Chapter 2 The Politics of Commonality (Draft from All Things in Common Spinoza and the Collegiant Letters Please do not quote Allrights reserved Gary Zabel September 12 2015)

Letter 44 Spinoza to Jelles

Letter 44 is dated February 17 1671 and is written in Dutch Spinoza was living in the

Hague the city he would die in six years later The letter is one of six between Spinoza and Jellesthat were preserved by Meyer and Rieuwertsz the executors of the philosopherrsquos literary estateThe six letters are the only correspondence Spinoza exchanged with a Collegiant friend after themid-1660s that survived the executorsrsquo precautionary editorial excisions

As mentioned in the previous chapter Jarig Jelles was one of Spinozarsquos oldest friendsperhaps going back to the time when the young Bentorsquos father was still living From a Mennonitefamily he was a member of the liberal Waterlander group headed by Galenus Abrahamsz and aparticipant in meetings of the Amsterdam college that Abrahamsz also led After making hisfortune as a spice merchant Jelles retired from business in 1653 to devote himself to the study ofphilosophy In 1671 he was at work on his own contribution to the Collegiantsrsquo rationalistinterpretation of religion his Confession of the Universal Christian Belief Like his friend PieterBalling he was influenced by spiritualism and Mennonite Anabaptism equally identifying theldquoinner lightrdquo with the faculty of human reason Although Jelles did not have much of anindependent interest in politics he was interested in promoting Spinozarsquos writings including theinfamous Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (Theological Political Treatise - TPT for short) in thepublication of which he apparently played a role

Letter 44 is divided into two parts

Part 1 In the opening paragraph Spinoza reports to Jelles that he has heard from aprofessor (whose name he does not give) that someone is planning to publish a Dutch translationof the Tractatus He expresses anxiety over the plan and with a tone of urgency asks Jelles tofind out if the report is true and if it is to block the publication if possible The reason he givesis that a publicly available translation of the TPT is bound to result in the banning of the Latinoriginal as well as the translation Stopping publication of the translated book is vital to whatSpinoza calls the ldquocause [zaak] he and Jelles share along with a number of unidentified friendswho according to Spinoza agree with him about the urgency of the matter In addition to therequest the fact that the letter omits the names of the professor and friends is a sign of thecaution Spinoza characteristically observed He is clearly trying to minimize the risk of involvingothers in the controversy swirling around the TPT should the letter fall into the wrong handsThe fact that Spinoza names the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus instead of referring to itobliquely indicates that he is aware that his enemies already know the identity of its authorIndeed the radical ideas philosophical sophistication and detailed knowledge of Hebrewevinced by the text left few in doubt that it was written by the renegade Jew from Amsterdam

Part 2 The remainder of the letter appears to be an unrelated account of Spinozasreaction to a little book an unidentified friend gave to him titled Homo Politicus The bookmust have been making quite a stir since Spinoza tells Jelles that he had heard a great deal aboutit before receiving it from his friend The full title which he does not provide in the letter isHomo politicus hoc est Consiliarus novus officiarus et aulicus secundum hodiernam praxin(Political Man or the New Counselor Official and Courtier According to Contemporary

Practice) The book was published anonymously in 1664 by the Jesuit press Cosmopoli InSpinozas judgment Homo Politicus is the most pernicious book conceived by the mind ofman Wealth and honors are the highest good of its author who counsels the use ofldquodissembling lying breaking promises perjuryrdquo and other forms of deception in order toachieve them He even recommends that the man who wants wealth and honors affect thedemeanor of a religious person while surreptitiously disregarding the precepts of religion in hisself-serving behavior The ambitious ldquopolitical manrdquo keeps ldquofaith with no one except insofar as itconduces to his advantagerdquo Spinoza tells Jelles that he formulated but then discarded the planto write a short book that would not attack the author of Homo Politicus directly but insteadpresent an account of what the ultimate good for human beings genuinely is ldquoI would treat of thehighest good and then indicate the restless and pitiable condition of those who are greedy formoney and covet honorshellip ldquo The letter then proceeds to discuss very briefly the content of theabandoned project

In order to understand that project it is important to recognize that the two parts of theletter are more closely related than they seem This is because Spinoza reads Homo Politicus as akind of inverted Tractatus Theologico-Politicus or if you prefer an anti-Tractatus (in the sensethat physicists talk about anti-electrons or anti-protons) At the time he wrote the letter he couldnot have known that the little book was written by Christoph Rapp Jan Rieuwertz identifiedRapp as its author when he republished the work after Spinozas death Rapp had an illustriouscareer in Prussia He studied jurisprudence at universities in Jena Wittenberg Ingolstadt andLeipzig and moved up the ranks of the Prussian state beginning as Counselor of Justice andending as Chancellor Although he was known as a champion of the rights of the feudal estatesagainst centralized political authority he was well-connected in Court enjoying the support ofthe Prince-Elector of Brandenberg Johann Sigismund Rapprsquos sympathies with the feudal estatesraise the question as to whether his treatise represents his own opinion or is rather a satire onthe proliferating figure of the political man whose pursues a successful career at Court As amanual for political advancement it is a Machiavellian work in the colloquial sense of the termand indeed Rapp cites Machiavelli frequently Spinoza had high regard for Machiavelli andsome of the most significant parts of the TPT rely upon the Florentinersquos social-scientific analysisof the dynamics of political power But Spinoza did not consider Machiavelli to be the purveyorof self-serving immoralism that many readers of The Prince took him to be Although The Princemade Spinoza somewhat uneasy he interpreted the book as either a warning about entrustingstate power to a single person or about the peril involved in changing the form of a state Forhim Machiavellirsquos fundamental project as articulated especially in the Discourses was devotedto the establishment of republican liberty Spinoza sees Rapp on the other hand as a man on themake who offers advice to the aspiring careerist on how to secure his personal interests in therough and tumble of politics by violating moral norms while appearing to be morally uprightAlthough this is an accurate description of the content of the book Spinoza does not consider thepossibility that Rapp is not stating his own position but satirizing that of the homo politicus whohas emerged in an era of advancing centralization of state power ndash at least on the provincial levelndash and the consequent multiplication of political careers After all how could Rapp expect hisbook to have anything other than a negative effect on the aspirations of unscrupulous candidatesfor state office Public exposure of the techniques he discusses could only result in defusing theirdeception-based efficacy Spinoza however reads Homo Politicus as a straightforwardarticulation of the views of its author and so for him the book is a kind of anti-Tractatus andits author an anti-Spinoza

Spinozarsquos Political Program

The Theological Political Treatise is a very unusual work It is a call to battle from a man

who valued quiet and regarded conflict with the utmost distaste It combines a scholarly treatisein biblical hermeneutics ndash complete with linguistic analyses of ancient Hebrew ndash with one of thefounding contributions to modern political philosophy It is written in a style that ranges fromtheoretical detachment to impassioned polemic the latter unusual for Spinoza even when

regarded on its own Throughout the book but especially in the Preface we find striking turns ofphrase from a writer not known for his literary flourishes ldquothe relics of manrsquos ancient bondagerdquo fighting for ldquoservitude as though for their salvationrdquo ldquoas if the whole of nature were as insaneas theyrdquo These and other characteristics that make the treatise unique stem from the fact thatSpinoza as author plays two quite different and seemingly incompatible roles that of thephilosopher who interrogates a complex subject-matter in order to discover and articulate truthand that of the militant who intervenes in a political situation with the intention of altering it in afundamental way The subject-matter of Spinozarsquos philosophical interrogation is the nature ofreligion the state and the relation between the two The political situation that is the object ofhis intervention is the struggle of conservative Calvinists to undermine and ultimately overthrowthe Dutch Republic and the reciprocal struggle of the Republic to persevere in its existence

The story of that struggle is complex in particular because it involves two additionalldquopartiesrdquo monarchists who were grouped around the noble House of Orange and liberalCalvinists In this epic conflict the Orangists were allied with the conservative Calvinists andthe liberal Calvinists with the republicans The split in Dutch Calvinism between liberal andconservative wings occurred in the early years of the seventeenth century with the writings andlectures of Jacobus Arminius and the remonstrance sent by his supporters to the States ofHolland Arminius and the ldquoRemonstrantsrdquo challenged the traditional Calvinist doctrine ofpredestination arguing instead for freedom of the will while also making a plea for religioustolerance The Counter-Remonstrants led by Franciscus Gomarius opposed them in both ofthese innovations The split within the Reform Church appeared to have been settled when theSynod of Dordrecht condemned the Remonstrants in 1618 and expelled Remonstrant ministersfrom their churches but the Remonstrants survived the purge and continued to develop theirinfluence not least because of their success in proselytizing prominent republicans Many joinedthe Collegiants Although the republicans were dominant in the political sphere the Counter-Remonstrants controlled the largest most powerful Church organization ndash the official ReformChurch including its various synods ndash and had the religious allegiance of the great majority ofthe Dutch population including nearly all of the common people Spinoza recognized this forwhat it was a case of divided sovereignty that could not last In the TPT he focuses his critiqueon the Counter-Remonstrants without ever naming them directly rather than the Orangists whowere the main political threat to the Republic He probably thought with some justification thatthe Orangists would not have been a serious problem had they not been backed by the ReformChurch In the Preface to his book he lays out his project with admirable clarity

For this purpose my most urgent task has been to indicate the main false assumptionsthat prevail regarding religion ndash that is the relics of manrsquos ancient bondage ndash and thenagain the false assumptions regarding the right of civil authorities There are many whowith an impudence quite shameless seek to usurp much of this right and under theguise of religion to alienate from the government the loyalty of the masses still proneto heathenish superstition so that slavery may return once more

Spinoza was not exaggerating There was a great deal at stake here In 1619 the Landrsquos

Advocate of Holland Johan van Oldenbarnevelt ndash a Remonstrant ndash was executed by the StatesGeneral under the influence of the Counter-Remonstrant stadtholder Maurice of Nassau Princeof Orange The stadtholder was head of state and commander of the armed forces an office thatwas hereditary in all but name and reserved for the House of Orange Under Oldenbarnevelt theposition of Landrsquos Advocate was essentially that of prime minister like the position of GrandPensionary under Johan De Witt A coup drsquoeacutetat in 1650 by Mauricersquos nephew and thenstadtholder William II failed when William died the same year The result was theldquostadholderless republicrdquo presided over by the Remonstrant Johan De Witt which lasted untilhis murder by a mob of Counter-Remonstrants and Orangists in the ldquoyear of disasterrdquo 1672 Thestadtholderless Republic was dominated by the regents leaders of Dutch cities who werenormally appointed by their predecessors and who came from the stratum of merchants bankersand traders on the stock exchange who made enormous fortunes during the Dutch ldquoGolden Agerdquo

Many were investors in the Dutch East India Company and many made their fortunes byimporting goods from the colonies In general the regents were from the wealthiest families inthe Netherlands Thus from 1650 to 1672 state power in the United Provinces including thenational legislature the States General was in the hands of the haute bourgeoisie The House ofOrange represented the class of rural aristocratic landowners but it also had a mass base ofsupport in the common people There are two reasons for this First the peasants artisans wage-workers and small retail merchants who comprised the common people were skeptical that theirinterests were well-served by the wealthy regents The second reason is that except in theCatholic parts of the Netherlands the common people were overwhelmingly Counter-Remonstrants The alliance of the House of Orange with the Reform Church ensured it a massbase that was indispensable for its aspirations to monarchical rule

By family background and friendships that appear to have included Johan De Witt andhis brother Cornelius as well as by philosophical principle Spinoza was inclined to support theRepublic against the alliance of Orangists and Counter-Remonstrants But he also understoodthat the weakness of the Republic lay in the fact that the regents who dominated it did not have amass base of support As nouveau riche and unlike the nobility they had no customaryobligations to the lower classes and little contact with them even as employers since wholesalemerchants bankers and stock traders had need for only a handful of employees As their wealthgrew to sometimes fabulous proportions the regents led lives that were increasingly isolatedfrom the rest of society The growing number of children from wealthy bourgeois families whoreceived a university education and the international connections that came from engaging intrade and finance gave the regents and their social milieu a cosmopolitan orientation They wereeasy targets for Dutch nationalism which was a powerful influence among the common peopleand championed by the House of Orange which had played a leading role in the war of nationalliberation from Spain But most of all the allegiance of the common people to the conservativeCalvinism of the Reform Church was an acute problem for the regents and their Republic ForCounter-Remonstrant Calvinism was without any question the most powerful ideological forcein the United Provinces of the seventeenth century The extensive network of parish churchesprovided the only education the common people received which was of course strictly religiousin character Its ministers knew the families in their congregations and were able to offer themadvice and spiritual support as well as charity in difficult times And every Sunday they had acaptive audience for preaching that easily shaded into political speech-making advocating thecensorship of this or that book condemning free-thinking intellectuals (Spinoza was certainlyamong them) or raking the regents over the coals Johan de Witt was the topic of more than afew fiery sermons

The antagonism between the Reform Church and the Republic was exceedinglydangerous because the Church was an ideological force with great influence on popular thinkingThe disastrous consequences of the split between Church and State had an important lesson toteach namely that the modern state needed to control the dominant ideological apparatus insociety in order to secure its rule Spinoza was the first philosopher to make this point And hewas also the first to show that the state could accomplish that task while granting its citizensfreedom of thought and expression In that respect it was Spinoza not Locke who was the mostimportant philosophical forerunner of the modern liberal republic precisely because headdressed the problem that Locke avoided with his advocacy of the ldquoseparation of church andstaterdquo As we will see Spinoza argued for state control of public religion with full freedom ofprivate worship But while the republic Spinoza wanted to see in the United Provinces wasliberal in the sense that it would protect individual freedom of thought and expression it wentwell beyond the liberal tradition by making the common people sovereign It would have beendemocratic ndash had it actually existed ndash in a far more radical sense than any of the so-calledldquoliberal democraciesrdquo that have taken root in the world since Spinoza wrote the TractatusTheologico-Politicus

In the TPT then Spinoza addresses himself to the most important political problem ofthe day namely how to reconcile religion and the Dutch Republic He does this by establishing adistinction between true religion and superstition It would make sense to call superstition a kindof disease of the mind were it not so much a part of the ordinary human condition Spinoza

likens it to hallucination and frenzy It is a mental state that involves a false even absurdconception of the world as a response to fears and hopes Spinoza is a strict determinist Thecourse of events is a chain of causes and effects in which each effect is the necessaryconsequence of the cause or confluence of causes that immediately precedes it But the chain ofcauses and effects is much too complex for the human mind to comprehend at least in any detailFear and hope stem from our ignorance concerning the future and from our desire to controlevents that are beyond our capacity to influence through realistic action ie through effectiveintervention in real causal sequences Superstition involves a false anthropomorphic conceptionof the divine The superstitious person regards God or the gods as possessing the same emotionsas human beings In order to influence the outcome of events it is necessary to placate divineanger or flatter the deity or make sacrifices to it Out of this spurious need the professions ofsoothsayer priest and minister arise people who make their living by interpreting the divineemotions responsible for difficult circumstances prescribing remedial essentially magicalactions and interceding with God or the gods on behalf of those who pay for their services Whatmakes superstition so difficult to expunge is the fact that it originates not only from ignorancebut from human misery In particular that is the reason the common people are so wedded tosuperstition or so says Spinoza They are ldquoeverywhere at the same level of miseryrdquo

Spinoza develops a conception of true religion in contrast with superstition asessentially moral in character That is the purpose of the detailed Biblical exegesis that comprisesthree-quarters of the TPT In the hands of the professional caste of church officials the Bible isthe most potent instrument of superstition They say it contains the answer to every questionworth asking even the questions philosophers and scientists raise It is supposed to harborsecrets and mysteries that only specialists can decipher It becomes an object of idolatry in thatpeople come to ldquoworship paper and ink rather than the word of Godrdquo But that word is writtenfirst of all in the human heart a Socinian doctrine Spinoza fully endorses Unlike the ldquolettersrdquo ofthe Bible the inwardly revealed word is not subject to the distortions or corruptions of textualtransmission over the course of centuries

There is a core of religious truth in the Bible that accords with the inner light but it hasnothing to do with superstition More broadly it must be distinguished from the beliefs that wereprevalent at the times its various books were written These include the beliefs of the prophets aswell as those of the common people who received their message The prophets were notaccomplished in philosophy or science and it would be a mistake to look for these disciplinesbetween the covers of the Bible Spinoza lists three characteristics that distinguished the prophetsfrom other people and none of them involve intellectual excellence a vivid and activeimagination the experience of a sign and a heart set on what is just and good Of these the lastis the most important The story of the creation of Adam and Eve and the events that transpire inthe Garden of Eden is a parable rather than a record of historical fact Joshua could not havestopped the sun in its motion through the sky because the sun does not revolve around the earthThe prophets disagreed with one another so that there is no possibility of a logically consistentreading of the Bible But none of this really matters In an audacious move Spinoza argues thatwe must neither add nor subtract anything from the Bible remaining content what it clearlyconveys We must read it ldquoliterallyrdquo except when there is linguistic evidence of the intentionaluse of metaphor In one sense then Spinoza is a ldquofundamentalistrdquo But he also argues that we arefree to believe or refuse to believe much of what the Bible says because it is ancillary to itsreligious message

The only claim of religion that can be justified on the basis of a proper reading ofScripture is that human beings ought to obey God by treating one another with justice and love(caritas) Although often rendered into English as ldquocharityrdquo caritas includes much more thangiving to those in need The Latin is a translation of the Koine Greek word agape which refersexpansively to the love of God for the human person the love of the person for God and thelove of people for one another as an extension of their love for God that is to say their desire tolove what God loves For Spinoza the Bible is an appeal to the beliefs and imagination of thecommon people by the prophets and apostles the purpose of which is to convey a moral messageso simple that ldquoeven the most sluggish mindrdquo can understand it In dramatic narrative languageand vivid imagery the authors of the Bible try to convince people to obey God by treating other

people with justice and love The purpose of their writing is to elicit obedience not articulatemetaphysical truth From the Bible we learn nothing about what God is or what his relation is tohuman beings or the universe as a whole The Bible conveys a moral truth in the sense that itcommands people to live in the way that is best for human beings In terms of the theory ofspeech acts John Austin developed in the twentieth-century the Biblersquos use of language isperformative rather than constative It is meant to do something rather than to state somethingalthough it implies the assertion that the best life is one in which we treat other people with loveand justice But it presents no arguments in support of that assertion other than that we must livein the way that God commands By contrast the discovery of metaphysical truth and itsexpression in deductive propositional form is the goal of philosophers According to Spinozathen there can be no conflict between philosophy and religion properly understood becausethey are dedicated to entirely different ends ldquobetween faith and theology on the one side andphilosophy on the other there is no relation and no affinityhelliprdquo

The same cannot be said of religion and the state There is indeed a relation between thetwo though it is in danger of degenerating into conflict because they occupy the same terrainboth demand obedience Of course Spinoza has in mind the fraught relationship between theReform Church and the Dutch Republic In an alliance with the House of Orange the Calvinistconsistories sought to alter the character of the state by abolishing the Republic and replacing itwith a monarchy that would make room for the authority of the Reform Church As long as aninfluential church independent of the state is involved in politics (considering its ability toinfluence the actions of thousands of believers) sovereignty is divided But as Hobbes pointsout in Leviathan it is impossible to divide sovereignty without undermining it The first plank inthe political program Spinoza develops in the TPT is that of subordinating the church to the stateThe sovereignty of the state must be absolute and that means that it must extend even toreligious doctrine and the details of public worship

Thus we cannot doubt that in modern times religionbelongs solely to the right of thesovereign No one has the right and power to exercise control over it to choose itsministers to determine and establish the foundations of the church and its doctrine topass judgment on morality and acts of piety to excommunicate or to accept into thechurch and to provide for the poor except by the authority and permission of thesovereign

Since this conclusion provocatively challenges the power of the Calvinist consistories their

violent reaction to the publication of the TPT is perfectly understandable And yet Spinozaargues that regulation of worship by the state ought to be minimized His purpose is not statedomination of religion but preventing religion from dominating the state He agrees withHobbes that sovereignty is absolute or it does not exist at all since a divided sovereignty isinherently unstable But he also agrees with Machiavelli that the state is sovereign only as longas it is able to retain its power There is a logic a psychology and a physics of political powerwhose most fundamental law is that power can sustain itself only when it does not provoke theindignation of the multitude

In the definition Spinoza gives in the Ethics indignation (indignatio) is hatred towardone who has injured another either someone we love or someone for whom we feel no emotionbut believe to be similar to ourselves It operates through the mechanism of the imitation ofaffects I imitate ndash ie empathetically feel ndash the emotions of those with whom I identify so that Iexperience harm to the other person as harm to myself Since hatred is pain along with the ideaof an external cause my imitation of the suffering of someone whom the sovereign has harmed isequivalent to my hatred of the sovereign The consequence of my hatred is a desire to injure thesovereign in order to diminish or destroy the perceived cause of pain If fear of the consequencesof defying the sovereignrsquos command is transformed into mass indignation then the authority torule disintegrates ldquohellip to slaughter subjects to despoil them to ravish maidens and the like turnsfear into indignation and consequently the civil order into a condition of warrdquo

One certain way to provoke indignation is for the sovereign to tell people what they must

believe and what they are allowed to say Indignation is inevitable if the state attempts to controlthought and expression not only because such attempts harm the multitude but also becausethey are futile Spinoza recognizes that it is possible for the state to deceive its citizens and toeffect their beliefs in other ways But he also assets that no state has the power to suspend thelaws of human nature by for example ordering its people to free themselves from anger to hatethose who have benefited them or to regard as false what they believe to be true Any attempt toexercise power in this fashion provokes indignation in part because of the emptiness of thepower it vainly seeks to assert All that it demonstrates is the sovereignrsquos weakness therebyencouraging the further spread of indignation It also makes enemies of those who refuse to hidetheir deepest beliefs and honors those who lie about what they believe which is both unjust tothose falsely reviled and dangerous to the state because it encourages duplicity and corruption inthose who hold political office Far from protecting the state the attempt to control thought andexpression undermines it

The remarkable thing about the theory of politics Spinoza develops in the TPT is that itderives liberal conclusions from absolutist premises The power of the state is absolute but it isnonetheless fragile No state Spinoza says has more to fear from external enemies than it doesfrom its own people Polices that avoid or minimize indignation are vital to its health Howeverwhile he advocates full freedom of thought and expression as necessary to preserving thepolitical community Spinoza draws the line at action which comes under the province of lawand command After all what else could sovereignty mean but the power to command orprohibit action Action includes such functions of a church as public worship and the provisionof charity both of which for this reason are appropriate objects of state control Most of allcivil peace requires the prohibition of church interference with government which would reversethe proper order of obedience and command Thus Spinoza identifies two conditions of stablepolitical power freedom of thought and expression and the iron will of the state to brook nochallenge to its sovereign authority over action especially from organized religion

If Spinozarsquos program for political reform is liberal it is liberalism of a unique kindUnlike the main currents in the liberal tradition it is based on neither a theory of rights nor oneof individual utility The concept of rights has no normative role to play in the TPT becauseSpinoza insists that rights are the same as powers For example there is no right of free speechunless there is the effective power to speak freely Thus the right cannot function as a normbecause it has no reality until it actually exists and whether or not it exists depends upon thebalance of political forces Moreover although the state is necessary to security and civil peaceno one chooses to create it in order to maximize his or her utility People are driven by self-interest but this is true no matter what their conditions of life happen to be Spinoza makes muchof the irrefutable but neglected point that people do not have the ability to survive withoutcombining their power with that of others There is no possible scenario in which isolatedindividuals choose for or against political organization in the interest of maximizing their utilityfor the simple reason that there are no isolated individuals

It is true that Spinoza argues that democracy is the only ldquonaturalrdquo form of governmentbecause it preserves collectively the right to make decisions that each person enjoys individuallyin the ldquostate of naturerdquo For this reason it is the form of government most compatible withfreedom But the idea of a state of nature that precedes political organization and the associatedidea of natural rights are no more than hypothetical because it is precisely in a state of naturethat people would be unable to protect their rights against the aggression of others But forSpinoza this is the same as saying that these rights do not exist The idea of natural rights in apre-political condition is purely notional The only way to enjoy rights effectively ndash which is tosay the only way to exercise the powers they involve ndash is to entrust them to a sovereign authoritycapable of replacing unbridled aggression with the rule of law If ever there were a socialcontract theorist who employed the concept of the state of nature as an hypothesis in a thoughtexperiment without taking the myth of an original condition seriously it is Spinoza The idea thatdemocracy is the most natural form of government simply means that it comes closest to thehypothetical freedom of the state of nature In a democracy people retain their power to decidewhat actions to take but as members of the sovereign authority ndash ie as citizens ndash while theyare bound as subjects to obey the laws that result from their collective deliberations ldquoIn a

democratic state nobody transfers his natural right to another so completely that thereafter he isnot to be consulted he transfers it to the majority of the entire community of which he is partrdquo

In addition to the claim of naturalism in his advocacy of democracy in the TPT Spinozaargues that democratic governments are less prone to irrationality than monarchical oraristocratic ones A large number of people is less likely to endorse the same irrational decisionthan a small council (aristocracy) or a single person (monarchy) ldquohellip In a democracy there is lessdanger of an assembly behaving unreasonably for it is practically impossible for the majority ofa single assembly if it is of some size to agree on the same piece of follyrdquo The sentence thatfollows the one just quoted throws some light on what ldquothe same piece of follyrdquo means byreferring to ldquothe follies of appetiterdquo Spinozarsquos claim is that a democratic state is more rationalthan the alternatives in that it does the best job avoiding the foolish decisions people make whenled by their appetites

Spinoza does not provide an argument in support of this claim in the TPT but in thePolitical Treatise which he began to write two years later there is a passage that that helpscorrect the omission It concerns the wisdom of establishing a governing council with a largenumber of members in an aristocratic state Although an aristocracy excludes the commonpeople from political power reserving it for an elite Spinoza argues that it is capable ofguaranteeing liberties similar to those of democratic government provided that the members ofits governing council are sufficiently numerous

The fact that sovereignty is conferred absolutely on the council need not give thecommon people [plebi] any reason to fear oppressive slavery at its hands For when acouncil is so large its will is determined by reason rather than mere caprice becauselusts [libidine] draw men asunder and it is only when they have as their objective whatis honorable or at least appears so that they can be guided as if by one mind

Spinozarsquos argument is more complicated than a quick reading might indicate It is

impossible he claims for the members of a large council to come to agreement on the basis oftheir libidine because these affects draw them in different and incompatible directions Whilelibidine generally refers to sexual appetites Spinoza uses the word in this context to refer to thefull range of disreputable passions The corresponding point in the TPT is that it is ldquopracticallyimpossiblerdquo for the members of the democratic council to endorse the same ldquopiece of follyrdquo Inorder to reach agreement the members of the governing council in an aristocratic state must takeas their goal ldquowhat is honorable or at least appears sordquo In the Ethics Spinoza defines thehonorable (honestum) as ldquowhat is praised by men who live by the guidance of reasonrdquo and hemakes it clear that what such men praise is ldquothe desire to establish friendshiprdquo In accordancewith this definition the objective of the council members in an aristocracy is not so much to actwith reason as to be regarded by the reasonable as acting with reason ie as promotingfriendship That is why they are able to reach agreement even when their objective appears to behonorable although it is not But with whom do they wish to be or appear to be friends SinceSpinoza intends his argument to allay the fear of the plebs it seems obvious that it is theirfriendship that the council members seek But why would aristocrats be interested in makingfriends with commoners Although Spinoza does not tell us why in this passage the answer canbe found elsewhere in the Political Treatise The reason that the council members must seek thefriendship of the common people is that aristocratic government is not nor can it be absolute inthe full sense of the word in other words it cannot hold a complete monopoly on powerAlthough they have no institutional role in an aristocratic regime the common people retain thepower to undermine state authority by refusing to obey it or even by waging war against it Therulers recognize that power in the fear with which they regard the masses

In the Introduction to the Political Treatise Spinoza dissociates himself from the rosyview of human nature held by the authors of utopias In order to develop a political philosophythat is useful in the world of actual human affairs it is necessary to design institutions inaccordance with which those in government realize the rational end of politics ndash ie the common

good ndash whether or not that is their intention The desire of the members of the council to be seenas seeking the friendship of the masses ensures the rationality of the formerrsquos decisions becauseit causes them to seek the common good even if they do so from fear rather than dedication toreason One might object that appearing to seek the friendship of the masses entails only that thecouncil appear to seek the common good not that it actually does so But it is not possible for thecouncil to neglect the common interest over the long run without dire consequences unless weassume that the masses are so benighted that they are unable to discern the consistent violation oftheir interests The appearance and reality of seeking the friendship of the masses areindistinguishable as proved nearly two hundred years later by a theorem of Abraham LincolnsIt is possible to fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the timebut not all of the people all of the time If that theorem were not true then there would be nolimit to the power of tyrants while Spinoza is fond of quoting Tacitus that tyrannies never lastlong Once again the reason for their inevitable downfall is the indignation they provokethrough the harm they cause to the interests of the multitude

Although Spinoza does not make the point explicitly it is easy to see that a democraticcouncil does not require the same concern with the honorable as an aristocratic one because fearof the masses has no role to play in a democracy Since the common people who are the vastmajority of society are empowered to make decisions they have no need to evoke fear indecision-makers different than themselves in order to protect their own interests Thus in the caseof a democratic council the impossibility of a large number of people agreeing on ldquothe samepiece of follyrdquo is enough to secure political rationality ie the discovery and implementation ofthe common good

An implication of Spinozarsquos emphasis on the affinity between democracy and reason isthat democracy is a kind school for developing rationality The need to make and assess publicarguments about the common good requires clarity of thought and some understanding of theprinciples of logical implication In addition while citizens of a democracy agree to obey the lawor decree established by a vote of the majority they retain their freedom of judgment includingthe right to argue in favor of reversing decisions already made Thus there is no point in ademocracy at which citizens must give up their efforts to influence collective decisions andtherefore no point at which rationality becomes irrelevant However reason is not simply ameans of achieving the common good as an external end It is part of the common good forhuman beings and therefore itself one the ends it seeks to achieve The highest good is theintellectual love of God ndash so Spinoza argues in the Ethics ndash which we cannot attain withoutexercising reason Democracy then turns out to be not only the best way of securing thecommon good of the members of a polity but the best way of advancing the ultimate goodappropriate to human beings in general

Spinozarsquos advocacy of democracy was exceedingly radical at a time when monarchy wasthe political norm in Europe and even the oligarchic regent-dominated Dutch Republic waswidely regarded as an ultra-left anomaly But it sits uncomfortably with another aspect of theTPT namely its apparently low opinion of ldquothe multituderdquo (multitudo) In the Introduction to thebook which was written in Latin Spinoza tells his readers that he would prefer that ldquothecommon peoplerdquo (plebs) not read the work since they are incapable of understanding it andlikely to distort its meaning He pictures its members as entirely driven by their passions andincapable of using reason

I know how deeply rooted in the mind are the prejudices embraced under the guise ofpiety I know too that the masses [vulgo] can no more be freed from their superstitionthan from their fears Finally I know that they are unchanging in their obstinacy thatthey are not guided by reason and that their praise and blame is at the mercy of impulse

But this judgment throws into question the affinity between democracy and reason that

Spinoza affirms in the TPT For in order for such an affinity to exist the common people mustbe able to make decisions on the basis of reason Is the negative picture he paints of the masses

in the Introduction to the TPT simply a rhetorical device meant to appeal to the vanity of hiseducated readership It does not seem to be because a similarly low opinion appears again in theEthics and in some of his letters where there is no need to appeal to anyonersquos vanity Instead offunctioning simply as a rhetorical ploy Spinozarsquos generally negative view of the vast majority ofsociety and the positive view he develops in his advocacy of democracy indicate a tension in hispolitics

In the Ethics and TPT Spinoza uses the words vulgus plebs and multitudointerchangeably When any of the three word appears it is usually accompanied by suchqualifiers as ldquoirrationalrdquo ldquoignorantrdquo ldquouneducatedrdquo ldquosuperstitiousrdquo and ldquogoverned by passionsrdquoStill for Spinoza reason is not the possession of a natural elite Rather it is a universally humancapacity whose occurrence among people in developed form is rare Above all the cultivation ofreason requires free time There are two references to this requirement in the TPT that bear onthe ability of the multitude to develop their rational capacities One passage refers to ldquothecommon peoplerdquo as ldquofor the most part knowing nothing of logical reasoning or without leisurefor itrdquo Another refers to Spinozarsquos method of biblical exegesis noting that ldquoour own methoddemands a knowledge of Hebrew for which study the common people can likewise have noleisurerdquo A third passage which we have already referred to is relevant to the relationshipbetween leisure and the cultivation of reason while not mentioning it directly ldquothe multitude arealways at the same level of miseryrdquo Although Spinoza does not specify what he means by thelast statement it is likely that he is referring at least in part to the misery of onerous labor Thepoverty of the multitude demands that they spend most of their time engaged in hard physicalwork and the resulting absence of leisure prevents them from acquiring knowledge anddeveloping rational skills Lacking developed reason it is easy for them to fall under the sway ofthose who manipulate their fears and hopes for their own personal advantage the priestsministers rabbis and other religious officials In Spinozarsquos view fears and hopes make themultitude credulous and willing to accept superstitious beliefs (in divination the ability ofprayer to change the natural course of events the purchase of indulgences etc) that promisecontrol of an uncertain future For clerics the key to power and money is manipulation of thegreat majority of society through the instrument of superstition masked as religion

While the words plebs vulgus and multitudo do not designate a particular social classthey are not free of class reference either Spinoza uses the word plebs much as it was used in theearly Roman Republic to refer to the free subjects of a state who have no right to participate ingovernment Although plebs designates a political status rather than an economic class Spinozais clear that the group it refers to consists largely in those who work with their hands Forexample in the Political Treatise he identifies artisans as an example of the plebs the onlyexample in any of his writings Undoubtedly he would also have included peasants and wageworkers in that category and probably small retail merchants who were also politicallydisenfranchised Patricians by contrast certainly include nobles but may also include at least thewealthier burghers as was the case in the United Provinces Germany and much of the rest ofEurope The word vulgus as Spinoza uses it refers to the same members of society as the wordplebs but with the specific connotation of a lack of education and culture whose most extremeexpression is the unruly and irrational behavior of mobs In fact depending upon the contextvulgus is sometimes best translated as ldquocrowdrdquo or ldquomobrdquo Multitudo means ldquothe manyrdquo Spinozauses it to designate any group with numerous members including for example the simplebodies that make up a chemical substance In the context of political theory he uses the word torefer to the same people who comprise the plebs or vulgus but with the specific connotation ofbeing the vast majority of society Thus plebs vulgus and multitudo have the same referentalthough their principal connotations differ However in Spinozarsquos usage each word tends tobecome a synecdoche for the combined meaning of all three Thus in general the plebs vulgusor multitudo comprise the vast majority of society comprised largely of those who work withtheir hands are denied political rights except in democracies lack culture and education and aregiven to uncouth irrational or unruly behavior

The tension in Spinozarsquos politics between his critical view of the multitude and hisadvocacy of a democratic state in which it is sovereign can be explained by drawing a distinctionbetween the multitude as it is under the conditions of the actually existing Dutch Republic and

the multitude as it could be were Spinozarsquos reforms to be implemented With an uncontrolledReform Church and a Republic dominated by regents who represent the wealthy burghers themultitude has no chancing of shedding its superstitions or developing its rational capacities TheChurch manipulates their hopes and fears through the instrument of superstition and therepublican oligarchs block their participation in political decision-making which is the only waythey can develop rationality on a significant scale The story would be very different however ifthe state were both democratic and prohibited the Church from involvement in politics Twomajor conditions would then exist for the development of reason on a mass scale

The idea of a democracy raises the problem of how people without significant materialresources are to participate in making decisions when they must spend their lives in toil It mightbe thought that the problem can be solved by a universal franchise enabling all citizens to votefor representatives to a legislative assembly and other state offices But even if measures were inplace to prevent the wealthy minority from exercising unequal influence in elected bodiesrepresentative government is not Spinozarsquos idea of democracy Like Plato and Aristotle when heuses the term ldquodemocracyrdquo he has in mind a state such as the Athenian polis in which all adult(male) citizens were empowered to vote directly on legislation and other public matters Spinozamakes this clear in the unfinished chapter on democracy in the Political Treatise

hellipin this state all who are born of citizen parents or on native soil or have done serviceto the commonwealth or are qualified on any other grounds on which the right ofcitizenship is granted by law all I say can lawfully demand for themselves the right tovote in the supreme council and to undertake offices of state nor can they be refusedexcept for crime or dishonor

At a relatively advanced stage in its development the Athenian polis solved the problem

of the multitudersquos participation in government by paying citizens to attend sessions of theAssembly thereby compensating them for missed days of work If Spinoza was aware of theAthenian solution he gives no indication of it in his writings although it is likely that he wouldhave considered the problem of participation in politics by those without leisure in the part of thePolitical Treatise he left unfinished at his death Following the pattern of the completed chapterson monarchy and aristocracy the unfinished chapters on democracy would undoubtedly havespecified the institutional structures and practices necessary to sustain a democratic state In anyevent without something like the Athenian solution the idea of a democratic republic in theUnited Provinces would have been no more than the sort of utopian dream Spinoza rejects in theIntroduction to the Political Treatise

Returning to the earlier work the program for reforming the Dutch Republic that emergesin the TPT has three planks 1) establish state control over the churches as public institutions 2)guarantee freedom of thought expression and private worship and 3) democratize the oligarchicRepublic Although Spinozarsquos book is a work of philosophy it is equally a political interventionin a concrete historical situation a fact that he indicates in his letter to Jelles by referring to theldquocauserdquo he asks his friend to serve by blocking the Dutch translation of the book But in order toact as a political intervention the book must influence the beliefs and through them the actionsof people That raises the question To whom is the TPT addressed Since the decision to write inLatin effectively prevented the multitude from reading the work (which as we have seen wasSpinozarsquos intention) and on the assumption that not many aristocrats were likely to be swayedby its radical arguments the addressee of the book can only have been the educated section ofthe bourgeoisie Since Spinoza was unlikely to sway many conservative Calvinists with hisrationalist conception of religion there were only two groups within the bourgeoisie ndash at leastsome of whose members were capable of reading Latin ndash that the work could effectively addressThe first consists in republicans including the regents who hesitated to support the kind of stateauthority over religion that Spinoza advocated for ideological or pragmatic reasons The secondconsists in Orangists who were liberals in matters of religion and so in conflict with the ReformChurch As odd as it may seem there were a good number of people who fit into the secondcategory Even many of the Collegiantrsquos were loyal to the House of Orange in spite of theirpronounced religious liberalism

Had the TPTrsquos program been limited to its first two planks ndash state control of the churchesand freedom of thought and expression ndash it would have been politically coherent But where doesthe idea of democratizing the United Provinces fit into this picture Neither bourgeoisrepublicans nor religious liberals were apt to be sympathetic to the idea of a democratic republicthat would place power in the hands of the multitude If Spinoza wanted to make an appeal to therepublican and liberal Orangist sections of the bourgeoisie he ought to have been defending theexisting oligarchic Republic against its conservative Calvinist and monarchist enemies ratherthan elaborating an argument for its democratization There is only one audience who wouldhave been sympathetic to that argument namely the peasants artisans wage-workers and smallmerchants who comprised the multitude But that is precisely the readership Spinoza deniedhimself by writing in Latin

And yet Spinoza understood that the only way the Republic could survive in face of thealliance between the Reform Church and the House of Orange was to shift the allegiance of themultitude by winning its support Thus the contradiction in Spinozarsquos program is not a theoreticalflaw but a reflection of the real contradiction involved in the stadtholderless Republic or if youprefer the instability in the balance of social forces that enabled it to exist The Republic couldsurvive only by means of an impossible alliance between the multitude and the regents IfSpinoza erred it was in believing that it was possible to convince the regents to democratize bythe force of his arguments But this was the same as asking them to commit political suicidesince their power on the urban and national levels depended upon their ability to defend theirmonopoly on state offices The only alternative which Spinoza rejected was a popularrevolution that would create a new and radically democratic republic But that republic wouldshare with the existing one no more than the name like the animal dog and the dog star thatSpinoza refers to in a different context For that reason it would have fallen under his warningthat those who attempt to change the form of the state are likely to see it restored in a morerepressive version (see page 25 below) In short there was no solution to the problem the TPTattempted to solve or at least none within the limits of Spinozarsquos thinking As a political theoryand a theory of biblical hermeneutics the book is a brilliant work that went on to influencephilosophers and ironically theologians for the next three centuries As an intervention in theextraordinarily difficult and complex political situation of the seventeenth-century Netherlands itwas and had to be an utter failure

There are in fact two political programs in the TPT an overt program and a latent oneThe overt program is liberal republican and bourgeois in the sense that its addressee andintended agent of change is the educated bourgeoisie The latent program lies quite a bit furtherto the left It is radically democratic and its only possible agent of change is the multitude Letter44 makes a contribution to the latent program that moves in an even more radical direction

The Communist Idea

In his letter to Jelles Spinoza develops an idea of the highest good for human beings as

an alternative to what he argues is the false conception of Homo Politicus For the author of thatbook wealth and honors comprise the highest good But Spinoza claims in the letter thatcommonwealths devoted to the pursuit of wealth and honors ldquomust necessarily perish and haveperishedrdquo He then writes

How far superior indeed and excellent were the reflections of Thales of Miletus compared with this writer is shown by the following account All things he said are incommon among friends

The fact that this paragraph follows Spinozarsquos critique of Homo Politicus while proposing

an alternative to the apparent position of its author justifies an interpretation that takes it in apolitical sense Spinoza should be read as offering the saying of Thales as an addendum to the

latent program he articulates in the TPT Like democracy common ownership could have onlyone social basis in the Netherlands of the seventeenth century ndash namely the peasants artisanswage-workers and small retail merchants The problem this raises is how to make the transitionfrom a multitude given to irrationality and superstition ndash and therefore under the sway of theReformed Church ndash to one capable of the rationality necessary to create the democraticcommunism (the content of which we have yet to define) that Letter 44 implies when consideredalong with the TPT Spinoza saw no answer to this problem That is why he suppressed his latentproject in favor of the overt one for a liberal republic able to assert its sovereign authority overthe Church It seemed to him that the educated bourgeoisie had political capacities that themultitude lacked

Spinozarsquos judgment on this matter is similar mutatis mutandis to that of FrederickEngels in the Peasant War in Germany For Engels the Peasant War of the sixteenth century wasa heroic but premature revolution Under the leadership of Thomas Muumlntzer the peasantsadopted a program that included the expropriation of ecclesiastic and aristocratic property andthe common ownership of goods But the princes were the only group with the wealth andmilitary resources necessary to benefit from the ensuing turmoil while their rivals for power ndashthe Catholic prelates and lesser nobility ndash were ruined by the confiscation of property andplundering or destruction of fixed wealth by the peasant masses The rising bourgeoisie was ableto frame an independent liberal political program but did not yet have the social weightnecessary to play a leading role in the economy and the state According to Engels the peasantrywas incapable of mastering the new forces of production unleashed by the world market and theonly class that might have played a progressive role alongside the peasants ndash the proletarianwage-working element in the towns ndash was a very small part of laboring population It would takeanother three centuries for the proletariat to develop along with industry to the point where itwould be able to draft a meaningful equivalent of the communist program first framed by thesixteenth-century German peasantry Spinoza certainly had no idea that industrialization and asizeable proletariat were on their way But he shared with Engels a pessimistic assessment of thechances for a successful social transformation led by peasants and their allies Perhaps with thedisastrous defeat of the German peasants in mind (as well as the allegiance of the Dutchmultitude to the Reformed Church) Spinoza judged that relying upon the common people as anagent of social and political change in his own century would have been equally futile

Why then does Spinoza raise the issue of common ownership in Letter 44 The answer isthe same as for why he discusses democracy in the TPT when it makes no contribution to hispolitical intervention but on the contrary damages it We could say that Spinoza is either a badmilitant or a good philosopher The truth is he is both Like Platorsquos attempt to influence thecourse of events in Syracuse or Aristotlersquos decision to tutor Alexander the Great Spinozarsquos faithin the political efficacy of philosophical reasoning was misguided There is ample historicalevidence that the philosopher who attempts to be politically effective as a philosopher is doomedto defeat That is why Marx ceased considering himself a philosopher in 1845 as he indicates inthe eleventh of his Theses on Feuerbach ldquoUntil now philosophers have only attempted tounderstand the world the point however is to change itrdquo The project of changing the world isdifferent than that of understanding it from a purely theoretical perspective Of course it ispossible for philosophers to influence statesmen as Locke influenced the drafters of the USConstitution But Lockersquos influence was effective more than a century after he wrote the SecondTreatise on Civil Government and so can hardly be called a political intervention The attempt tointervene politically in a concrete situation in which multiple forces and complex structures arein play is something very different than the delayed influence on the drafters of a constitutionwho have had an opportunity to ponder at leisure the meaning of a philosopherrsquos work The mostimportant question of politics is not so much ldquoWhat is to be donerdquo as ldquoWho is to do itrdquoSpinoza may have been right that the multitude was not the collective subject to defendrepublican liberty That is why he appealed to the Dutch bourgeoisie through its philosophicallyliterate elements But he was too much the philosopher to suppress his argument that ademocratic republic is the kind of state that best preserves freedom and encourages rationalityand he was willing to make his point even at the cost of alienating the collective agent he wasattempting to influence

The reference to common ownership in Letter 44 would have had an even more negativeeffect on his readers should Spinoza have made it in the TPT In private communication withJelles however he was able to raise the topic without risking further political difficultiesSpinozarsquos reference presumes an intellectual history with roots in both ancient Greek philosophyand early Christianity a history that was renewed practically as well as theoretically in earlymodern Europe In the passage from Letter 44 where he introduces the theme of commonownership he goes on to elaborate the position he attributes to Thales Here is the passage in fullthat we have already quoted partially

How far superior indeed and excellent were the reflections of Thales of Miletuscompared with this writer is shown by the following account All things he said are incommon among friends The wise are the friends of the Gods and all things belong tothe Gods therefore all things belong to the wise In this way the wise man makeshimself the richest by nobly despising riches instead of greedily pursuing them

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo (Amicorum communia omnia) is

the first entry in his book Adages by the late Renaissance humanist and reform-minded Catholicscholar Desiderius Erasmus The Adages were widely available in Spinozarsquos day and it is likelythat both Spinoza and Jelles had read them although the former must have also consultedErasmusrsquo source for the saying ndash Lives of the Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius We will seewhy in a moment Erasmus cites the same deduction from the maxim as Spinoza does in Letter44 except that he attributes it to Socrates rather than Thales

From this proverb Socrates deduced that all things belong to all good men just as theydo to the gods For to the gods he said belong all things good men are friends of thegods and among friends all possessions are in common

The fact that Spinoza refers to wise men while Erasmus refers to good men does not

indicate any real difference between them because both accepted the ancient Greek and biblicalequivalence between human goodness and wisdom The difference in attributing the deductiveconsequences of the proverb to Thales on the one hand and Socrates on the other also does notindicate any substantive disagreement between Spinoza and Erasmus although it does signify adifference in intellectual vocation and emphasis Interestingly however the attribution in bothcases is incorrect Their common source the Lives of the Philosophers places the argument intothe mouth of Diogenes the Cynic rather than Socrates or Thales Thus both Spinoza and Erasmushave had a failure of memory and probably for the same reason The author of Lives makes itclear that although Diogenes the Cynic despised the pursuit of wealth he was not a veryappealing character he was arrogant and could be verbally and physically abusive to those hejudged to be unwise It is understandable then that the figure of Diogenes would drop out of thememory of both Erasmus and Spinoza and be replaced by a philosopher with whom each tosome extent identified Erasmus the Renaissance humanist undoubtedly found Socrates well-suited to stand in for the part of Diogenes the Cynic because Socrates was a moral philosopherand the teacher of Plato whose influence on the Renaissance was profound As an admirer of thenatural sciences and a maker of telescopes Spinoza would have felt the same way about Thaleswho was an astronomer as well as a philosopher

In Letter 44 a story from Lives follows the identification of Thales as the figureresponsible for the drawing the deductive consequences of the proverb In order to demonstratethat his rejection of the pursuit of wealth was not an alibi for poverty Thales made use of hisexpert knowledge of the heavens Foreseeing a bountiful olive crop after the previous harvestrsquosdearth he rented all of the olive presses in Greece cheaply and then hired them out at a highprice to farmers who needed them to press the oil from their olives In this way he amassed agreat deal of wealth within a single year which ldquohe then distributed with a liberality equal to the

shrewdness by which he had acquired itrdquo Spinozarsquos memory of the story must have acted as abridge for the mistaken identification

The similarity between the ancient Greek proverb and the passages from Acts about thecommunal practices of the early Church with respect to property must have been evident to thebiblical scholar Spinoza Rendered into Latin by Erasmus the proverb ldquoAll things are incommon among friendsrdquo is amicorum communia omnia In Acts 244 ndash ldquoAll that believed weretogether and had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquohad all things in commonrdquo appears in theLatin Vulgate as habebant omnia communia In Acts 432 ndash ldquoNo one claimed that any of theirpossessions was their own but they had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquothey had all thingsin commonrdquo appears in the Vulgate as erant illis omnia communia The equivalence between thecommunia omnia of the proverb and the omnia communia of the two verses from Acts wouldhave been perfectly clear to Spinoza on linguistic grounds alone

In Adages Erasmus is more explicit than Spinoza in connecting the proverb with theverses from Acts He discusses the proverb in its appearance in book 5 of the Laws where Platoappeals to it in order to demonstrate that the best condition of society consists in the communityof possessions Erasmus writes

But it is extraordinary how Christians dislike this common ownership of Platorsquos how infact they throw stones at it although nothing comes closer to the mind of Christ

Further on Erasmus identifies the inventor of the proverb as Pythagoras who he saysestablished a community in which life and property were shared

hellipwhich is the very thing Christ wants to happen among Christians For all those whowere admitted by Pythagoras into that well-known band who followed his instructionswould give to the common fund whatever money and family property they possessed

Even apart from Erasmus the similarity between the Greek philosophersrsquo proverb and the

New Testament passages would have been evident to the Mennonite Jelles from MennoSimonrsquos discussion of the communal practice described in Acts (more on this below) Jelleswould also have found the parallel especially appealing because it makes the principle ofcommon ownership part of that rational philosophical version of Christianity that he and theother Waterlander Mennonites and Collegiants were seeking to establish

Although Erasmus was an advocate of religious reform he never joined the ProtestantReformation remaining a loyal Catholic until his death It is ironic then that during hislifetime the only vigorous champions of the common ownership he espoused were members ofthe most radical wing of the Reformation ironic but completely intelligible since the radicalsrsquoproject was to restore the Church to its original apostolic condition before its accommodationwith worldly power and wealth under Constantine

The Latin phrase designating Anabaptist communism in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies is Omnia sunt communia (for example it appears in this form in the confession theauthorities extracted from Thomas Muumlntzer under torture) It translates into English as ldquoAllthings are commonrdquo which is the present tense version of the phrase in Acts 432 ldquoall thingswere commonrdquo (ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά) to the members of the Church in Jerusalem Theparallel formulation in Acts 244 is slightly different although the distinction is lost in the LatinVulgate It reads that the members of the apostolic Church ldquohad all things in commonrdquo (εἶχονἅπαντα κοινὰ) In the second formulation εἶχον (had) seems to suggest a specific mode ofpossession or even an established quasi-legal form of property But it would be a mistake tointerpret it this way In both verses the anonymous author of Acts is articulating a generalprinciple rather than specifying a form of its implementation As we shall see the concreteapplication of the principle in the first century Church involved not a mode of possession orform of property but rather a practice of redistribution

Within the Anabaptist movement there was a broad range of beliefs and practices thatinvolved specific applications of the principle Omnia sunt communia We need to recognizetheir breadth in order to grasp just how subtle and variegated Anabaptist communism could beFor this purpose it is important to distinguish between communism as 1) a principle ofredistribution 2) a form of joint or communal property 3) a mode of the organization of workand 4) a kind of mutual aid In general all Anabaptist applications of Omnia sunt communia areintended to realize in different ways a communal and spiritual life in which all things arecommon We could say if we like that each of the four categories serves as a means for realizingthe end designated by that principle as long as we keep in mind that in this case the meanscannot be discarded once the end has been achieved Communism as a principle of redistributiona form of communal property a mode of the organization of work a kind of mutual aid ndash orsome combination of these ndash are the concrete ways in which communism as a mode ofcommunal and spiritual life is realized In this case the means are internal to the end That isbecause there can be no fellowship no community of the spirit unless those participating sharesomething ie have it in common Greek recognizes this internal relationship between acommon life and something shared in the word translated into English as fellowship κοινωνίαthe root of which is κοινός which means ldquocommonrdquo Its antonym ἴδιος means ldquobelonging toonerdquo It is the word κοινός that appears in the passages from Acts that refer to the practice ofsharing material wealth

244 ldquoAll who believed were together and had all things in common (Πάντες δὲ οἱπιστεύοντες ἦσαν ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό καὶ εἶχον ἅπαντα κοινὰ)

432 ldquoThe multitude of believers were one in heart and soul (Τοῦ δὲ πλήθους τῶνπιστευσάντων ἦν καρδία καὶ ψυχὴ microία) and no one claimed anything as his ownpossession but to them all things were in common (καὶ οὐδὲ εἷς τι τῶν ὑπαρχόντωναὐτῷ ἔλεγεν ἴδιον εἶναι ἀλλrsquo ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά)

Both verses affirm an internal relationship between living a common life and things

being in common or people having things in common But this is true of any collectiveendeavor A chess club for example is only possible if the members have a common interest inplaying chess But the verses from Acts mean to assert more than this They affirm the intensityand universality of the common life experienced in the early Church (being ldquoone in heart andsoulrdquo) They indicate this by referring to the fact that in the Church in Jerusalem all things areheld in common (ἅπαντα κοινά) Although ldquoall thingsrdquo (ἅπαντα) is not limited to materialpossessions the succeeding verses in chapters 2 and 4 of Acts indicate the depth of thecommitment the early Christians had to sharing a common life by referring to the practice inwhich they enacted it

245 And they sold their possessions and goods and divided them among everyoneaccording to need (καὶ τὰ κτήmicroατα καὶ τὰς ὑπάρξεις ἐπίπρασκον καὶ διεmicroέριζον αὐτὰπᾶσιν καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

434 There was no one among them in need as many as owned land or houses soldthem and brought the values of what was sold (οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐνδεής τις ἦν ἐν αὐτοῖς ὅσοιγὰρ κτήτορες χωρίων ἢ οἰκιῶν ὑπῆρχον πωλοῦντες ἔφερον τὰς τιmicroὰς τῶνπιπρασκοmicroένων) 435 and laid them at the feet of the apostles and distribution wasmade to each in accordance with need (καὶ ἐτίθουν παρὰ τοὺς πόδας τῶν ἀποστόλωνδιεδίδετο δὲ ἑκάστῳ καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

The needs of others are what break the bonds of individual ownership allowing the

transition from the private (ἴδιος) to the common (κοινά) Acts refers to making material goods

common rather than for example communicating private knowledge publicly presumablybecause of the difficulty people experience parting with private property and the correlativesignificance of the act of doing so For material possessions are the means by which they satisfytheir basic needs ndash for food shelter clothing and so on ndash and when possible their desire forluxuries The act of handing over possessions has two consequences The first is that thedistinction between rich and poor wealthy and needy owner and propertyless is abolished andthe members of the community come to stand on level ground The second consequence involvesa more fundamental risk on the part of property-owners By handing over their property theymake a leap of faith that the community will henceforth satisfy their needs as well through thesame practice of redistribution When applied in this fashion the general principle of being incommon or having in common results in an example of the first category of communism asspecified above ie communism as a principle of redistribution

Redistribution of property by the apostles creates occasions for active sharing asexpressions of the new form of common life 246 says that the members of the Church inJerusalem ldquoalso broke bread in each otherrsquos homes and took their meals in exaltation andsimplicity of heartrdquo (κλῶντές τε κατrsquo ο ἴκον ἄρτον microετελάmicroβανον τροφῆς ἐν ἀγαλλιάσει καὶἀφελότητι καρδίας) The value of sharing meals lies not merely in the fact that everyone is fedbut also in the experience of exaltation or ecstatic delight (ἀγαλλιάσεις) and sincerity orsimplicity of heart (ἀφελότητι καρδίας) The experience in common of exaltation and sincerity isat least as important as the act of satisfying needs although the two can be distinguished onlynotionally

The experience has its meaning in relation to the power (δυνάmicroις) that brings together themembers of the new community and inspires them to share their property The gathering of JewsGreeks and those from other nations (the circumcised and the uncircumcised as Paul says)occurs in the period following Pentecost when the Holy Spirit is supposed to have descended incloven tongues of flame upon the twelve apostles endowing them with the ability to speak inevery language Pentecost in turn follows by several weeks the resurrection of Christ and hisbodily ascension into heaven The gift of being able to speak in every language permits theapostles to convey their message to all nations That message ndash confirmed by ldquosigns andwondersrdquo ndash is testimony of their own first-hand witness to the Resurrection It is accompanied bythe baptism of the new members of the Church which repeats the Pentecostal experience byfilling them with the grace and power of the Holy Spirit

433 ldquoAnd with great power the apostles were giving witness to the resurrection of theLord Jesus and abundant grace was upon them all (καὶ δυνάmicroει microεγάλῃ ἀπεδίδουν τὸmicroαρτύριον οἱ ἀπόστολοι τοῦ Κυρίου Ἰησοῦ τῆς ἀναστάσεως χάρις τε microεγάλη ἦν ἐπὶπάντας αὐτούς)

The ecstatic delight and simplicity of heart that the members of the Church in Jerusalem

experience by sharing a common life is their enjoyment of this ldquoabundant gracerdquo (χάρις τεmicroεγάλη) The new community is built upon faith in the apostlesrsquo testimony that Jesus triumphedover death and that his victory promises an eternal life to all who believe That is the gift of theHoly Spirit Yet the ldquospiritualrdquo (πνευmicroατικός) content of early Christian experience does not denyits simultaneously material character For the significance of the Resurrection and the Ascensioninto Heaven is precisely that they concern the physical body of Christ When he appears toThomas who doubts that he has returned Jesus invites his disciple to place his hands into thewounds received from the Crucifixion The point is to show not only that the man standing infront of Thomas is not an imposter but also that the risen Christ is no disembodied ghost Andwhen the apostles witness the Ascension what they see is the physical body of Jesus rising toheaven There is little suggestion of soul-body dualism in Acts The spirit (πνεῦmicroα) infuses andtransfigures the body it does not exist apart from it In this respect it is similar to the life-givingbreath to which the word πνεῦmicroα originally referred Dualism is the result of a Platonizinginterpretation of Christianity that comes later The bodily character of the Resurrection extends tothe promise of eternal life for believers as well The promise is not that their souls will exist apart

from their bodies but that their bodies will rise up from the grave like that of their Savior Giventhis early Christian materialism it is not surprising that commonality of material goods wouldserve as a fundamental expression of the new life of the believers

As we already know the project of the sixteenth-century Anabaptists was to restore theChurch to its original apostolic condition by undoing the corruption they believed had set inwhen it made its peace with worldly wealth and power under Constantine Given the nature ofthe Anabaptist project it would seem that making material things common as described in Actswould follow as a matter of course However there is a long tradition ndash one that began aroundthe middle of the sixteenth century ndash of denying that Anabaptism has anything to do withcommunism regarding it as an accusation brought against the Anabaptists by their enemies It isunderstandable that this should be so The Anabaptists were the victims of a ldquored scarerdquo thatgripped the ruling classes of Europe in the aftermath of the Peasant War and the Muumlnstercommune It is impossible to explain the horrendous tortures forced relocations andinnumerable executions Anabaptists faced on the basis of heretical belief alone Nothing of aremotely similar scale was visited upon other schismatics The fact that the Anabaptistschallenged prevailing property relations is what made them victims of near-genocide It was amatter of survival then to create some distance between themselves and the charge ofadvocating common ownership of goods that came from Luther Zwingli and those whoextracted the confession from Thomas Muumlntzer that he held to the principle of Omnia communiasunt Recent scholarship however has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that having thingsin common was indeed a basic and widespread principle of Anabaptism at its origin just as it hasdemonstrated the influence veterans of the Peasant War had among the early Anabaptists

The dominant form of communist practice in early Anabaptism was appropriatelymodeled on the description of redistribution in Acts In Switzerland where the movementoriginated converts were often asked or required to make contributions to a ldquocommon purserdquoafter receiving adult baptism Some especially pious initiates went so far as to sell their land andhouses for that purpose in accordance with the biblical precedent When necessary officialsdistributed the contents of the purse to members of the community who were in need

Both proponents and enemies of Anabaptist communism often confused the redistributionof wealth with joint or communal property However except for the taking of meals in commonthere is no indication in Acts that redistribution collectivized ownership of wealth in this fashionbut only that it transferred wealth from the better-off members of the community to the worse-off Nevertheless some Anabaptists took joint or communal property as a paradigm for newproperty relations For example the visionary writing of the Nuremberg printer Hans Hergotwho was executed for rebellion in 1527 includes the following passage

And everything that grows on the land belongs to the church and the people who livethere Everything is bestowed for common use so that the people will eat from one potdrink from one vesselhellip And all things will be used in common so that no one is betteroff than another

The ldquowar communismrdquo of the city of Muumlnster involved an ad hoc form of communal propertythrough the edict that the doors to all homes be left open and the owners take in anyone whowished to reside with them But the most significant successful and long-lasting attempt toimplement communal property was that of the Hutterites

The Hutterites took their name from the charismatic hat-maker and Anabaptist leaderJacob Hutter However at their origins they were influenced by the revolutionary bookbinderHans Hut Hut shared Thomas Muumlntzerrsquos sanguinary apocalyptic view of social change andadvocated community ownership of goods in accordance with his own understanding of ActsHe survived the battle of Frankenhausen in which the peasant rebels were finally defeated butwas tortured and executed a few years later In the aftermath and under the influence of JacobHutter the Hutterites adopted pacifism and a strategy of creating autonomous communities Inorder escape persecution thousands of the brethren emigrated from Switzerland and Germany to

the more tolerant Moravia where they created hundreds of Bruderhofs farms and vineyards inwhich land houses farm implements produce and even objects of personal use were ownedcollectively The center of Bruderhof life was a large communal house in which craft productionoccurred on the ground floor and couples lived in small apartments on the upper levels The menengaged in farm labor and craftwork while the women were limited to traditional domesticduties in spite of the fact that children were raised communally apart from their parents TheBruderhofs enjoyed great economic success for a number of reasons People worked hard andconsumed little resulting in a surplus that could be used to purchase additional land seed andtools The size of the communities and of their agricultural production also enabled them to sellcheaply and to pay for supplies at generous prices both of which made the communitieseconomic assets to the areas in which they were located The Hutterites also organized both farmlabor and craft production cooperatively including the education boys were given in thenecessary skills They were therefore practitioners of the second and third forms of communismwe have identified namely communal ownership and cooperative organization of work Whenthey were ultimately forced out of Moravia by the triumph of Catholic forces in the Thirty YearsWar the Hutterites migrated eastward many finally relocating to Canada and the United Stateswhere the Bruderhofs continue to exist to this day

Communism as a kind of mutual aid was the contribution of the other major form ofAnabaptism that of the Mennonites With great political intelligence and skill Menno Simonswas able to reformulate the meaning of Omnia communia sunt in such a way as to avoidthreatening the property interests of nobles and clerics He did this in his book A Humble andChristian Justification and Replication First he denied that Mennonites were advocates ofcommunal property

This accusation is false and without all truth We do not teach and practice communityof goods but we teach and testify the Word of the Lord that all true believers in Christare of one body (1 Corinthians 1213) partakers of one bread (1 Corinthians 1017)have one God and one Lord (Ephesians 4)

In his assertion that the believers are of one body and partakers of one bread Simons is affirmingwhat we have called the general principle of communism while denying that Mennonitesembrace it in the specific form of communal property But he goes further by denying thatMennonites advocate a contemporary version of the apostolic redistribution of wealth

For although we know that the apostolic church had this practice in the beginning ascan be seen in the Acts of the Apostles nevertheless we note from their epistles that itdisappeared in their time and was no longer practiced

Instead of communal property or centralized redistribution of wealth the Mennonites derivefrom the general principle of Christian communism an alternative practice

Seeing then that they are one as said it is Christian and reasonable that they also havedivine love among them and that one member cares for another for both the Scripturesand nature teach this They show mercy and love as much as is in them They do notsuffer a beggar among them They have pity on the wants of the saints They receive thewretched They take strangers into their houses They comfort the sad They lend to theneedy They clothe the naked They share their bread with the hungry They do not turntheir face from the poorhellip

In the subsequent history of Mennonism the practice Simons describes came to be calledldquomutual aidrdquo Note that it is different from charitable giving and this in two ways First thereferences to receiving the wretched taking in strangers sharing bread and so on indicate a farmore personal even intimate form of involvement than simple charitable donation Second

there is the suggestion of reciprocity or mutuality (ldquoone member cares for anotherrdquo) that tends todeny the difference in status between the charitable giver and the recipient of charity Thepractice Simons describes is similar to what some anthropologists have called ldquogeneralizedreciprocityrdquo in which my obligation to give to you when you are in need corresponds to yourobligation to give to me when I am in need In a sense this is a form of redistribution inaccordance with need but it is enacted directly between individual members of the communityrather than administered centrally through a common purse

In line with his political purpose Simons is careful to distinguish between mutual aid andthe expropriation of private property

This is the kind of brotherhood we teach and not that some should take over andpossess the land soil and properties of others as we are falsely maligned accused andlied about by many

In this way he detaches the Mennonite version of communism from any revolutionary intentionThat was the prerequisite for communal survival during the long counter-revolution thatfollowed the Peasant War Still Simons never abandons the general principle Omnia communiasunt nor does he even really reject the practice of the early Church

Since we do not find it a permanent practice with the apostles we have not taught orpracticed community of goods but we urge earnestly and zealously to practice liberalgiving love and mercy as the apostolic writings teach and testify abundantly Andeven if we had taught and practiced community of goods as we are falsely accused ofdoing we would still not be doing otherwise than the holy apostles full of the HolySpirit themselves did in the former church at Jerusalem in the beginning of the holyChristian Church although they stopped the practice as has been said

Like the Hutterites Mennonite communities prospered once they managed to survive the

bloody period of reaction In Holland the Mennonite population consisted largely in successfulmerchants along with a number of lawyers doctors and other professionals Most of thepeasant artisan and laborer families who had started as Mennonites in the sixteenth century hadlong since converted to the Reform Church which is one reason Spinoza faced the problem ofpolitical agency in the TPT Although the idea of mutual aid persisted among the DutchMennonites it took the form predominantly of organized international philanthropy in which thecommunity made contributions not only to Mennonites abroad but to other populations in needThere was no escaping the fact however that in this philanthropic form mutual aid becamehardly distinguishable from conventional charity

Jarig Jelles was born into the Dutch Mennonite community around a century afterSimmons wrote his book when this process of slippage was well underway But there is littledoubt that Jelles knew the Mennonite teaching on mutual aid and its origin in the generalprinciple of Christian communism Even if Jelles never read Erasmusrsquo Adages Spinozarsquosreference to the supposed communism of Thales was likely to resonate with him on the basis ofhis own religious tradition

We cannot be certain how much Spinoza knew in detail about the communist practices ofthe Anabaptists but it is probably not a coincidence that he recommends three of the four atvarious places in his writings In Part 4 of the Ethics ldquoOf Human Bondage or the Strength of theEmotionsrdquo he identifies the chief virtue of the intellect as ldquostrength of the mindrdquo (fortitudo)According to him it takes two forms one directed to the self and one directed to others He callsthe inwardly directed form ldquocouragerdquo defining it as ldquothe desire whereby every individualendeavors to preserve his own being according to the dictates of reason alonerdquo The outwardlydirected form is generositas which Shirley translates as ldquonobilityrdquo though ldquosolidarityrdquo is closerto what Spinoza is getting at He defines it as ldquothe desire whereby every individual according to

the dictates of reason alone endeavors to assist others and make friends of themrdquo When twopeople in contact with one another possess the virtue of generositas they will clearly exhibit itreciprocally in the form of mutual aid the fourth communist practice

In Part 4 of the Ethics Spinoza also formulates a version of the first communist practicethat of the redistribution of wealth in accordance with need

Again men are won over by generosity especially those who do not have thewherewithal to produce what is necessary to support life Yet it is far beyond the powerand resources of a private person to come to the assistance of everyone in need For thewealth of a private person is quite unequal to such a demand It is also a practicalimpossibility for one man to establish friendship with all Therefore the care of the poordevolves upon society as a whole and looks only to the common good

The fact that society as a whole has responsibility for meeting the needs of the poor makes thepractice Spinoza recommends in this passage a version of the centralized redistribution of wealthdescribed in the Acts of the Apostles and institutionalized in Anabaptist form as the ldquocommonpurserdquo More than that the fact that society as a whole must take on this responsibility ratherthan a church or other sub-community makes Spinoza an early advocate of what will becomethree centuries later the European welfare state In our own period as the welfare state is beingdismantled it is easy to see that what neoliberals object to concerning it is precisely its implicitcommunism ie its practice of distribution in accordance with need

Spinoza advocates a third communist practice in his unfinished final work the PoliticalTreatise The context is his discussion of a maximally democratic version of monarchy in whichthe entire citizen body is armed and the king forbidden from making any decision contrary to thewill of a massive council of ordinary citizens In such a state

The fields and the soil and if possible the houses as well should be public property thatis should belong to the sovereign by whom they should be let at an annual rent tocitizens whether townsmen or country-dwellers Apart from this all citizens should befree or exempt from any form of taxation in time of peace Of this rent part should beallocated to the defense works of the commonwealth part to the kings domestic needsFor in time of peace it is still necessary to fortify cities as for war and to have in a stateof readiness ships and other armaments

Ownership of land and buildings by the sovereign is a form of communal property first becausethe citizens of the commonwealth delegate to him or them the property they hold in commonand second because that delegation occurs with the understanding that the sovereign will use theproperty in service of the common good

Spinoza supplies an argument based on more than simple utility for the practice ofholding land and buildings in common

hellip in a state of Nature the one thing a man cannot appropriate to himself and make hisown is land and whatever is so fixed to the land that he cannot conceal it anywhere orcarry it away where he pleases Thus the land and whatever is fixed to it in the way wehave described is especially the public property of the commonwealth that is of allthose who by their united strength can claim it or of him to whom all have delegated thepower to claim it

To state the argument differently since rights are the same as powers no individual has a naturalright to appropriate privately the land or any of its fixed structures because none has the powernecessary to do so The only response an individual can make to incursions by a more powerfulperson or group of people is flight in which he must leave the land and its buildings behind It is

only by entering into a community in which the strength of each is combined for the purpose ofdefense that people can effectively possess fixed property but they do so as a members of thecommunity rather than as an separate individuals According to Spinozarsquos theory of rights onlythe community has the right to own the land and its structures because only the community hasthe required power

The communal ownership of land houses and other buildings is a version of the secondcommunist practice on our list of which Hutterite joint ownership is the most developedhistorical example When adopted by a polity rather than a small community though thepractice has an added advantage Under those circumstances communal possession of fixedproperty eliminates the need for taxes except in time of war What takes their place is ageneration of revenue pegged to wealth since the members of society who are able to rent themost expensive and largest amounts of communal property will obviously pay the most in rentIn this way the form of communal ownership of land and buildings that Spinoza recommendsalso acts as a mechanism for the redistribution of wealth

The only communist practice of the Anabaptists that does not find an equivalent inSpinozarsquos writings is that of the cooperative organization of work The absence is related toSpinozarsquos inability to resolve the problem of political agency in the TPT An attempt to mobilizethe multitude on behalf of democratic social change would need to address the organization ofwork in such a way as to alleviate the burden of toil Reducing the number of hours spent inonerous labor is the only way to provide the multitude with the free time necessary to participatein institutionalized democratic politics Along with the redistribution of wealth and thedevelopment of communal property the cooperative reorganization of work would need to beincorporated as a plank in the latent political program that makes its first democratic appearancein the TPT and is extended in a communist direction in the passages from the Ethics and thePolitical Treatise that we have just examined But that would constitute an explicit anddangerous appeal to the multitude as the agent of political and social transformation an appealthat Spinoza consistently rejects It would involve nothing less than the revival of therevolutionary energies of the Peasant War on a new seventeenth-century foundation

In spite of his radicalism Spinoza doubted that revolution was capable of reconstructingsociety and the state in the way revolutionaries wanted In Chapter 18 of the TPT he takes aposition that is at least on the surface opposed to revolution or any attempt to change the formof the state fundamentally The context is a discussion of the transition from the early Hebrewcommonwealth in which the people held sovereignty to the rule of kings Spinoza tells us thatthe first period saw only a single civil war and concluded with a compassion for the vanquishedthat resulted in lasting peace By contrast the period of kings was marred by multiple warswaged only for the glory of the rulers and involved the massacre of hundreds of thousandsDuring the first period few prophets arose to rebuke the Jews while a great many emergedduring the time of the monarchies From this example Spinoza reasons that it is fatal for peopleaccustomed to popular sovereignty and governed by settled laws to adopt a new monarchicalform of government On the one hand they will be unable to tolerate the arbitrary exercise ofpower by a single individual while on the other the new monarch will be compelled to abolishthe existing laws because they did not originate by his own authority But it is just as dangerousaccording to Spinoza for the subjects of a monarch to attempt his replacement with popular ruleThis is because a popular revolution must advance to the point where it annihilates the king thekingrsquos family and the friends of the king in order to prevent the restoration of royal power But inthe process the revolutionary authority must assume a power even more draconian then thatpreviously exercised by the king In addition having committed regicide the new popularauthority faces the danger that it will fall victim to its own precedent For this reason as well andin the interest of survival it must wield power more repressively than the deposed sovereignSpinoza illustrates his point with reference to the English revolution which eliminated themonarch Charles I only to replace him with the Lord Protector Cromwell who was monarch inall but name and more repressive than Charles

Spinozarsquos point seems unassailable especially since the pattern he describes in the caseof the English Revolution repeated itself over the course of the next three centuries in the French

and Russian Revolutions It is at least arguable that Napoleon if not Robespierre was a newLouis XVI and Stalin a new Tsar even if this understates the more fundamental social changesthat resulted form the two revolutions Still Spinoza does not absolutely proscribe therevolutionary overthrow of a tyrannical government but says instead that there is a great dangerin making the attempt Besides his analysis of the conditions necessary for retaining sovereigntydoes not leave the decision about whether to engage in revolution up to militants He argues thatno state can survive that creates mass indignation in its people and this is precisely theunavoidable result of tyrannical government Spinozarsquos real purpose in Chapter 18 is to opposethe Orangist-Calvinist project of replacing the Dutch Republic with a monarchy ldquoAs for theEstates of Hollandrdquo he writes ldquoas far as we know they never had kings but counts to whom theright of sovereignty was never transferredrdquo His point is that the Dutch War of Independenceagainst Spain was justified because it restored the sovereignty of the people against the attemptby the Spanish ldquocountrdquo (King Philip II) to abolish it However any attempt to replace theRepublic with a monarchy would change the form of the state disastrously by divesting thepeople of their former rights

When Spinoza wrote his treatise the only revolutionary forces that existed were on theRight The danger he warns about in Chapter 18 of the TPT did indeed come to pass only oneyear after his letter to Jelles In 1672 a Calvinist-Orangist mob hacked Johan De Witt and hisbrother Cornelius to death at a time when Holland was invaded by the French army Streetorators stirred up the mob by claiming that the invasion was the result of the brothersrsquo treason Inthe aftermath of the murders William III prince of Orange was elevated to the position ofstadtholder of Holland Although William went on to become King of England he stopped shortof claiming a Dutch throne However in actuality he substituted his own power for much of thatwhich had belonged to the Estates General while the Reformed Church gained considerableinfluence in Dutch government According to a story made famous by Spinozarsquos earliestbiographer Johannes Colerus when the De Witt brothers were murdered Spinozarsquos landlordthwarted his attempt to go the site of the assassinations where the bodies of the brothers werestill on gruesome display in order to plant a sign reading Ultimi Barbarorum (the ultimatebarbarians) In this way the landlord undoubtedly saved the philosopherrsquos life It was the onlytime we know of when the mature Spinoza gave in to his passive affects in a significant way

There is a passage in Chapter 18 of the TPT that uncannily anticipates the murders

Tyranny is most violent where individual beliefs which are unalienable rights areregarded as criminal Indeed in such circumstances the anger of the common people[plebis] is usually the greatest tyrant of allhellip the vilest hypocrites urged on by that samefury which they call zeal for Gods law have everywhere persecuted men whoseblameless character and distinguished qualities have excited the hostility of the commonpeople [plebi] publicly denouncing their beliefs and inflaming the savage multitudersquos[multitudinem] anger against them

Spinoza was the first political philosopher who grappled with the problem of a mass-

based politics of the Right The problem would occur again with the fascist movements of the1920s and 1930s and with the return of the rightwing religious fundamentalisms of our own dayndash Jewish Christian Muslim and Hindu It is not surprising that he failed to solve the problemdefinitively since it continues to remain unsolved The remarkable thing about Spinoza thoughis not that he was skeptical about the liberatory possibilities of revolution by the masses but thathe defended the idea of a popular democracy nonetheless And this he continued to do even inthe aftermath of the De Witt murders In his work on the Political Treatise in the final year of hislife Spinoza developed a powerful critique of the elitist claim that the multitude are incapable ofgoverning

Yet perhaps our [democratic] suggestions will be received with ridicule by those whorestrict to the common people the faults that are inherent in all mankind saying There

is no moderation in the mob they terrorize unless they are frightened and Thecommon people is either a humble servant or an arrogant master there is no truth orjudgment in itrdquo and the like But all men share in one and the same nature it is powerand culture that mislead us with the result that when two men do the same thing weoften say that it is permissible for the one to do it and not the other not because of anydifference in the thing done but in the doer hellipThen again There is no moderation inthe mob they terrorize unless they are frightened For freedom and slavery do not gowell together Finally that there is no truth or judgment in the common people is notsurprising since the important affairs of state are conducted without their knowledgeand from the little that cannot be concealed they can only make conjecturehellip Howeveras we have said all men have the same nature ndash all grow haughty with rule terrorizeunless they are frightened ndash and everywhere truth becomes a casualty through hostilityor servility especially when despotic power is in the hands of one or a few who in trialspay attention not to justice or truth but to the extent of a persons wealth

Surprisingly Spinoza develops this democratic argument while discussing the institutions

appropriate to a monarchy But the key point he makes in the discussion is that a condition ofeffective monarchical rule is expansion of the democratic element within the state in the form ofa sizeable legislative council whose members are drawn from the general population of citizensover the age of fifty On Spinozarsquos view the mistake those who oppose democracy make isassuming that the faults exhibited by the common people ndash such as poor judgment arroganceand hostility ndash belong only to them while they are in fact typical of human beings Actually it iselitist politics that magnifies these all-too-human faults by restricting political power to a limitednumber of people while democratic politics minimizes them through the principle of majorityrule among numerous decision-makers The reason as we already know is that passions pullpeople in different directions making it nearly impossible for the members of a large council toagree on a common position unless they make decisions based not on passion but an idea of thecommon good On Spinozarsquos view it is when government is in the hands of a single person oronly a few people that the dangers the critics of democracy attribute to the common people are infact the greatest

Spinoza also argues against the claim that the common people are not qualified to makepolitical decisions because they lack the necessary education or degree of intellect There is noone he says who has been engaged in an occupation until the age of fifty who lacksunderstanding of his sphere of work ldquoevery man is reasonably competent and sagacious inmatters in which he has been long and attentively engagedrdquo So each is qualified at least to giveadvice in the kingrsquos council concerning his own business especially if given the time necessaryto reflect on the matter under discussion

Most of all the plebs are the group best suited to serving on the council because theirinterest is that of society as a whole ldquoHence it follows that counselors must necessarily beappointed whose private fortune and advantage depend on the general welfare and the peace ofallrdquo For example Spinoza emphasizes the idea that the common people have the highest stake inavoiding war or concluding an existing war with a settlement that brings lasting peace Thereason is they are ones who bear the heaviest burdens of war Unlike the wealthy well-bornmembers of society it is the common person whose occupation is most likely to be interrupted itis his taxes that are raised to onerous levels and it is his son who dies Thus the common interestof society in peace is best served not by a wealthy or educated elite but rather by those whohave the most to lose from war

At the end of the long paragraph defending popular power quoted above Spinozaconnects the question of who holds power within the state to that of who owns property Truthand justice he says are casualties in states where power is held by one person or a handful ofpeople who conduct courtroom trials that favor the rich The implication is that elitist politicalpower and ownership of wealth are intrinsically connected One of the reasons Spinozarecommends public ownership of land and buildings in a monarchy is to prevent the rise of aclass of wealthy landowners with interests different than those of the rest of society Under the

conditions of common ownership ldquothe greatest part of the council will generally have one andthe same attitude of mind towards their common interests and peaceful activitieshelliprdquo And yethaving gone this far he has trouble imagining a state where fixed property is owned collectivelyin which the actually existing multitude holds power The peasants artisans and urban poor whoconstitute the common people of the United Provinces drop out of the picture in the democratic-communist monarchy he describes and nearly everyone makes his living by selling merchandiseor lending money to countrymen ldquoall will have to make a living by engaging in trade or bylending money to their fellow citizensrdquo He seems to assume that the collectivization of land andfixed property would eliminate the occupations of peasant and artisan leaving trade and loaningat interest the only remaining possibilities of work But that of course is not true The fact thatpeople would have to rent farm land would not prevent them from farming any more than theneed to rent workshops in the cities and towns would prevent artisans from plying their tradesBut Spinoza finds the idea of a commonwealth based on commercial enterprise politicallyappealing This is because he regards commercial occupations as contributing to harmony andpeace since he claims they establish connections between people that further the interests of allwhile those who engage in them prosper only in peacetime Both of these assumptions are asquestionable as the expectation that non-commercial occupations will die out After all even inSpinozarsquos day colonialism and the struggle for colonies between imperialist states led to warsbetween the great powers including the United Provinces not to mention the military and otherforms of violence involved in subjugating the colonies The East India Company was not exactlya force for peace What seems to be at work here instead is a failure of social imaginationthough one we may find understandable given the fact that the capitalist economy was still at anearly stage in its development However this may be there is no denying the fact that despite hispowerful arguments in favor of democratic rule and communal property it is still a bourgeoissociety and state that Spinoza envisions

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of what we should not hesitate to call Spinozarsquoscommunism is the critique of private ownership he develops in the Ethics based on his theory ofaffects For him there is a paradox involved in social and political life It stems from the fact thaton the one hand people can survive and develop their capacities only by joining with oneanother in societies and states But on the other hand the necessity of combining with oneanother does not prevent them from seeking their own advantage above that of their fellowsbeing quarrelsome or hateful and erecting obstacles to each otherrsquos happiness Spinoza identifiesthe reason for these deep-rooted problems of social coexistence in Part IV Proposition 35 of theEthics ldquoInsofar as men are assailed by emotions that are passive they can be contrary to oneanotherrdquo Emotions are states of the body characterized by a transition from a lower degree of thepower to exist and act (conatus) to a higher one or conversely from a higher degree to a lowerone The first transition is the affect of joy while the second is that of sadness Passive emotionsare caused by an object external to the body or more precisely external to its essential natureSpinoza conceives of that nature as a specific proportion of motion-and-rest that the parts of thebody exhibit in relation to one another While joy is an increase in our capacity to preserve theproportion of motion-and-rest essential to our body (ie to exist and act as we do) sadness is adecrease in that capacity The political problem created by the passive emotions is that evenwhen they are joyful they are not under the control of the person who experiences themMoreover different people are affected by the same external object in different ways because theparts of their bodies and their proportionate relations of motion-and rest-differ The same objectmay elicit anger in one person and pity in another or love in one and hatred in another and soon And because people differ in their emotional reactions to the same things they also differ inthe judgments they frame on the basis of these reactions What one person praises anotherperson blames what one regards as fearless another believes to be timid etc Finally sincepeople act upon their judgments seeking to foster what they judge to be good and destroy whatthey judge to be bad their differing judgments can result in actions that are in conflict with oneanother In short ldquoinsofar as they are assailed by passive emotions [people] can be contrary toone anotherrdquo

In Proposition 34 Spinoza gives an example of the contrariety caused by the passiveaffects Suppose Peter has sole possession of something Paul loves Deprivation of the loved

object causes sadness in Paul with the idea of Peter as its cause In accordance with Spinozarsquosdefinition of hatred Paul will hate Peter and therefore seek to injure or destroy him in order toremove the cause of his Paulrsquos sadness Spinoza says that this example may seem wrong becausePaul and Peter appear to be contrary to one another because of something they share ndash ie theirlove for the thing Peter possesses But that is not the case Paul has an image of himself aslacking the loved object while Peter has an image of himself as possessing the loved object Sothey in fact differ from one another by virtue of the different images they have rather than bypossessing something in common It is clear from the example that the root of this contrariety ndashie this enmity ndash between Paul and Peter is the fact that the object can be possessed by only oneof them so that what one has the other must lack The difficulty with private property is that it isexclusive to the one who possesses it which means that what I experience as possession othersexperience as deprivation It may seem that there is no problem if other people are indifferent tothe thing I possess However in accordance with Spinozarsquos theory of the imitation of affects themere fact that I love the thing I own other things being equal will cause you to love it as wellMy exclusive possession of the thing will therefore cause sadness in you that takes the form ofhatred or more precisely the kind of hatred called envy which involves pain at the good fortuneof another ldquohuman nature is in general so constituted that men pity the unfortunate and envy thefortunate in the latter case with a hatred proportionate to their love of what they think anotherpossessesrdquo

Common Possession Friendship and Philosophy

In the Ethics Spinoza does not follow his analysis of the antagonisms of private property

by considering the collective possession of material goods (although he does advocateredistribution of wealth to the poor in Part 4 as we have seen) But the theme of commonpossession figures large in the book anyway in his treatment of the intellectual love of God Inorder to understand the connection between common possession and amor Dei intellectualis itwill be necessary to engage in a detailed analysis of Spinozarsquos metaphysics We will begin thattask in earnest in the next chapter At this point we will simply introduce the theme byexamining the relationship between friendship and common possession in the letter to Jelles andsome related writings

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo unlike the similar passages fromActs has its provenance among philosophers Spinoza mistakenly attributes it to Thales but itoccurs in Platorsquos Phaedrus and Laws and is present though not in so many words in thediscussion in the Republic of common ownership of property by the guardian class Thetradition cited by Erasmus that traces the proverb back to Pythagoras is plausible when weconsider the influence the Pythagorean community in Sicily had on Plato in the aftermath ofSocratesrsquo death Erasmus sees the supposed use of a common fund by the Pythagoreans as ananticipation of the similar practice in Acts But Spinozarsquos approach is different What interestshim in the letter is common ownership not as a religious practice but as a matter of thephilosopherrsquos relation to the world Remember the deductive consequences of the proverb sinceall things are in common among friends everything belongs to the wise because the wise arefriends of the gods and all things belong to the gods But what does it mean to say that the wiseare friends of the gods

Although Spinoza uses the word ldquofriendshiprdquo often in his writings he never supplies aformal definition However we can reconstruct the wordrsquos meaning from the contexts in whichhe uses it So for example Proposition 35 of Part III of the Ethics reads

If anyone thinks that there is between the object of his love and another person the sameor a more intimate bond of friendship than there was between them when he alone usedto possess the object loved he will be affected with hatred toward the object loved andwill envy his rival

According to the proposition friendship is an intimate bond between a person and the

object he loves I hate an object of love that I alone once possessed when it wounds my vanity byloving someone else more than me So the object of love must be capable of loving whichmeans that the bond of friendship is a relation of reciprocal love between persons Nowaccording to Spinoza I love something when I have the idea of that thing as the cause of myexperience of joy Joy is an increase in conatus which Spinoza defines as the tendency to persistin being or equivalently the ability to exist and act So friendship is a relation in which Iidentify the other person as the cause of an increase in my conatus and the other personidentifies me as the cause of a similar increase in his or hers Two things each of which causesan increase in the ability to exist and act of the other are said by Spinoza to be in harmony Sincetwo entities in harmony have more combined power than either does singly it is to the advantageof each to be in harmony with the other There is even greater advantage in entering intoharmonious connection with a third individual and the greatest advantage in combining with asmany individuals as possible This is a universal metaphysical principle For example it pertainsjust as much to chemical combination or herding among animals as it does to social relationsbetween people In the case of human relationships it is the fundamental basis of politics orrather one of its two bases the other one being the tendency human beings have to conflict withone another When the state is functioning well it involves not a random collection ofindividuals and certainly not the war of each against all but a group whose members are boundto one another by friendship the human form of harmony Thus for Spinoza friendship is apolitical virtue as it was for Plato and Aristotle

The opposite of friendship is enmity That person is my enemy whom I regard as thecause of my sadness or pain which is the same as saying the cause of a decrease in my abilityto exist and act Like friendship enmity is a reciprocal relationship If I identify you as the causeof my sadness I will seek to injure or eliminate you But that means I will be identified in yourmind as the cause of your sadness Enmity is a relation of reciprocal hatred just as friendship is arelation of reciprocal love Just as there is harmony between friends there is discord betweenenemies The fundamental task of a rational politics is easy to state it is to extend and intensifyfriendship and to reduce and mollify enmity

We have already seen that Spinoza identifies solidarity (generositas) as one of the twoforms of strength of mind (fortitudo) which is the virtue that belongs to the exercise of theintellect Solidarity is the desire to assist others and foster friendship on the basis of reason aloneThe friendship fostered by solidarity is a bond of active love The love of friends for one anotheris active when each person who loves is the adequate cause of his or her love To say that theperson is the adequate cause means that the cause of love is internal to the person who feels it inother words that the love is self-generated Active love differs from passive love in that thecause of passive love is at least partially something that exists outside the person who has theemotion The problem with passive love is that it need not be constant If the bodily dispositionof the person changes in a particular way then the object of erstwhile love will have a differentemotional effect Passive love can change into boredom or indifference or even hatred This isnot possible in the case of active love because it is self-generated Since love involves theexperience of joy no one actively abandons it

There seems to be something odd about the idea of a love between persons that isinternally generated by each of the partners in the relationship Is it not the case that part of theessence of love is the fact that the object of my love is the cause of my love Without denyingthis Spinoza identifies two forms of love that are self-generated in the Ethics One is myintellectual love of God It is indeed true that God is the cause of my love but only insofar as myintellect is part of the infinite intellect of God Thus the object that causes my love - ie God - isinternal to my mind and conversely my mind is internal to it Such reciprocal internality ndash hardas it is to visualize ndash is what Spinoza means by immanence God he tells us is the immanentcause of everything that exists Nothing can exist apart from God while God expresses himselfin all of the things that exist My love of God and Gods love of himself are one and the samebecause Godrsquos intellect is immanent in mine The second form of self-generated love is the

friendship that exists between me and others who love God through the exercise of the intellectThe reason is that the joy I feel in loving God is by the imitation of affects augmented by thejoy you feel in loving God But your love as well as mine is joy caused by the same immanentbeing Another way of saying this is that your intellect and mine are parts (ie finiteexpressions) of the infinite intellect of God Thus the relationship between friends who are boundtogether by the common exercise of the intellect and the love of God that flows from it is basedon an internal bond an internal object and cause of love In this kind of love you and I as itwere discover one another internally You are inside of me and I am inside of you Thus whenyou augment my love and I augment yours it is Gods power as the intellect immanent in us boththat causes the augmentation even though we remain finite individual beings In this state ofaffairs which is admittedly difficult to grasp we can see the rational meaning of the command tolove God by loving the neighbor In intellectual love God not insofar as he is infinite butinsofar as he expresses himself in my finite intellect loves God as he expresses himself in yourfinite intellect

For Spinoza the exercise of the intellect is very different than our ordinary experience ofthe world In the course of ordinary experience we encounter objects in a way that appearshaphazard disordered and incomplete This is so first of all because our encounters are part ofan infinitely complex chain of natural causes and effects of which we know only very limitedparts In addition our experience of objects has as much to do with the condition our bodies arein when we encounter them as it does with the nature of the objects themselves By contrast inexercising the intellect we arrange our ideas in an intelligible pattern that is internal to the mindand entirely different than the images we accumulate through sensory experience The ideas arean expression of our power while the images result from our hapless deliverance to chanceEmotions caused by objects we encounter in the course of ordinary experience are externallydetermined and therefore passive while emotions caused by acts of intellectual comprehensionare internally generated and therefore active That is why love as an active emotion has its originin the exercise of the intellect and the most satisfying form of friendship is based on thereciprocal experience of such love In a letter to Willem van Blyenberg Spinoza provides themost complete description of this kind of friendship to be found in his writings

For my part of all things that are not under my control what I most value is to enterinto a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth For I believe that such a lovingrelationship affords us a serenity surpassing any other boon in the whole wide worldThe love that such men bear to one another grounded as it is in the love that each hasfor knowledge of truth is as unshakable as is the acceptance of truth once it has beenperceived It is moreover the highest source of happiness to be found in things notunder our command for truth more than anything else has the power to effect a closeunion between different sentiments and dispositions

Spinoza says that a friendship based on the love of truth is not under our control But how

can that be if intellectual friendship involves a form of love internally generated by each friendIt would seem that the love we generate through the exercise of the intellect is fully under ourcontrol Spinoza however is referring to the fact that we are able to become friends only withpeople we actually meet which is something that occurs in the course of ordinary haphazarddisordered experience To a large extent our friendships are a matter of chance By way ofillustrating this point it turned out that Spinoza decided his initial judgment of Blyenberg wasmistaken He broke off their correspondence when he realized that the infinite chain of causesand effects had brought his way not a lover of truth but a dogmatic worshipper of the ldquopaperand inkrdquo of the Bible

People create commonwealths because the power of each to exist and act is increased byall others who transfer their rights to the sovereign For reasons we have already considered thepolitical bond is one of friendship ldquoIt is of the first importance to men to establish closerelationships and to bind themselves together with such ties as may most effectively unite theminto one body and as an absolute rule to act in such a way as serves to strengthen friendshiprdquo If

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

Practice) The book was published anonymously in 1664 by the Jesuit press Cosmopoli InSpinozas judgment Homo Politicus is the most pernicious book conceived by the mind ofman Wealth and honors are the highest good of its author who counsels the use ofldquodissembling lying breaking promises perjuryrdquo and other forms of deception in order toachieve them He even recommends that the man who wants wealth and honors affect thedemeanor of a religious person while surreptitiously disregarding the precepts of religion in hisself-serving behavior The ambitious ldquopolitical manrdquo keeps ldquofaith with no one except insofar as itconduces to his advantagerdquo Spinoza tells Jelles that he formulated but then discarded the planto write a short book that would not attack the author of Homo Politicus directly but insteadpresent an account of what the ultimate good for human beings genuinely is ldquoI would treat of thehighest good and then indicate the restless and pitiable condition of those who are greedy formoney and covet honorshellip ldquo The letter then proceeds to discuss very briefly the content of theabandoned project

In order to understand that project it is important to recognize that the two parts of theletter are more closely related than they seem This is because Spinoza reads Homo Politicus as akind of inverted Tractatus Theologico-Politicus or if you prefer an anti-Tractatus (in the sensethat physicists talk about anti-electrons or anti-protons) At the time he wrote the letter he couldnot have known that the little book was written by Christoph Rapp Jan Rieuwertz identifiedRapp as its author when he republished the work after Spinozas death Rapp had an illustriouscareer in Prussia He studied jurisprudence at universities in Jena Wittenberg Ingolstadt andLeipzig and moved up the ranks of the Prussian state beginning as Counselor of Justice andending as Chancellor Although he was known as a champion of the rights of the feudal estatesagainst centralized political authority he was well-connected in Court enjoying the support ofthe Prince-Elector of Brandenberg Johann Sigismund Rapprsquos sympathies with the feudal estatesraise the question as to whether his treatise represents his own opinion or is rather a satire onthe proliferating figure of the political man whose pursues a successful career at Court As amanual for political advancement it is a Machiavellian work in the colloquial sense of the termand indeed Rapp cites Machiavelli frequently Spinoza had high regard for Machiavelli andsome of the most significant parts of the TPT rely upon the Florentinersquos social-scientific analysisof the dynamics of political power But Spinoza did not consider Machiavelli to be the purveyorof self-serving immoralism that many readers of The Prince took him to be Although The Princemade Spinoza somewhat uneasy he interpreted the book as either a warning about entrustingstate power to a single person or about the peril involved in changing the form of a state Forhim Machiavellirsquos fundamental project as articulated especially in the Discourses was devotedto the establishment of republican liberty Spinoza sees Rapp on the other hand as a man on themake who offers advice to the aspiring careerist on how to secure his personal interests in therough and tumble of politics by violating moral norms while appearing to be morally uprightAlthough this is an accurate description of the content of the book Spinoza does not consider thepossibility that Rapp is not stating his own position but satirizing that of the homo politicus whohas emerged in an era of advancing centralization of state power ndash at least on the provincial levelndash and the consequent multiplication of political careers After all how could Rapp expect hisbook to have anything other than a negative effect on the aspirations of unscrupulous candidatesfor state office Public exposure of the techniques he discusses could only result in defusing theirdeception-based efficacy Spinoza however reads Homo Politicus as a straightforwardarticulation of the views of its author and so for him the book is a kind of anti-Tractatus andits author an anti-Spinoza

Spinozarsquos Political Program

The Theological Political Treatise is a very unusual work It is a call to battle from a man

who valued quiet and regarded conflict with the utmost distaste It combines a scholarly treatisein biblical hermeneutics ndash complete with linguistic analyses of ancient Hebrew ndash with one of thefounding contributions to modern political philosophy It is written in a style that ranges fromtheoretical detachment to impassioned polemic the latter unusual for Spinoza even when

regarded on its own Throughout the book but especially in the Preface we find striking turns ofphrase from a writer not known for his literary flourishes ldquothe relics of manrsquos ancient bondagerdquo fighting for ldquoservitude as though for their salvationrdquo ldquoas if the whole of nature were as insaneas theyrdquo These and other characteristics that make the treatise unique stem from the fact thatSpinoza as author plays two quite different and seemingly incompatible roles that of thephilosopher who interrogates a complex subject-matter in order to discover and articulate truthand that of the militant who intervenes in a political situation with the intention of altering it in afundamental way The subject-matter of Spinozarsquos philosophical interrogation is the nature ofreligion the state and the relation between the two The political situation that is the object ofhis intervention is the struggle of conservative Calvinists to undermine and ultimately overthrowthe Dutch Republic and the reciprocal struggle of the Republic to persevere in its existence

The story of that struggle is complex in particular because it involves two additionalldquopartiesrdquo monarchists who were grouped around the noble House of Orange and liberalCalvinists In this epic conflict the Orangists were allied with the conservative Calvinists andthe liberal Calvinists with the republicans The split in Dutch Calvinism between liberal andconservative wings occurred in the early years of the seventeenth century with the writings andlectures of Jacobus Arminius and the remonstrance sent by his supporters to the States ofHolland Arminius and the ldquoRemonstrantsrdquo challenged the traditional Calvinist doctrine ofpredestination arguing instead for freedom of the will while also making a plea for religioustolerance The Counter-Remonstrants led by Franciscus Gomarius opposed them in both ofthese innovations The split within the Reform Church appeared to have been settled when theSynod of Dordrecht condemned the Remonstrants in 1618 and expelled Remonstrant ministersfrom their churches but the Remonstrants survived the purge and continued to develop theirinfluence not least because of their success in proselytizing prominent republicans Many joinedthe Collegiants Although the republicans were dominant in the political sphere the Counter-Remonstrants controlled the largest most powerful Church organization ndash the official ReformChurch including its various synods ndash and had the religious allegiance of the great majority ofthe Dutch population including nearly all of the common people Spinoza recognized this forwhat it was a case of divided sovereignty that could not last In the TPT he focuses his critiqueon the Counter-Remonstrants without ever naming them directly rather than the Orangists whowere the main political threat to the Republic He probably thought with some justification thatthe Orangists would not have been a serious problem had they not been backed by the ReformChurch In the Preface to his book he lays out his project with admirable clarity

For this purpose my most urgent task has been to indicate the main false assumptionsthat prevail regarding religion ndash that is the relics of manrsquos ancient bondage ndash and thenagain the false assumptions regarding the right of civil authorities There are many whowith an impudence quite shameless seek to usurp much of this right and under theguise of religion to alienate from the government the loyalty of the masses still proneto heathenish superstition so that slavery may return once more

Spinoza was not exaggerating There was a great deal at stake here In 1619 the Landrsquos

Advocate of Holland Johan van Oldenbarnevelt ndash a Remonstrant ndash was executed by the StatesGeneral under the influence of the Counter-Remonstrant stadtholder Maurice of Nassau Princeof Orange The stadtholder was head of state and commander of the armed forces an office thatwas hereditary in all but name and reserved for the House of Orange Under Oldenbarnevelt theposition of Landrsquos Advocate was essentially that of prime minister like the position of GrandPensionary under Johan De Witt A coup drsquoeacutetat in 1650 by Mauricersquos nephew and thenstadtholder William II failed when William died the same year The result was theldquostadholderless republicrdquo presided over by the Remonstrant Johan De Witt which lasted untilhis murder by a mob of Counter-Remonstrants and Orangists in the ldquoyear of disasterrdquo 1672 Thestadtholderless Republic was dominated by the regents leaders of Dutch cities who werenormally appointed by their predecessors and who came from the stratum of merchants bankersand traders on the stock exchange who made enormous fortunes during the Dutch ldquoGolden Agerdquo

Many were investors in the Dutch East India Company and many made their fortunes byimporting goods from the colonies In general the regents were from the wealthiest families inthe Netherlands Thus from 1650 to 1672 state power in the United Provinces including thenational legislature the States General was in the hands of the haute bourgeoisie The House ofOrange represented the class of rural aristocratic landowners but it also had a mass base ofsupport in the common people There are two reasons for this First the peasants artisans wage-workers and small retail merchants who comprised the common people were skeptical that theirinterests were well-served by the wealthy regents The second reason is that except in theCatholic parts of the Netherlands the common people were overwhelmingly Counter-Remonstrants The alliance of the House of Orange with the Reform Church ensured it a massbase that was indispensable for its aspirations to monarchical rule

By family background and friendships that appear to have included Johan De Witt andhis brother Cornelius as well as by philosophical principle Spinoza was inclined to support theRepublic against the alliance of Orangists and Counter-Remonstrants But he also understoodthat the weakness of the Republic lay in the fact that the regents who dominated it did not have amass base of support As nouveau riche and unlike the nobility they had no customaryobligations to the lower classes and little contact with them even as employers since wholesalemerchants bankers and stock traders had need for only a handful of employees As their wealthgrew to sometimes fabulous proportions the regents led lives that were increasingly isolatedfrom the rest of society The growing number of children from wealthy bourgeois families whoreceived a university education and the international connections that came from engaging intrade and finance gave the regents and their social milieu a cosmopolitan orientation They wereeasy targets for Dutch nationalism which was a powerful influence among the common peopleand championed by the House of Orange which had played a leading role in the war of nationalliberation from Spain But most of all the allegiance of the common people to the conservativeCalvinism of the Reform Church was an acute problem for the regents and their Republic ForCounter-Remonstrant Calvinism was without any question the most powerful ideological forcein the United Provinces of the seventeenth century The extensive network of parish churchesprovided the only education the common people received which was of course strictly religiousin character Its ministers knew the families in their congregations and were able to offer themadvice and spiritual support as well as charity in difficult times And every Sunday they had acaptive audience for preaching that easily shaded into political speech-making advocating thecensorship of this or that book condemning free-thinking intellectuals (Spinoza was certainlyamong them) or raking the regents over the coals Johan de Witt was the topic of more than afew fiery sermons

The antagonism between the Reform Church and the Republic was exceedinglydangerous because the Church was an ideological force with great influence on popular thinkingThe disastrous consequences of the split between Church and State had an important lesson toteach namely that the modern state needed to control the dominant ideological apparatus insociety in order to secure its rule Spinoza was the first philosopher to make this point And hewas also the first to show that the state could accomplish that task while granting its citizensfreedom of thought and expression In that respect it was Spinoza not Locke who was the mostimportant philosophical forerunner of the modern liberal republic precisely because headdressed the problem that Locke avoided with his advocacy of the ldquoseparation of church andstaterdquo As we will see Spinoza argued for state control of public religion with full freedom ofprivate worship But while the republic Spinoza wanted to see in the United Provinces wasliberal in the sense that it would protect individual freedom of thought and expression it wentwell beyond the liberal tradition by making the common people sovereign It would have beendemocratic ndash had it actually existed ndash in a far more radical sense than any of the so-calledldquoliberal democraciesrdquo that have taken root in the world since Spinoza wrote the TractatusTheologico-Politicus

In the TPT then Spinoza addresses himself to the most important political problem ofthe day namely how to reconcile religion and the Dutch Republic He does this by establishing adistinction between true religion and superstition It would make sense to call superstition a kindof disease of the mind were it not so much a part of the ordinary human condition Spinoza

likens it to hallucination and frenzy It is a mental state that involves a false even absurdconception of the world as a response to fears and hopes Spinoza is a strict determinist Thecourse of events is a chain of causes and effects in which each effect is the necessaryconsequence of the cause or confluence of causes that immediately precedes it But the chain ofcauses and effects is much too complex for the human mind to comprehend at least in any detailFear and hope stem from our ignorance concerning the future and from our desire to controlevents that are beyond our capacity to influence through realistic action ie through effectiveintervention in real causal sequences Superstition involves a false anthropomorphic conceptionof the divine The superstitious person regards God or the gods as possessing the same emotionsas human beings In order to influence the outcome of events it is necessary to placate divineanger or flatter the deity or make sacrifices to it Out of this spurious need the professions ofsoothsayer priest and minister arise people who make their living by interpreting the divineemotions responsible for difficult circumstances prescribing remedial essentially magicalactions and interceding with God or the gods on behalf of those who pay for their services Whatmakes superstition so difficult to expunge is the fact that it originates not only from ignorancebut from human misery In particular that is the reason the common people are so wedded tosuperstition or so says Spinoza They are ldquoeverywhere at the same level of miseryrdquo

Spinoza develops a conception of true religion in contrast with superstition asessentially moral in character That is the purpose of the detailed Biblical exegesis that comprisesthree-quarters of the TPT In the hands of the professional caste of church officials the Bible isthe most potent instrument of superstition They say it contains the answer to every questionworth asking even the questions philosophers and scientists raise It is supposed to harborsecrets and mysteries that only specialists can decipher It becomes an object of idolatry in thatpeople come to ldquoworship paper and ink rather than the word of Godrdquo But that word is writtenfirst of all in the human heart a Socinian doctrine Spinoza fully endorses Unlike the ldquolettersrdquo ofthe Bible the inwardly revealed word is not subject to the distortions or corruptions of textualtransmission over the course of centuries

There is a core of religious truth in the Bible that accords with the inner light but it hasnothing to do with superstition More broadly it must be distinguished from the beliefs that wereprevalent at the times its various books were written These include the beliefs of the prophets aswell as those of the common people who received their message The prophets were notaccomplished in philosophy or science and it would be a mistake to look for these disciplinesbetween the covers of the Bible Spinoza lists three characteristics that distinguished the prophetsfrom other people and none of them involve intellectual excellence a vivid and activeimagination the experience of a sign and a heart set on what is just and good Of these the lastis the most important The story of the creation of Adam and Eve and the events that transpire inthe Garden of Eden is a parable rather than a record of historical fact Joshua could not havestopped the sun in its motion through the sky because the sun does not revolve around the earthThe prophets disagreed with one another so that there is no possibility of a logically consistentreading of the Bible But none of this really matters In an audacious move Spinoza argues thatwe must neither add nor subtract anything from the Bible remaining content what it clearlyconveys We must read it ldquoliterallyrdquo except when there is linguistic evidence of the intentionaluse of metaphor In one sense then Spinoza is a ldquofundamentalistrdquo But he also argues that we arefree to believe or refuse to believe much of what the Bible says because it is ancillary to itsreligious message

The only claim of religion that can be justified on the basis of a proper reading ofScripture is that human beings ought to obey God by treating one another with justice and love(caritas) Although often rendered into English as ldquocharityrdquo caritas includes much more thangiving to those in need The Latin is a translation of the Koine Greek word agape which refersexpansively to the love of God for the human person the love of the person for God and thelove of people for one another as an extension of their love for God that is to say their desire tolove what God loves For Spinoza the Bible is an appeal to the beliefs and imagination of thecommon people by the prophets and apostles the purpose of which is to convey a moral messageso simple that ldquoeven the most sluggish mindrdquo can understand it In dramatic narrative languageand vivid imagery the authors of the Bible try to convince people to obey God by treating other

people with justice and love The purpose of their writing is to elicit obedience not articulatemetaphysical truth From the Bible we learn nothing about what God is or what his relation is tohuman beings or the universe as a whole The Bible conveys a moral truth in the sense that itcommands people to live in the way that is best for human beings In terms of the theory ofspeech acts John Austin developed in the twentieth-century the Biblersquos use of language isperformative rather than constative It is meant to do something rather than to state somethingalthough it implies the assertion that the best life is one in which we treat other people with loveand justice But it presents no arguments in support of that assertion other than that we must livein the way that God commands By contrast the discovery of metaphysical truth and itsexpression in deductive propositional form is the goal of philosophers According to Spinozathen there can be no conflict between philosophy and religion properly understood becausethey are dedicated to entirely different ends ldquobetween faith and theology on the one side andphilosophy on the other there is no relation and no affinityhelliprdquo

The same cannot be said of religion and the state There is indeed a relation between thetwo though it is in danger of degenerating into conflict because they occupy the same terrainboth demand obedience Of course Spinoza has in mind the fraught relationship between theReform Church and the Dutch Republic In an alliance with the House of Orange the Calvinistconsistories sought to alter the character of the state by abolishing the Republic and replacing itwith a monarchy that would make room for the authority of the Reform Church As long as aninfluential church independent of the state is involved in politics (considering its ability toinfluence the actions of thousands of believers) sovereignty is divided But as Hobbes pointsout in Leviathan it is impossible to divide sovereignty without undermining it The first plank inthe political program Spinoza develops in the TPT is that of subordinating the church to the stateThe sovereignty of the state must be absolute and that means that it must extend even toreligious doctrine and the details of public worship

Thus we cannot doubt that in modern times religionbelongs solely to the right of thesovereign No one has the right and power to exercise control over it to choose itsministers to determine and establish the foundations of the church and its doctrine topass judgment on morality and acts of piety to excommunicate or to accept into thechurch and to provide for the poor except by the authority and permission of thesovereign

Since this conclusion provocatively challenges the power of the Calvinist consistories their

violent reaction to the publication of the TPT is perfectly understandable And yet Spinozaargues that regulation of worship by the state ought to be minimized His purpose is not statedomination of religion but preventing religion from dominating the state He agrees withHobbes that sovereignty is absolute or it does not exist at all since a divided sovereignty isinherently unstable But he also agrees with Machiavelli that the state is sovereign only as longas it is able to retain its power There is a logic a psychology and a physics of political powerwhose most fundamental law is that power can sustain itself only when it does not provoke theindignation of the multitude

In the definition Spinoza gives in the Ethics indignation (indignatio) is hatred towardone who has injured another either someone we love or someone for whom we feel no emotionbut believe to be similar to ourselves It operates through the mechanism of the imitation ofaffects I imitate ndash ie empathetically feel ndash the emotions of those with whom I identify so that Iexperience harm to the other person as harm to myself Since hatred is pain along with the ideaof an external cause my imitation of the suffering of someone whom the sovereign has harmed isequivalent to my hatred of the sovereign The consequence of my hatred is a desire to injure thesovereign in order to diminish or destroy the perceived cause of pain If fear of the consequencesof defying the sovereignrsquos command is transformed into mass indignation then the authority torule disintegrates ldquohellip to slaughter subjects to despoil them to ravish maidens and the like turnsfear into indignation and consequently the civil order into a condition of warrdquo

One certain way to provoke indignation is for the sovereign to tell people what they must

believe and what they are allowed to say Indignation is inevitable if the state attempts to controlthought and expression not only because such attempts harm the multitude but also becausethey are futile Spinoza recognizes that it is possible for the state to deceive its citizens and toeffect their beliefs in other ways But he also assets that no state has the power to suspend thelaws of human nature by for example ordering its people to free themselves from anger to hatethose who have benefited them or to regard as false what they believe to be true Any attempt toexercise power in this fashion provokes indignation in part because of the emptiness of thepower it vainly seeks to assert All that it demonstrates is the sovereignrsquos weakness therebyencouraging the further spread of indignation It also makes enemies of those who refuse to hidetheir deepest beliefs and honors those who lie about what they believe which is both unjust tothose falsely reviled and dangerous to the state because it encourages duplicity and corruption inthose who hold political office Far from protecting the state the attempt to control thought andexpression undermines it

The remarkable thing about the theory of politics Spinoza develops in the TPT is that itderives liberal conclusions from absolutist premises The power of the state is absolute but it isnonetheless fragile No state Spinoza says has more to fear from external enemies than it doesfrom its own people Polices that avoid or minimize indignation are vital to its health Howeverwhile he advocates full freedom of thought and expression as necessary to preserving thepolitical community Spinoza draws the line at action which comes under the province of lawand command After all what else could sovereignty mean but the power to command orprohibit action Action includes such functions of a church as public worship and the provisionof charity both of which for this reason are appropriate objects of state control Most of allcivil peace requires the prohibition of church interference with government which would reversethe proper order of obedience and command Thus Spinoza identifies two conditions of stablepolitical power freedom of thought and expression and the iron will of the state to brook nochallenge to its sovereign authority over action especially from organized religion

If Spinozarsquos program for political reform is liberal it is liberalism of a unique kindUnlike the main currents in the liberal tradition it is based on neither a theory of rights nor oneof individual utility The concept of rights has no normative role to play in the TPT becauseSpinoza insists that rights are the same as powers For example there is no right of free speechunless there is the effective power to speak freely Thus the right cannot function as a normbecause it has no reality until it actually exists and whether or not it exists depends upon thebalance of political forces Moreover although the state is necessary to security and civil peaceno one chooses to create it in order to maximize his or her utility People are driven by self-interest but this is true no matter what their conditions of life happen to be Spinoza makes muchof the irrefutable but neglected point that people do not have the ability to survive withoutcombining their power with that of others There is no possible scenario in which isolatedindividuals choose for or against political organization in the interest of maximizing their utilityfor the simple reason that there are no isolated individuals

It is true that Spinoza argues that democracy is the only ldquonaturalrdquo form of governmentbecause it preserves collectively the right to make decisions that each person enjoys individuallyin the ldquostate of naturerdquo For this reason it is the form of government most compatible withfreedom But the idea of a state of nature that precedes political organization and the associatedidea of natural rights are no more than hypothetical because it is precisely in a state of naturethat people would be unable to protect their rights against the aggression of others But forSpinoza this is the same as saying that these rights do not exist The idea of natural rights in apre-political condition is purely notional The only way to enjoy rights effectively ndash which is tosay the only way to exercise the powers they involve ndash is to entrust them to a sovereign authoritycapable of replacing unbridled aggression with the rule of law If ever there were a socialcontract theorist who employed the concept of the state of nature as an hypothesis in a thoughtexperiment without taking the myth of an original condition seriously it is Spinoza The idea thatdemocracy is the most natural form of government simply means that it comes closest to thehypothetical freedom of the state of nature In a democracy people retain their power to decidewhat actions to take but as members of the sovereign authority ndash ie as citizens ndash while theyare bound as subjects to obey the laws that result from their collective deliberations ldquoIn a

democratic state nobody transfers his natural right to another so completely that thereafter he isnot to be consulted he transfers it to the majority of the entire community of which he is partrdquo

In addition to the claim of naturalism in his advocacy of democracy in the TPT Spinozaargues that democratic governments are less prone to irrationality than monarchical oraristocratic ones A large number of people is less likely to endorse the same irrational decisionthan a small council (aristocracy) or a single person (monarchy) ldquohellip In a democracy there is lessdanger of an assembly behaving unreasonably for it is practically impossible for the majority ofa single assembly if it is of some size to agree on the same piece of follyrdquo The sentence thatfollows the one just quoted throws some light on what ldquothe same piece of follyrdquo means byreferring to ldquothe follies of appetiterdquo Spinozarsquos claim is that a democratic state is more rationalthan the alternatives in that it does the best job avoiding the foolish decisions people make whenled by their appetites

Spinoza does not provide an argument in support of this claim in the TPT but in thePolitical Treatise which he began to write two years later there is a passage that that helpscorrect the omission It concerns the wisdom of establishing a governing council with a largenumber of members in an aristocratic state Although an aristocracy excludes the commonpeople from political power reserving it for an elite Spinoza argues that it is capable ofguaranteeing liberties similar to those of democratic government provided that the members ofits governing council are sufficiently numerous

The fact that sovereignty is conferred absolutely on the council need not give thecommon people [plebi] any reason to fear oppressive slavery at its hands For when acouncil is so large its will is determined by reason rather than mere caprice becauselusts [libidine] draw men asunder and it is only when they have as their objective whatis honorable or at least appears so that they can be guided as if by one mind

Spinozarsquos argument is more complicated than a quick reading might indicate It is

impossible he claims for the members of a large council to come to agreement on the basis oftheir libidine because these affects draw them in different and incompatible directions Whilelibidine generally refers to sexual appetites Spinoza uses the word in this context to refer to thefull range of disreputable passions The corresponding point in the TPT is that it is ldquopracticallyimpossiblerdquo for the members of the democratic council to endorse the same ldquopiece of follyrdquo Inorder to reach agreement the members of the governing council in an aristocratic state must takeas their goal ldquowhat is honorable or at least appears sordquo In the Ethics Spinoza defines thehonorable (honestum) as ldquowhat is praised by men who live by the guidance of reasonrdquo and hemakes it clear that what such men praise is ldquothe desire to establish friendshiprdquo In accordancewith this definition the objective of the council members in an aristocracy is not so much to actwith reason as to be regarded by the reasonable as acting with reason ie as promotingfriendship That is why they are able to reach agreement even when their objective appears to behonorable although it is not But with whom do they wish to be or appear to be friends SinceSpinoza intends his argument to allay the fear of the plebs it seems obvious that it is theirfriendship that the council members seek But why would aristocrats be interested in makingfriends with commoners Although Spinoza does not tell us why in this passage the answer canbe found elsewhere in the Political Treatise The reason that the council members must seek thefriendship of the common people is that aristocratic government is not nor can it be absolute inthe full sense of the word in other words it cannot hold a complete monopoly on powerAlthough they have no institutional role in an aristocratic regime the common people retain thepower to undermine state authority by refusing to obey it or even by waging war against it Therulers recognize that power in the fear with which they regard the masses

In the Introduction to the Political Treatise Spinoza dissociates himself from the rosyview of human nature held by the authors of utopias In order to develop a political philosophythat is useful in the world of actual human affairs it is necessary to design institutions inaccordance with which those in government realize the rational end of politics ndash ie the common

good ndash whether or not that is their intention The desire of the members of the council to be seenas seeking the friendship of the masses ensures the rationality of the formerrsquos decisions becauseit causes them to seek the common good even if they do so from fear rather than dedication toreason One might object that appearing to seek the friendship of the masses entails only that thecouncil appear to seek the common good not that it actually does so But it is not possible for thecouncil to neglect the common interest over the long run without dire consequences unless weassume that the masses are so benighted that they are unable to discern the consistent violation oftheir interests The appearance and reality of seeking the friendship of the masses areindistinguishable as proved nearly two hundred years later by a theorem of Abraham LincolnsIt is possible to fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the timebut not all of the people all of the time If that theorem were not true then there would be nolimit to the power of tyrants while Spinoza is fond of quoting Tacitus that tyrannies never lastlong Once again the reason for their inevitable downfall is the indignation they provokethrough the harm they cause to the interests of the multitude

Although Spinoza does not make the point explicitly it is easy to see that a democraticcouncil does not require the same concern with the honorable as an aristocratic one because fearof the masses has no role to play in a democracy Since the common people who are the vastmajority of society are empowered to make decisions they have no need to evoke fear indecision-makers different than themselves in order to protect their own interests Thus in the caseof a democratic council the impossibility of a large number of people agreeing on ldquothe samepiece of follyrdquo is enough to secure political rationality ie the discovery and implementation ofthe common good

An implication of Spinozarsquos emphasis on the affinity between democracy and reason isthat democracy is a kind school for developing rationality The need to make and assess publicarguments about the common good requires clarity of thought and some understanding of theprinciples of logical implication In addition while citizens of a democracy agree to obey the lawor decree established by a vote of the majority they retain their freedom of judgment includingthe right to argue in favor of reversing decisions already made Thus there is no point in ademocracy at which citizens must give up their efforts to influence collective decisions andtherefore no point at which rationality becomes irrelevant However reason is not simply ameans of achieving the common good as an external end It is part of the common good forhuman beings and therefore itself one the ends it seeks to achieve The highest good is theintellectual love of God ndash so Spinoza argues in the Ethics ndash which we cannot attain withoutexercising reason Democracy then turns out to be not only the best way of securing thecommon good of the members of a polity but the best way of advancing the ultimate goodappropriate to human beings in general

Spinozarsquos advocacy of democracy was exceedingly radical at a time when monarchy wasthe political norm in Europe and even the oligarchic regent-dominated Dutch Republic waswidely regarded as an ultra-left anomaly But it sits uncomfortably with another aspect of theTPT namely its apparently low opinion of ldquothe multituderdquo (multitudo) In the Introduction to thebook which was written in Latin Spinoza tells his readers that he would prefer that ldquothecommon peoplerdquo (plebs) not read the work since they are incapable of understanding it andlikely to distort its meaning He pictures its members as entirely driven by their passions andincapable of using reason

I know how deeply rooted in the mind are the prejudices embraced under the guise ofpiety I know too that the masses [vulgo] can no more be freed from their superstitionthan from their fears Finally I know that they are unchanging in their obstinacy thatthey are not guided by reason and that their praise and blame is at the mercy of impulse

But this judgment throws into question the affinity between democracy and reason that

Spinoza affirms in the TPT For in order for such an affinity to exist the common people mustbe able to make decisions on the basis of reason Is the negative picture he paints of the masses

in the Introduction to the TPT simply a rhetorical device meant to appeal to the vanity of hiseducated readership It does not seem to be because a similarly low opinion appears again in theEthics and in some of his letters where there is no need to appeal to anyonersquos vanity Instead offunctioning simply as a rhetorical ploy Spinozarsquos generally negative view of the vast majority ofsociety and the positive view he develops in his advocacy of democracy indicate a tension in hispolitics

In the Ethics and TPT Spinoza uses the words vulgus plebs and multitudointerchangeably When any of the three word appears it is usually accompanied by suchqualifiers as ldquoirrationalrdquo ldquoignorantrdquo ldquouneducatedrdquo ldquosuperstitiousrdquo and ldquogoverned by passionsrdquoStill for Spinoza reason is not the possession of a natural elite Rather it is a universally humancapacity whose occurrence among people in developed form is rare Above all the cultivation ofreason requires free time There are two references to this requirement in the TPT that bear onthe ability of the multitude to develop their rational capacities One passage refers to ldquothecommon peoplerdquo as ldquofor the most part knowing nothing of logical reasoning or without leisurefor itrdquo Another refers to Spinozarsquos method of biblical exegesis noting that ldquoour own methoddemands a knowledge of Hebrew for which study the common people can likewise have noleisurerdquo A third passage which we have already referred to is relevant to the relationshipbetween leisure and the cultivation of reason while not mentioning it directly ldquothe multitude arealways at the same level of miseryrdquo Although Spinoza does not specify what he means by thelast statement it is likely that he is referring at least in part to the misery of onerous labor Thepoverty of the multitude demands that they spend most of their time engaged in hard physicalwork and the resulting absence of leisure prevents them from acquiring knowledge anddeveloping rational skills Lacking developed reason it is easy for them to fall under the sway ofthose who manipulate their fears and hopes for their own personal advantage the priestsministers rabbis and other religious officials In Spinozarsquos view fears and hopes make themultitude credulous and willing to accept superstitious beliefs (in divination the ability ofprayer to change the natural course of events the purchase of indulgences etc) that promisecontrol of an uncertain future For clerics the key to power and money is manipulation of thegreat majority of society through the instrument of superstition masked as religion

While the words plebs vulgus and multitudo do not designate a particular social classthey are not free of class reference either Spinoza uses the word plebs much as it was used in theearly Roman Republic to refer to the free subjects of a state who have no right to participate ingovernment Although plebs designates a political status rather than an economic class Spinozais clear that the group it refers to consists largely in those who work with their hands Forexample in the Political Treatise he identifies artisans as an example of the plebs the onlyexample in any of his writings Undoubtedly he would also have included peasants and wageworkers in that category and probably small retail merchants who were also politicallydisenfranchised Patricians by contrast certainly include nobles but may also include at least thewealthier burghers as was the case in the United Provinces Germany and much of the rest ofEurope The word vulgus as Spinoza uses it refers to the same members of society as the wordplebs but with the specific connotation of a lack of education and culture whose most extremeexpression is the unruly and irrational behavior of mobs In fact depending upon the contextvulgus is sometimes best translated as ldquocrowdrdquo or ldquomobrdquo Multitudo means ldquothe manyrdquo Spinozauses it to designate any group with numerous members including for example the simplebodies that make up a chemical substance In the context of political theory he uses the word torefer to the same people who comprise the plebs or vulgus but with the specific connotation ofbeing the vast majority of society Thus plebs vulgus and multitudo have the same referentalthough their principal connotations differ However in Spinozarsquos usage each word tends tobecome a synecdoche for the combined meaning of all three Thus in general the plebs vulgusor multitudo comprise the vast majority of society comprised largely of those who work withtheir hands are denied political rights except in democracies lack culture and education and aregiven to uncouth irrational or unruly behavior

The tension in Spinozarsquos politics between his critical view of the multitude and hisadvocacy of a democratic state in which it is sovereign can be explained by drawing a distinctionbetween the multitude as it is under the conditions of the actually existing Dutch Republic and

the multitude as it could be were Spinozarsquos reforms to be implemented With an uncontrolledReform Church and a Republic dominated by regents who represent the wealthy burghers themultitude has no chancing of shedding its superstitions or developing its rational capacities TheChurch manipulates their hopes and fears through the instrument of superstition and therepublican oligarchs block their participation in political decision-making which is the only waythey can develop rationality on a significant scale The story would be very different however ifthe state were both democratic and prohibited the Church from involvement in politics Twomajor conditions would then exist for the development of reason on a mass scale

The idea of a democracy raises the problem of how people without significant materialresources are to participate in making decisions when they must spend their lives in toil It mightbe thought that the problem can be solved by a universal franchise enabling all citizens to votefor representatives to a legislative assembly and other state offices But even if measures were inplace to prevent the wealthy minority from exercising unequal influence in elected bodiesrepresentative government is not Spinozarsquos idea of democracy Like Plato and Aristotle when heuses the term ldquodemocracyrdquo he has in mind a state such as the Athenian polis in which all adult(male) citizens were empowered to vote directly on legislation and other public matters Spinozamakes this clear in the unfinished chapter on democracy in the Political Treatise

hellipin this state all who are born of citizen parents or on native soil or have done serviceto the commonwealth or are qualified on any other grounds on which the right ofcitizenship is granted by law all I say can lawfully demand for themselves the right tovote in the supreme council and to undertake offices of state nor can they be refusedexcept for crime or dishonor

At a relatively advanced stage in its development the Athenian polis solved the problem

of the multitudersquos participation in government by paying citizens to attend sessions of theAssembly thereby compensating them for missed days of work If Spinoza was aware of theAthenian solution he gives no indication of it in his writings although it is likely that he wouldhave considered the problem of participation in politics by those without leisure in the part of thePolitical Treatise he left unfinished at his death Following the pattern of the completed chapterson monarchy and aristocracy the unfinished chapters on democracy would undoubtedly havespecified the institutional structures and practices necessary to sustain a democratic state In anyevent without something like the Athenian solution the idea of a democratic republic in theUnited Provinces would have been no more than the sort of utopian dream Spinoza rejects in theIntroduction to the Political Treatise

Returning to the earlier work the program for reforming the Dutch Republic that emergesin the TPT has three planks 1) establish state control over the churches as public institutions 2)guarantee freedom of thought expression and private worship and 3) democratize the oligarchicRepublic Although Spinozarsquos book is a work of philosophy it is equally a political interventionin a concrete historical situation a fact that he indicates in his letter to Jelles by referring to theldquocauserdquo he asks his friend to serve by blocking the Dutch translation of the book But in order toact as a political intervention the book must influence the beliefs and through them the actionsof people That raises the question To whom is the TPT addressed Since the decision to write inLatin effectively prevented the multitude from reading the work (which as we have seen wasSpinozarsquos intention) and on the assumption that not many aristocrats were likely to be swayedby its radical arguments the addressee of the book can only have been the educated section ofthe bourgeoisie Since Spinoza was unlikely to sway many conservative Calvinists with hisrationalist conception of religion there were only two groups within the bourgeoisie ndash at leastsome of whose members were capable of reading Latin ndash that the work could effectively addressThe first consists in republicans including the regents who hesitated to support the kind of stateauthority over religion that Spinoza advocated for ideological or pragmatic reasons The secondconsists in Orangists who were liberals in matters of religion and so in conflict with the ReformChurch As odd as it may seem there were a good number of people who fit into the secondcategory Even many of the Collegiantrsquos were loyal to the House of Orange in spite of theirpronounced religious liberalism

Had the TPTrsquos program been limited to its first two planks ndash state control of the churchesand freedom of thought and expression ndash it would have been politically coherent But where doesthe idea of democratizing the United Provinces fit into this picture Neither bourgeoisrepublicans nor religious liberals were apt to be sympathetic to the idea of a democratic republicthat would place power in the hands of the multitude If Spinoza wanted to make an appeal to therepublican and liberal Orangist sections of the bourgeoisie he ought to have been defending theexisting oligarchic Republic against its conservative Calvinist and monarchist enemies ratherthan elaborating an argument for its democratization There is only one audience who wouldhave been sympathetic to that argument namely the peasants artisans wage-workers and smallmerchants who comprised the multitude But that is precisely the readership Spinoza deniedhimself by writing in Latin

And yet Spinoza understood that the only way the Republic could survive in face of thealliance between the Reform Church and the House of Orange was to shift the allegiance of themultitude by winning its support Thus the contradiction in Spinozarsquos program is not a theoreticalflaw but a reflection of the real contradiction involved in the stadtholderless Republic or if youprefer the instability in the balance of social forces that enabled it to exist The Republic couldsurvive only by means of an impossible alliance between the multitude and the regents IfSpinoza erred it was in believing that it was possible to convince the regents to democratize bythe force of his arguments But this was the same as asking them to commit political suicidesince their power on the urban and national levels depended upon their ability to defend theirmonopoly on state offices The only alternative which Spinoza rejected was a popularrevolution that would create a new and radically democratic republic But that republic wouldshare with the existing one no more than the name like the animal dog and the dog star thatSpinoza refers to in a different context For that reason it would have fallen under his warningthat those who attempt to change the form of the state are likely to see it restored in a morerepressive version (see page 25 below) In short there was no solution to the problem the TPTattempted to solve or at least none within the limits of Spinozarsquos thinking As a political theoryand a theory of biblical hermeneutics the book is a brilliant work that went on to influencephilosophers and ironically theologians for the next three centuries As an intervention in theextraordinarily difficult and complex political situation of the seventeenth-century Netherlands itwas and had to be an utter failure

There are in fact two political programs in the TPT an overt program and a latent oneThe overt program is liberal republican and bourgeois in the sense that its addressee andintended agent of change is the educated bourgeoisie The latent program lies quite a bit furtherto the left It is radically democratic and its only possible agent of change is the multitude Letter44 makes a contribution to the latent program that moves in an even more radical direction

The Communist Idea

In his letter to Jelles Spinoza develops an idea of the highest good for human beings as

an alternative to what he argues is the false conception of Homo Politicus For the author of thatbook wealth and honors comprise the highest good But Spinoza claims in the letter thatcommonwealths devoted to the pursuit of wealth and honors ldquomust necessarily perish and haveperishedrdquo He then writes

How far superior indeed and excellent were the reflections of Thales of Miletus compared with this writer is shown by the following account All things he said are incommon among friends

The fact that this paragraph follows Spinozarsquos critique of Homo Politicus while proposing

an alternative to the apparent position of its author justifies an interpretation that takes it in apolitical sense Spinoza should be read as offering the saying of Thales as an addendum to the

latent program he articulates in the TPT Like democracy common ownership could have onlyone social basis in the Netherlands of the seventeenth century ndash namely the peasants artisanswage-workers and small retail merchants The problem this raises is how to make the transitionfrom a multitude given to irrationality and superstition ndash and therefore under the sway of theReformed Church ndash to one capable of the rationality necessary to create the democraticcommunism (the content of which we have yet to define) that Letter 44 implies when consideredalong with the TPT Spinoza saw no answer to this problem That is why he suppressed his latentproject in favor of the overt one for a liberal republic able to assert its sovereign authority overthe Church It seemed to him that the educated bourgeoisie had political capacities that themultitude lacked

Spinozarsquos judgment on this matter is similar mutatis mutandis to that of FrederickEngels in the Peasant War in Germany For Engels the Peasant War of the sixteenth century wasa heroic but premature revolution Under the leadership of Thomas Muumlntzer the peasantsadopted a program that included the expropriation of ecclesiastic and aristocratic property andthe common ownership of goods But the princes were the only group with the wealth andmilitary resources necessary to benefit from the ensuing turmoil while their rivals for power ndashthe Catholic prelates and lesser nobility ndash were ruined by the confiscation of property andplundering or destruction of fixed wealth by the peasant masses The rising bourgeoisie was ableto frame an independent liberal political program but did not yet have the social weightnecessary to play a leading role in the economy and the state According to Engels the peasantrywas incapable of mastering the new forces of production unleashed by the world market and theonly class that might have played a progressive role alongside the peasants ndash the proletarianwage-working element in the towns ndash was a very small part of laboring population It would takeanother three centuries for the proletariat to develop along with industry to the point where itwould be able to draft a meaningful equivalent of the communist program first framed by thesixteenth-century German peasantry Spinoza certainly had no idea that industrialization and asizeable proletariat were on their way But he shared with Engels a pessimistic assessment of thechances for a successful social transformation led by peasants and their allies Perhaps with thedisastrous defeat of the German peasants in mind (as well as the allegiance of the Dutchmultitude to the Reformed Church) Spinoza judged that relying upon the common people as anagent of social and political change in his own century would have been equally futile

Why then does Spinoza raise the issue of common ownership in Letter 44 The answer isthe same as for why he discusses democracy in the TPT when it makes no contribution to hispolitical intervention but on the contrary damages it We could say that Spinoza is either a badmilitant or a good philosopher The truth is he is both Like Platorsquos attempt to influence thecourse of events in Syracuse or Aristotlersquos decision to tutor Alexander the Great Spinozarsquos faithin the political efficacy of philosophical reasoning was misguided There is ample historicalevidence that the philosopher who attempts to be politically effective as a philosopher is doomedto defeat That is why Marx ceased considering himself a philosopher in 1845 as he indicates inthe eleventh of his Theses on Feuerbach ldquoUntil now philosophers have only attempted tounderstand the world the point however is to change itrdquo The project of changing the world isdifferent than that of understanding it from a purely theoretical perspective Of course it ispossible for philosophers to influence statesmen as Locke influenced the drafters of the USConstitution But Lockersquos influence was effective more than a century after he wrote the SecondTreatise on Civil Government and so can hardly be called a political intervention The attempt tointervene politically in a concrete situation in which multiple forces and complex structures arein play is something very different than the delayed influence on the drafters of a constitutionwho have had an opportunity to ponder at leisure the meaning of a philosopherrsquos work The mostimportant question of politics is not so much ldquoWhat is to be donerdquo as ldquoWho is to do itrdquoSpinoza may have been right that the multitude was not the collective subject to defendrepublican liberty That is why he appealed to the Dutch bourgeoisie through its philosophicallyliterate elements But he was too much the philosopher to suppress his argument that ademocratic republic is the kind of state that best preserves freedom and encourages rationalityand he was willing to make his point even at the cost of alienating the collective agent he wasattempting to influence

The reference to common ownership in Letter 44 would have had an even more negativeeffect on his readers should Spinoza have made it in the TPT In private communication withJelles however he was able to raise the topic without risking further political difficultiesSpinozarsquos reference presumes an intellectual history with roots in both ancient Greek philosophyand early Christianity a history that was renewed practically as well as theoretically in earlymodern Europe In the passage from Letter 44 where he introduces the theme of commonownership he goes on to elaborate the position he attributes to Thales Here is the passage in fullthat we have already quoted partially

How far superior indeed and excellent were the reflections of Thales of Miletuscompared with this writer is shown by the following account All things he said are incommon among friends The wise are the friends of the Gods and all things belong tothe Gods therefore all things belong to the wise In this way the wise man makeshimself the richest by nobly despising riches instead of greedily pursuing them

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo (Amicorum communia omnia) is

the first entry in his book Adages by the late Renaissance humanist and reform-minded Catholicscholar Desiderius Erasmus The Adages were widely available in Spinozarsquos day and it is likelythat both Spinoza and Jelles had read them although the former must have also consultedErasmusrsquo source for the saying ndash Lives of the Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius We will seewhy in a moment Erasmus cites the same deduction from the maxim as Spinoza does in Letter44 except that he attributes it to Socrates rather than Thales

From this proverb Socrates deduced that all things belong to all good men just as theydo to the gods For to the gods he said belong all things good men are friends of thegods and among friends all possessions are in common

The fact that Spinoza refers to wise men while Erasmus refers to good men does not

indicate any real difference between them because both accepted the ancient Greek and biblicalequivalence between human goodness and wisdom The difference in attributing the deductiveconsequences of the proverb to Thales on the one hand and Socrates on the other also does notindicate any substantive disagreement between Spinoza and Erasmus although it does signify adifference in intellectual vocation and emphasis Interestingly however the attribution in bothcases is incorrect Their common source the Lives of the Philosophers places the argument intothe mouth of Diogenes the Cynic rather than Socrates or Thales Thus both Spinoza and Erasmushave had a failure of memory and probably for the same reason The author of Lives makes itclear that although Diogenes the Cynic despised the pursuit of wealth he was not a veryappealing character he was arrogant and could be verbally and physically abusive to those hejudged to be unwise It is understandable then that the figure of Diogenes would drop out of thememory of both Erasmus and Spinoza and be replaced by a philosopher with whom each tosome extent identified Erasmus the Renaissance humanist undoubtedly found Socrates well-suited to stand in for the part of Diogenes the Cynic because Socrates was a moral philosopherand the teacher of Plato whose influence on the Renaissance was profound As an admirer of thenatural sciences and a maker of telescopes Spinoza would have felt the same way about Thaleswho was an astronomer as well as a philosopher

In Letter 44 a story from Lives follows the identification of Thales as the figureresponsible for the drawing the deductive consequences of the proverb In order to demonstratethat his rejection of the pursuit of wealth was not an alibi for poverty Thales made use of hisexpert knowledge of the heavens Foreseeing a bountiful olive crop after the previous harvestrsquosdearth he rented all of the olive presses in Greece cheaply and then hired them out at a highprice to farmers who needed them to press the oil from their olives In this way he amassed agreat deal of wealth within a single year which ldquohe then distributed with a liberality equal to the

shrewdness by which he had acquired itrdquo Spinozarsquos memory of the story must have acted as abridge for the mistaken identification

The similarity between the ancient Greek proverb and the passages from Acts about thecommunal practices of the early Church with respect to property must have been evident to thebiblical scholar Spinoza Rendered into Latin by Erasmus the proverb ldquoAll things are incommon among friendsrdquo is amicorum communia omnia In Acts 244 ndash ldquoAll that believed weretogether and had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquohad all things in commonrdquo appears in theLatin Vulgate as habebant omnia communia In Acts 432 ndash ldquoNo one claimed that any of theirpossessions was their own but they had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquothey had all thingsin commonrdquo appears in the Vulgate as erant illis omnia communia The equivalence between thecommunia omnia of the proverb and the omnia communia of the two verses from Acts wouldhave been perfectly clear to Spinoza on linguistic grounds alone

In Adages Erasmus is more explicit than Spinoza in connecting the proverb with theverses from Acts He discusses the proverb in its appearance in book 5 of the Laws where Platoappeals to it in order to demonstrate that the best condition of society consists in the communityof possessions Erasmus writes

But it is extraordinary how Christians dislike this common ownership of Platorsquos how infact they throw stones at it although nothing comes closer to the mind of Christ

Further on Erasmus identifies the inventor of the proverb as Pythagoras who he saysestablished a community in which life and property were shared

hellipwhich is the very thing Christ wants to happen among Christians For all those whowere admitted by Pythagoras into that well-known band who followed his instructionswould give to the common fund whatever money and family property they possessed

Even apart from Erasmus the similarity between the Greek philosophersrsquo proverb and the

New Testament passages would have been evident to the Mennonite Jelles from MennoSimonrsquos discussion of the communal practice described in Acts (more on this below) Jelleswould also have found the parallel especially appealing because it makes the principle ofcommon ownership part of that rational philosophical version of Christianity that he and theother Waterlander Mennonites and Collegiants were seeking to establish

Although Erasmus was an advocate of religious reform he never joined the ProtestantReformation remaining a loyal Catholic until his death It is ironic then that during hislifetime the only vigorous champions of the common ownership he espoused were members ofthe most radical wing of the Reformation ironic but completely intelligible since the radicalsrsquoproject was to restore the Church to its original apostolic condition before its accommodationwith worldly power and wealth under Constantine

The Latin phrase designating Anabaptist communism in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies is Omnia sunt communia (for example it appears in this form in the confession theauthorities extracted from Thomas Muumlntzer under torture) It translates into English as ldquoAllthings are commonrdquo which is the present tense version of the phrase in Acts 432 ldquoall thingswere commonrdquo (ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά) to the members of the Church in Jerusalem Theparallel formulation in Acts 244 is slightly different although the distinction is lost in the LatinVulgate It reads that the members of the apostolic Church ldquohad all things in commonrdquo (εἶχονἅπαντα κοινὰ) In the second formulation εἶχον (had) seems to suggest a specific mode ofpossession or even an established quasi-legal form of property But it would be a mistake tointerpret it this way In both verses the anonymous author of Acts is articulating a generalprinciple rather than specifying a form of its implementation As we shall see the concreteapplication of the principle in the first century Church involved not a mode of possession orform of property but rather a practice of redistribution

Within the Anabaptist movement there was a broad range of beliefs and practices thatinvolved specific applications of the principle Omnia sunt communia We need to recognizetheir breadth in order to grasp just how subtle and variegated Anabaptist communism could beFor this purpose it is important to distinguish between communism as 1) a principle ofredistribution 2) a form of joint or communal property 3) a mode of the organization of workand 4) a kind of mutual aid In general all Anabaptist applications of Omnia sunt communia areintended to realize in different ways a communal and spiritual life in which all things arecommon We could say if we like that each of the four categories serves as a means for realizingthe end designated by that principle as long as we keep in mind that in this case the meanscannot be discarded once the end has been achieved Communism as a principle of redistributiona form of communal property a mode of the organization of work a kind of mutual aid ndash orsome combination of these ndash are the concrete ways in which communism as a mode ofcommunal and spiritual life is realized In this case the means are internal to the end That isbecause there can be no fellowship no community of the spirit unless those participating sharesomething ie have it in common Greek recognizes this internal relationship between acommon life and something shared in the word translated into English as fellowship κοινωνίαthe root of which is κοινός which means ldquocommonrdquo Its antonym ἴδιος means ldquobelonging toonerdquo It is the word κοινός that appears in the passages from Acts that refer to the practice ofsharing material wealth

244 ldquoAll who believed were together and had all things in common (Πάντες δὲ οἱπιστεύοντες ἦσαν ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό καὶ εἶχον ἅπαντα κοινὰ)

432 ldquoThe multitude of believers were one in heart and soul (Τοῦ δὲ πλήθους τῶνπιστευσάντων ἦν καρδία καὶ ψυχὴ microία) and no one claimed anything as his ownpossession but to them all things were in common (καὶ οὐδὲ εἷς τι τῶν ὑπαρχόντωναὐτῷ ἔλεγεν ἴδιον εἶναι ἀλλrsquo ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά)

Both verses affirm an internal relationship between living a common life and things

being in common or people having things in common But this is true of any collectiveendeavor A chess club for example is only possible if the members have a common interest inplaying chess But the verses from Acts mean to assert more than this They affirm the intensityand universality of the common life experienced in the early Church (being ldquoone in heart andsoulrdquo) They indicate this by referring to the fact that in the Church in Jerusalem all things areheld in common (ἅπαντα κοινά) Although ldquoall thingsrdquo (ἅπαντα) is not limited to materialpossessions the succeeding verses in chapters 2 and 4 of Acts indicate the depth of thecommitment the early Christians had to sharing a common life by referring to the practice inwhich they enacted it

245 And they sold their possessions and goods and divided them among everyoneaccording to need (καὶ τὰ κτήmicroατα καὶ τὰς ὑπάρξεις ἐπίπρασκον καὶ διεmicroέριζον αὐτὰπᾶσιν καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

434 There was no one among them in need as many as owned land or houses soldthem and brought the values of what was sold (οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐνδεής τις ἦν ἐν αὐτοῖς ὅσοιγὰρ κτήτορες χωρίων ἢ οἰκιῶν ὑπῆρχον πωλοῦντες ἔφερον τὰς τιmicroὰς τῶνπιπρασκοmicroένων) 435 and laid them at the feet of the apostles and distribution wasmade to each in accordance with need (καὶ ἐτίθουν παρὰ τοὺς πόδας τῶν ἀποστόλωνδιεδίδετο δὲ ἑκάστῳ καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

The needs of others are what break the bonds of individual ownership allowing the

transition from the private (ἴδιος) to the common (κοινά) Acts refers to making material goods

common rather than for example communicating private knowledge publicly presumablybecause of the difficulty people experience parting with private property and the correlativesignificance of the act of doing so For material possessions are the means by which they satisfytheir basic needs ndash for food shelter clothing and so on ndash and when possible their desire forluxuries The act of handing over possessions has two consequences The first is that thedistinction between rich and poor wealthy and needy owner and propertyless is abolished andthe members of the community come to stand on level ground The second consequence involvesa more fundamental risk on the part of property-owners By handing over their property theymake a leap of faith that the community will henceforth satisfy their needs as well through thesame practice of redistribution When applied in this fashion the general principle of being incommon or having in common results in an example of the first category of communism asspecified above ie communism as a principle of redistribution

Redistribution of property by the apostles creates occasions for active sharing asexpressions of the new form of common life 246 says that the members of the Church inJerusalem ldquoalso broke bread in each otherrsquos homes and took their meals in exaltation andsimplicity of heartrdquo (κλῶντές τε κατrsquo ο ἴκον ἄρτον microετελάmicroβανον τροφῆς ἐν ἀγαλλιάσει καὶἀφελότητι καρδίας) The value of sharing meals lies not merely in the fact that everyone is fedbut also in the experience of exaltation or ecstatic delight (ἀγαλλιάσεις) and sincerity orsimplicity of heart (ἀφελότητι καρδίας) The experience in common of exaltation and sincerity isat least as important as the act of satisfying needs although the two can be distinguished onlynotionally

The experience has its meaning in relation to the power (δυνάmicroις) that brings together themembers of the new community and inspires them to share their property The gathering of JewsGreeks and those from other nations (the circumcised and the uncircumcised as Paul says)occurs in the period following Pentecost when the Holy Spirit is supposed to have descended incloven tongues of flame upon the twelve apostles endowing them with the ability to speak inevery language Pentecost in turn follows by several weeks the resurrection of Christ and hisbodily ascension into heaven The gift of being able to speak in every language permits theapostles to convey their message to all nations That message ndash confirmed by ldquosigns andwondersrdquo ndash is testimony of their own first-hand witness to the Resurrection It is accompanied bythe baptism of the new members of the Church which repeats the Pentecostal experience byfilling them with the grace and power of the Holy Spirit

433 ldquoAnd with great power the apostles were giving witness to the resurrection of theLord Jesus and abundant grace was upon them all (καὶ δυνάmicroει microεγάλῃ ἀπεδίδουν τὸmicroαρτύριον οἱ ἀπόστολοι τοῦ Κυρίου Ἰησοῦ τῆς ἀναστάσεως χάρις τε microεγάλη ἦν ἐπὶπάντας αὐτούς)

The ecstatic delight and simplicity of heart that the members of the Church in Jerusalem

experience by sharing a common life is their enjoyment of this ldquoabundant gracerdquo (χάρις τεmicroεγάλη) The new community is built upon faith in the apostlesrsquo testimony that Jesus triumphedover death and that his victory promises an eternal life to all who believe That is the gift of theHoly Spirit Yet the ldquospiritualrdquo (πνευmicroατικός) content of early Christian experience does not denyits simultaneously material character For the significance of the Resurrection and the Ascensioninto Heaven is precisely that they concern the physical body of Christ When he appears toThomas who doubts that he has returned Jesus invites his disciple to place his hands into thewounds received from the Crucifixion The point is to show not only that the man standing infront of Thomas is not an imposter but also that the risen Christ is no disembodied ghost Andwhen the apostles witness the Ascension what they see is the physical body of Jesus rising toheaven There is little suggestion of soul-body dualism in Acts The spirit (πνεῦmicroα) infuses andtransfigures the body it does not exist apart from it In this respect it is similar to the life-givingbreath to which the word πνεῦmicroα originally referred Dualism is the result of a Platonizinginterpretation of Christianity that comes later The bodily character of the Resurrection extends tothe promise of eternal life for believers as well The promise is not that their souls will exist apart

from their bodies but that their bodies will rise up from the grave like that of their Savior Giventhis early Christian materialism it is not surprising that commonality of material goods wouldserve as a fundamental expression of the new life of the believers

As we already know the project of the sixteenth-century Anabaptists was to restore theChurch to its original apostolic condition by undoing the corruption they believed had set inwhen it made its peace with worldly wealth and power under Constantine Given the nature ofthe Anabaptist project it would seem that making material things common as described in Actswould follow as a matter of course However there is a long tradition ndash one that began aroundthe middle of the sixteenth century ndash of denying that Anabaptism has anything to do withcommunism regarding it as an accusation brought against the Anabaptists by their enemies It isunderstandable that this should be so The Anabaptists were the victims of a ldquored scarerdquo thatgripped the ruling classes of Europe in the aftermath of the Peasant War and the Muumlnstercommune It is impossible to explain the horrendous tortures forced relocations andinnumerable executions Anabaptists faced on the basis of heretical belief alone Nothing of aremotely similar scale was visited upon other schismatics The fact that the Anabaptistschallenged prevailing property relations is what made them victims of near-genocide It was amatter of survival then to create some distance between themselves and the charge ofadvocating common ownership of goods that came from Luther Zwingli and those whoextracted the confession from Thomas Muumlntzer that he held to the principle of Omnia communiasunt Recent scholarship however has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that having thingsin common was indeed a basic and widespread principle of Anabaptism at its origin just as it hasdemonstrated the influence veterans of the Peasant War had among the early Anabaptists

The dominant form of communist practice in early Anabaptism was appropriatelymodeled on the description of redistribution in Acts In Switzerland where the movementoriginated converts were often asked or required to make contributions to a ldquocommon purserdquoafter receiving adult baptism Some especially pious initiates went so far as to sell their land andhouses for that purpose in accordance with the biblical precedent When necessary officialsdistributed the contents of the purse to members of the community who were in need

Both proponents and enemies of Anabaptist communism often confused the redistributionof wealth with joint or communal property However except for the taking of meals in commonthere is no indication in Acts that redistribution collectivized ownership of wealth in this fashionbut only that it transferred wealth from the better-off members of the community to the worse-off Nevertheless some Anabaptists took joint or communal property as a paradigm for newproperty relations For example the visionary writing of the Nuremberg printer Hans Hergotwho was executed for rebellion in 1527 includes the following passage

And everything that grows on the land belongs to the church and the people who livethere Everything is bestowed for common use so that the people will eat from one potdrink from one vesselhellip And all things will be used in common so that no one is betteroff than another

The ldquowar communismrdquo of the city of Muumlnster involved an ad hoc form of communal propertythrough the edict that the doors to all homes be left open and the owners take in anyone whowished to reside with them But the most significant successful and long-lasting attempt toimplement communal property was that of the Hutterites

The Hutterites took their name from the charismatic hat-maker and Anabaptist leaderJacob Hutter However at their origins they were influenced by the revolutionary bookbinderHans Hut Hut shared Thomas Muumlntzerrsquos sanguinary apocalyptic view of social change andadvocated community ownership of goods in accordance with his own understanding of ActsHe survived the battle of Frankenhausen in which the peasant rebels were finally defeated butwas tortured and executed a few years later In the aftermath and under the influence of JacobHutter the Hutterites adopted pacifism and a strategy of creating autonomous communities Inorder escape persecution thousands of the brethren emigrated from Switzerland and Germany to

the more tolerant Moravia where they created hundreds of Bruderhofs farms and vineyards inwhich land houses farm implements produce and even objects of personal use were ownedcollectively The center of Bruderhof life was a large communal house in which craft productionoccurred on the ground floor and couples lived in small apartments on the upper levels The menengaged in farm labor and craftwork while the women were limited to traditional domesticduties in spite of the fact that children were raised communally apart from their parents TheBruderhofs enjoyed great economic success for a number of reasons People worked hard andconsumed little resulting in a surplus that could be used to purchase additional land seed andtools The size of the communities and of their agricultural production also enabled them to sellcheaply and to pay for supplies at generous prices both of which made the communitieseconomic assets to the areas in which they were located The Hutterites also organized both farmlabor and craft production cooperatively including the education boys were given in thenecessary skills They were therefore practitioners of the second and third forms of communismwe have identified namely communal ownership and cooperative organization of work Whenthey were ultimately forced out of Moravia by the triumph of Catholic forces in the Thirty YearsWar the Hutterites migrated eastward many finally relocating to Canada and the United Stateswhere the Bruderhofs continue to exist to this day

Communism as a kind of mutual aid was the contribution of the other major form ofAnabaptism that of the Mennonites With great political intelligence and skill Menno Simonswas able to reformulate the meaning of Omnia communia sunt in such a way as to avoidthreatening the property interests of nobles and clerics He did this in his book A Humble andChristian Justification and Replication First he denied that Mennonites were advocates ofcommunal property

This accusation is false and without all truth We do not teach and practice communityof goods but we teach and testify the Word of the Lord that all true believers in Christare of one body (1 Corinthians 1213) partakers of one bread (1 Corinthians 1017)have one God and one Lord (Ephesians 4)

In his assertion that the believers are of one body and partakers of one bread Simons is affirmingwhat we have called the general principle of communism while denying that Mennonitesembrace it in the specific form of communal property But he goes further by denying thatMennonites advocate a contemporary version of the apostolic redistribution of wealth

For although we know that the apostolic church had this practice in the beginning ascan be seen in the Acts of the Apostles nevertheless we note from their epistles that itdisappeared in their time and was no longer practiced

Instead of communal property or centralized redistribution of wealth the Mennonites derivefrom the general principle of Christian communism an alternative practice

Seeing then that they are one as said it is Christian and reasonable that they also havedivine love among them and that one member cares for another for both the Scripturesand nature teach this They show mercy and love as much as is in them They do notsuffer a beggar among them They have pity on the wants of the saints They receive thewretched They take strangers into their houses They comfort the sad They lend to theneedy They clothe the naked They share their bread with the hungry They do not turntheir face from the poorhellip

In the subsequent history of Mennonism the practice Simons describes came to be calledldquomutual aidrdquo Note that it is different from charitable giving and this in two ways First thereferences to receiving the wretched taking in strangers sharing bread and so on indicate a farmore personal even intimate form of involvement than simple charitable donation Second

there is the suggestion of reciprocity or mutuality (ldquoone member cares for anotherrdquo) that tends todeny the difference in status between the charitable giver and the recipient of charity Thepractice Simons describes is similar to what some anthropologists have called ldquogeneralizedreciprocityrdquo in which my obligation to give to you when you are in need corresponds to yourobligation to give to me when I am in need In a sense this is a form of redistribution inaccordance with need but it is enacted directly between individual members of the communityrather than administered centrally through a common purse

In line with his political purpose Simons is careful to distinguish between mutual aid andthe expropriation of private property

This is the kind of brotherhood we teach and not that some should take over andpossess the land soil and properties of others as we are falsely maligned accused andlied about by many

In this way he detaches the Mennonite version of communism from any revolutionary intentionThat was the prerequisite for communal survival during the long counter-revolution thatfollowed the Peasant War Still Simons never abandons the general principle Omnia communiasunt nor does he even really reject the practice of the early Church

Since we do not find it a permanent practice with the apostles we have not taught orpracticed community of goods but we urge earnestly and zealously to practice liberalgiving love and mercy as the apostolic writings teach and testify abundantly Andeven if we had taught and practiced community of goods as we are falsely accused ofdoing we would still not be doing otherwise than the holy apostles full of the HolySpirit themselves did in the former church at Jerusalem in the beginning of the holyChristian Church although they stopped the practice as has been said

Like the Hutterites Mennonite communities prospered once they managed to survive the

bloody period of reaction In Holland the Mennonite population consisted largely in successfulmerchants along with a number of lawyers doctors and other professionals Most of thepeasant artisan and laborer families who had started as Mennonites in the sixteenth century hadlong since converted to the Reform Church which is one reason Spinoza faced the problem ofpolitical agency in the TPT Although the idea of mutual aid persisted among the DutchMennonites it took the form predominantly of organized international philanthropy in which thecommunity made contributions not only to Mennonites abroad but to other populations in needThere was no escaping the fact however that in this philanthropic form mutual aid becamehardly distinguishable from conventional charity

Jarig Jelles was born into the Dutch Mennonite community around a century afterSimmons wrote his book when this process of slippage was well underway But there is littledoubt that Jelles knew the Mennonite teaching on mutual aid and its origin in the generalprinciple of Christian communism Even if Jelles never read Erasmusrsquo Adages Spinozarsquosreference to the supposed communism of Thales was likely to resonate with him on the basis ofhis own religious tradition

We cannot be certain how much Spinoza knew in detail about the communist practices ofthe Anabaptists but it is probably not a coincidence that he recommends three of the four atvarious places in his writings In Part 4 of the Ethics ldquoOf Human Bondage or the Strength of theEmotionsrdquo he identifies the chief virtue of the intellect as ldquostrength of the mindrdquo (fortitudo)According to him it takes two forms one directed to the self and one directed to others He callsthe inwardly directed form ldquocouragerdquo defining it as ldquothe desire whereby every individualendeavors to preserve his own being according to the dictates of reason alonerdquo The outwardlydirected form is generositas which Shirley translates as ldquonobilityrdquo though ldquosolidarityrdquo is closerto what Spinoza is getting at He defines it as ldquothe desire whereby every individual according to

the dictates of reason alone endeavors to assist others and make friends of themrdquo When twopeople in contact with one another possess the virtue of generositas they will clearly exhibit itreciprocally in the form of mutual aid the fourth communist practice

In Part 4 of the Ethics Spinoza also formulates a version of the first communist practicethat of the redistribution of wealth in accordance with need

Again men are won over by generosity especially those who do not have thewherewithal to produce what is necessary to support life Yet it is far beyond the powerand resources of a private person to come to the assistance of everyone in need For thewealth of a private person is quite unequal to such a demand It is also a practicalimpossibility for one man to establish friendship with all Therefore the care of the poordevolves upon society as a whole and looks only to the common good

The fact that society as a whole has responsibility for meeting the needs of the poor makes thepractice Spinoza recommends in this passage a version of the centralized redistribution of wealthdescribed in the Acts of the Apostles and institutionalized in Anabaptist form as the ldquocommonpurserdquo More than that the fact that society as a whole must take on this responsibility ratherthan a church or other sub-community makes Spinoza an early advocate of what will becomethree centuries later the European welfare state In our own period as the welfare state is beingdismantled it is easy to see that what neoliberals object to concerning it is precisely its implicitcommunism ie its practice of distribution in accordance with need

Spinoza advocates a third communist practice in his unfinished final work the PoliticalTreatise The context is his discussion of a maximally democratic version of monarchy in whichthe entire citizen body is armed and the king forbidden from making any decision contrary to thewill of a massive council of ordinary citizens In such a state

The fields and the soil and if possible the houses as well should be public property thatis should belong to the sovereign by whom they should be let at an annual rent tocitizens whether townsmen or country-dwellers Apart from this all citizens should befree or exempt from any form of taxation in time of peace Of this rent part should beallocated to the defense works of the commonwealth part to the kings domestic needsFor in time of peace it is still necessary to fortify cities as for war and to have in a stateof readiness ships and other armaments

Ownership of land and buildings by the sovereign is a form of communal property first becausethe citizens of the commonwealth delegate to him or them the property they hold in commonand second because that delegation occurs with the understanding that the sovereign will use theproperty in service of the common good

Spinoza supplies an argument based on more than simple utility for the practice ofholding land and buildings in common

hellip in a state of Nature the one thing a man cannot appropriate to himself and make hisown is land and whatever is so fixed to the land that he cannot conceal it anywhere orcarry it away where he pleases Thus the land and whatever is fixed to it in the way wehave described is especially the public property of the commonwealth that is of allthose who by their united strength can claim it or of him to whom all have delegated thepower to claim it

To state the argument differently since rights are the same as powers no individual has a naturalright to appropriate privately the land or any of its fixed structures because none has the powernecessary to do so The only response an individual can make to incursions by a more powerfulperson or group of people is flight in which he must leave the land and its buildings behind It is

only by entering into a community in which the strength of each is combined for the purpose ofdefense that people can effectively possess fixed property but they do so as a members of thecommunity rather than as an separate individuals According to Spinozarsquos theory of rights onlythe community has the right to own the land and its structures because only the community hasthe required power

The communal ownership of land houses and other buildings is a version of the secondcommunist practice on our list of which Hutterite joint ownership is the most developedhistorical example When adopted by a polity rather than a small community though thepractice has an added advantage Under those circumstances communal possession of fixedproperty eliminates the need for taxes except in time of war What takes their place is ageneration of revenue pegged to wealth since the members of society who are able to rent themost expensive and largest amounts of communal property will obviously pay the most in rentIn this way the form of communal ownership of land and buildings that Spinoza recommendsalso acts as a mechanism for the redistribution of wealth

The only communist practice of the Anabaptists that does not find an equivalent inSpinozarsquos writings is that of the cooperative organization of work The absence is related toSpinozarsquos inability to resolve the problem of political agency in the TPT An attempt to mobilizethe multitude on behalf of democratic social change would need to address the organization ofwork in such a way as to alleviate the burden of toil Reducing the number of hours spent inonerous labor is the only way to provide the multitude with the free time necessary to participatein institutionalized democratic politics Along with the redistribution of wealth and thedevelopment of communal property the cooperative reorganization of work would need to beincorporated as a plank in the latent political program that makes its first democratic appearancein the TPT and is extended in a communist direction in the passages from the Ethics and thePolitical Treatise that we have just examined But that would constitute an explicit anddangerous appeal to the multitude as the agent of political and social transformation an appealthat Spinoza consistently rejects It would involve nothing less than the revival of therevolutionary energies of the Peasant War on a new seventeenth-century foundation

In spite of his radicalism Spinoza doubted that revolution was capable of reconstructingsociety and the state in the way revolutionaries wanted In Chapter 18 of the TPT he takes aposition that is at least on the surface opposed to revolution or any attempt to change the formof the state fundamentally The context is a discussion of the transition from the early Hebrewcommonwealth in which the people held sovereignty to the rule of kings Spinoza tells us thatthe first period saw only a single civil war and concluded with a compassion for the vanquishedthat resulted in lasting peace By contrast the period of kings was marred by multiple warswaged only for the glory of the rulers and involved the massacre of hundreds of thousandsDuring the first period few prophets arose to rebuke the Jews while a great many emergedduring the time of the monarchies From this example Spinoza reasons that it is fatal for peopleaccustomed to popular sovereignty and governed by settled laws to adopt a new monarchicalform of government On the one hand they will be unable to tolerate the arbitrary exercise ofpower by a single individual while on the other the new monarch will be compelled to abolishthe existing laws because they did not originate by his own authority But it is just as dangerousaccording to Spinoza for the subjects of a monarch to attempt his replacement with popular ruleThis is because a popular revolution must advance to the point where it annihilates the king thekingrsquos family and the friends of the king in order to prevent the restoration of royal power But inthe process the revolutionary authority must assume a power even more draconian then thatpreviously exercised by the king In addition having committed regicide the new popularauthority faces the danger that it will fall victim to its own precedent For this reason as well andin the interest of survival it must wield power more repressively than the deposed sovereignSpinoza illustrates his point with reference to the English revolution which eliminated themonarch Charles I only to replace him with the Lord Protector Cromwell who was monarch inall but name and more repressive than Charles

Spinozarsquos point seems unassailable especially since the pattern he describes in the caseof the English Revolution repeated itself over the course of the next three centuries in the French

and Russian Revolutions It is at least arguable that Napoleon if not Robespierre was a newLouis XVI and Stalin a new Tsar even if this understates the more fundamental social changesthat resulted form the two revolutions Still Spinoza does not absolutely proscribe therevolutionary overthrow of a tyrannical government but says instead that there is a great dangerin making the attempt Besides his analysis of the conditions necessary for retaining sovereigntydoes not leave the decision about whether to engage in revolution up to militants He argues thatno state can survive that creates mass indignation in its people and this is precisely theunavoidable result of tyrannical government Spinozarsquos real purpose in Chapter 18 is to opposethe Orangist-Calvinist project of replacing the Dutch Republic with a monarchy ldquoAs for theEstates of Hollandrdquo he writes ldquoas far as we know they never had kings but counts to whom theright of sovereignty was never transferredrdquo His point is that the Dutch War of Independenceagainst Spain was justified because it restored the sovereignty of the people against the attemptby the Spanish ldquocountrdquo (King Philip II) to abolish it However any attempt to replace theRepublic with a monarchy would change the form of the state disastrously by divesting thepeople of their former rights

When Spinoza wrote his treatise the only revolutionary forces that existed were on theRight The danger he warns about in Chapter 18 of the TPT did indeed come to pass only oneyear after his letter to Jelles In 1672 a Calvinist-Orangist mob hacked Johan De Witt and hisbrother Cornelius to death at a time when Holland was invaded by the French army Streetorators stirred up the mob by claiming that the invasion was the result of the brothersrsquo treason Inthe aftermath of the murders William III prince of Orange was elevated to the position ofstadtholder of Holland Although William went on to become King of England he stopped shortof claiming a Dutch throne However in actuality he substituted his own power for much of thatwhich had belonged to the Estates General while the Reformed Church gained considerableinfluence in Dutch government According to a story made famous by Spinozarsquos earliestbiographer Johannes Colerus when the De Witt brothers were murdered Spinozarsquos landlordthwarted his attempt to go the site of the assassinations where the bodies of the brothers werestill on gruesome display in order to plant a sign reading Ultimi Barbarorum (the ultimatebarbarians) In this way the landlord undoubtedly saved the philosopherrsquos life It was the onlytime we know of when the mature Spinoza gave in to his passive affects in a significant way

There is a passage in Chapter 18 of the TPT that uncannily anticipates the murders

Tyranny is most violent where individual beliefs which are unalienable rights areregarded as criminal Indeed in such circumstances the anger of the common people[plebis] is usually the greatest tyrant of allhellip the vilest hypocrites urged on by that samefury which they call zeal for Gods law have everywhere persecuted men whoseblameless character and distinguished qualities have excited the hostility of the commonpeople [plebi] publicly denouncing their beliefs and inflaming the savage multitudersquos[multitudinem] anger against them

Spinoza was the first political philosopher who grappled with the problem of a mass-

based politics of the Right The problem would occur again with the fascist movements of the1920s and 1930s and with the return of the rightwing religious fundamentalisms of our own dayndash Jewish Christian Muslim and Hindu It is not surprising that he failed to solve the problemdefinitively since it continues to remain unsolved The remarkable thing about Spinoza thoughis not that he was skeptical about the liberatory possibilities of revolution by the masses but thathe defended the idea of a popular democracy nonetheless And this he continued to do even inthe aftermath of the De Witt murders In his work on the Political Treatise in the final year of hislife Spinoza developed a powerful critique of the elitist claim that the multitude are incapable ofgoverning

Yet perhaps our [democratic] suggestions will be received with ridicule by those whorestrict to the common people the faults that are inherent in all mankind saying There

is no moderation in the mob they terrorize unless they are frightened and Thecommon people is either a humble servant or an arrogant master there is no truth orjudgment in itrdquo and the like But all men share in one and the same nature it is powerand culture that mislead us with the result that when two men do the same thing weoften say that it is permissible for the one to do it and not the other not because of anydifference in the thing done but in the doer hellipThen again There is no moderation inthe mob they terrorize unless they are frightened For freedom and slavery do not gowell together Finally that there is no truth or judgment in the common people is notsurprising since the important affairs of state are conducted without their knowledgeand from the little that cannot be concealed they can only make conjecturehellip Howeveras we have said all men have the same nature ndash all grow haughty with rule terrorizeunless they are frightened ndash and everywhere truth becomes a casualty through hostilityor servility especially when despotic power is in the hands of one or a few who in trialspay attention not to justice or truth but to the extent of a persons wealth

Surprisingly Spinoza develops this democratic argument while discussing the institutions

appropriate to a monarchy But the key point he makes in the discussion is that a condition ofeffective monarchical rule is expansion of the democratic element within the state in the form ofa sizeable legislative council whose members are drawn from the general population of citizensover the age of fifty On Spinozarsquos view the mistake those who oppose democracy make isassuming that the faults exhibited by the common people ndash such as poor judgment arroganceand hostility ndash belong only to them while they are in fact typical of human beings Actually it iselitist politics that magnifies these all-too-human faults by restricting political power to a limitednumber of people while democratic politics minimizes them through the principle of majorityrule among numerous decision-makers The reason as we already know is that passions pullpeople in different directions making it nearly impossible for the members of a large council toagree on a common position unless they make decisions based not on passion but an idea of thecommon good On Spinozarsquos view it is when government is in the hands of a single person oronly a few people that the dangers the critics of democracy attribute to the common people are infact the greatest

Spinoza also argues against the claim that the common people are not qualified to makepolitical decisions because they lack the necessary education or degree of intellect There is noone he says who has been engaged in an occupation until the age of fifty who lacksunderstanding of his sphere of work ldquoevery man is reasonably competent and sagacious inmatters in which he has been long and attentively engagedrdquo So each is qualified at least to giveadvice in the kingrsquos council concerning his own business especially if given the time necessaryto reflect on the matter under discussion

Most of all the plebs are the group best suited to serving on the council because theirinterest is that of society as a whole ldquoHence it follows that counselors must necessarily beappointed whose private fortune and advantage depend on the general welfare and the peace ofallrdquo For example Spinoza emphasizes the idea that the common people have the highest stake inavoiding war or concluding an existing war with a settlement that brings lasting peace Thereason is they are ones who bear the heaviest burdens of war Unlike the wealthy well-bornmembers of society it is the common person whose occupation is most likely to be interrupted itis his taxes that are raised to onerous levels and it is his son who dies Thus the common interestof society in peace is best served not by a wealthy or educated elite but rather by those whohave the most to lose from war

At the end of the long paragraph defending popular power quoted above Spinozaconnects the question of who holds power within the state to that of who owns property Truthand justice he says are casualties in states where power is held by one person or a handful ofpeople who conduct courtroom trials that favor the rich The implication is that elitist politicalpower and ownership of wealth are intrinsically connected One of the reasons Spinozarecommends public ownership of land and buildings in a monarchy is to prevent the rise of aclass of wealthy landowners with interests different than those of the rest of society Under the

conditions of common ownership ldquothe greatest part of the council will generally have one andthe same attitude of mind towards their common interests and peaceful activitieshelliprdquo And yethaving gone this far he has trouble imagining a state where fixed property is owned collectivelyin which the actually existing multitude holds power The peasants artisans and urban poor whoconstitute the common people of the United Provinces drop out of the picture in the democratic-communist monarchy he describes and nearly everyone makes his living by selling merchandiseor lending money to countrymen ldquoall will have to make a living by engaging in trade or bylending money to their fellow citizensrdquo He seems to assume that the collectivization of land andfixed property would eliminate the occupations of peasant and artisan leaving trade and loaningat interest the only remaining possibilities of work But that of course is not true The fact thatpeople would have to rent farm land would not prevent them from farming any more than theneed to rent workshops in the cities and towns would prevent artisans from plying their tradesBut Spinoza finds the idea of a commonwealth based on commercial enterprise politicallyappealing This is because he regards commercial occupations as contributing to harmony andpeace since he claims they establish connections between people that further the interests of allwhile those who engage in them prosper only in peacetime Both of these assumptions are asquestionable as the expectation that non-commercial occupations will die out After all even inSpinozarsquos day colonialism and the struggle for colonies between imperialist states led to warsbetween the great powers including the United Provinces not to mention the military and otherforms of violence involved in subjugating the colonies The East India Company was not exactlya force for peace What seems to be at work here instead is a failure of social imaginationthough one we may find understandable given the fact that the capitalist economy was still at anearly stage in its development However this may be there is no denying the fact that despite hispowerful arguments in favor of democratic rule and communal property it is still a bourgeoissociety and state that Spinoza envisions

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of what we should not hesitate to call Spinozarsquoscommunism is the critique of private ownership he develops in the Ethics based on his theory ofaffects For him there is a paradox involved in social and political life It stems from the fact thaton the one hand people can survive and develop their capacities only by joining with oneanother in societies and states But on the other hand the necessity of combining with oneanother does not prevent them from seeking their own advantage above that of their fellowsbeing quarrelsome or hateful and erecting obstacles to each otherrsquos happiness Spinoza identifiesthe reason for these deep-rooted problems of social coexistence in Part IV Proposition 35 of theEthics ldquoInsofar as men are assailed by emotions that are passive they can be contrary to oneanotherrdquo Emotions are states of the body characterized by a transition from a lower degree of thepower to exist and act (conatus) to a higher one or conversely from a higher degree to a lowerone The first transition is the affect of joy while the second is that of sadness Passive emotionsare caused by an object external to the body or more precisely external to its essential natureSpinoza conceives of that nature as a specific proportion of motion-and-rest that the parts of thebody exhibit in relation to one another While joy is an increase in our capacity to preserve theproportion of motion-and-rest essential to our body (ie to exist and act as we do) sadness is adecrease in that capacity The political problem created by the passive emotions is that evenwhen they are joyful they are not under the control of the person who experiences themMoreover different people are affected by the same external object in different ways because theparts of their bodies and their proportionate relations of motion-and rest-differ The same objectmay elicit anger in one person and pity in another or love in one and hatred in another and soon And because people differ in their emotional reactions to the same things they also differ inthe judgments they frame on the basis of these reactions What one person praises anotherperson blames what one regards as fearless another believes to be timid etc Finally sincepeople act upon their judgments seeking to foster what they judge to be good and destroy whatthey judge to be bad their differing judgments can result in actions that are in conflict with oneanother In short ldquoinsofar as they are assailed by passive emotions [people] can be contrary toone anotherrdquo

In Proposition 34 Spinoza gives an example of the contrariety caused by the passiveaffects Suppose Peter has sole possession of something Paul loves Deprivation of the loved

object causes sadness in Paul with the idea of Peter as its cause In accordance with Spinozarsquosdefinition of hatred Paul will hate Peter and therefore seek to injure or destroy him in order toremove the cause of his Paulrsquos sadness Spinoza says that this example may seem wrong becausePaul and Peter appear to be contrary to one another because of something they share ndash ie theirlove for the thing Peter possesses But that is not the case Paul has an image of himself aslacking the loved object while Peter has an image of himself as possessing the loved object Sothey in fact differ from one another by virtue of the different images they have rather than bypossessing something in common It is clear from the example that the root of this contrariety ndashie this enmity ndash between Paul and Peter is the fact that the object can be possessed by only oneof them so that what one has the other must lack The difficulty with private property is that it isexclusive to the one who possesses it which means that what I experience as possession othersexperience as deprivation It may seem that there is no problem if other people are indifferent tothe thing I possess However in accordance with Spinozarsquos theory of the imitation of affects themere fact that I love the thing I own other things being equal will cause you to love it as wellMy exclusive possession of the thing will therefore cause sadness in you that takes the form ofhatred or more precisely the kind of hatred called envy which involves pain at the good fortuneof another ldquohuman nature is in general so constituted that men pity the unfortunate and envy thefortunate in the latter case with a hatred proportionate to their love of what they think anotherpossessesrdquo

Common Possession Friendship and Philosophy

In the Ethics Spinoza does not follow his analysis of the antagonisms of private property

by considering the collective possession of material goods (although he does advocateredistribution of wealth to the poor in Part 4 as we have seen) But the theme of commonpossession figures large in the book anyway in his treatment of the intellectual love of God Inorder to understand the connection between common possession and amor Dei intellectualis itwill be necessary to engage in a detailed analysis of Spinozarsquos metaphysics We will begin thattask in earnest in the next chapter At this point we will simply introduce the theme byexamining the relationship between friendship and common possession in the letter to Jelles andsome related writings

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo unlike the similar passages fromActs has its provenance among philosophers Spinoza mistakenly attributes it to Thales but itoccurs in Platorsquos Phaedrus and Laws and is present though not in so many words in thediscussion in the Republic of common ownership of property by the guardian class Thetradition cited by Erasmus that traces the proverb back to Pythagoras is plausible when weconsider the influence the Pythagorean community in Sicily had on Plato in the aftermath ofSocratesrsquo death Erasmus sees the supposed use of a common fund by the Pythagoreans as ananticipation of the similar practice in Acts But Spinozarsquos approach is different What interestshim in the letter is common ownership not as a religious practice but as a matter of thephilosopherrsquos relation to the world Remember the deductive consequences of the proverb sinceall things are in common among friends everything belongs to the wise because the wise arefriends of the gods and all things belong to the gods But what does it mean to say that the wiseare friends of the gods

Although Spinoza uses the word ldquofriendshiprdquo often in his writings he never supplies aformal definition However we can reconstruct the wordrsquos meaning from the contexts in whichhe uses it So for example Proposition 35 of Part III of the Ethics reads

If anyone thinks that there is between the object of his love and another person the sameor a more intimate bond of friendship than there was between them when he alone usedto possess the object loved he will be affected with hatred toward the object loved andwill envy his rival

According to the proposition friendship is an intimate bond between a person and the

object he loves I hate an object of love that I alone once possessed when it wounds my vanity byloving someone else more than me So the object of love must be capable of loving whichmeans that the bond of friendship is a relation of reciprocal love between persons Nowaccording to Spinoza I love something when I have the idea of that thing as the cause of myexperience of joy Joy is an increase in conatus which Spinoza defines as the tendency to persistin being or equivalently the ability to exist and act So friendship is a relation in which Iidentify the other person as the cause of an increase in my conatus and the other personidentifies me as the cause of a similar increase in his or hers Two things each of which causesan increase in the ability to exist and act of the other are said by Spinoza to be in harmony Sincetwo entities in harmony have more combined power than either does singly it is to the advantageof each to be in harmony with the other There is even greater advantage in entering intoharmonious connection with a third individual and the greatest advantage in combining with asmany individuals as possible This is a universal metaphysical principle For example it pertainsjust as much to chemical combination or herding among animals as it does to social relationsbetween people In the case of human relationships it is the fundamental basis of politics orrather one of its two bases the other one being the tendency human beings have to conflict withone another When the state is functioning well it involves not a random collection ofindividuals and certainly not the war of each against all but a group whose members are boundto one another by friendship the human form of harmony Thus for Spinoza friendship is apolitical virtue as it was for Plato and Aristotle

The opposite of friendship is enmity That person is my enemy whom I regard as thecause of my sadness or pain which is the same as saying the cause of a decrease in my abilityto exist and act Like friendship enmity is a reciprocal relationship If I identify you as the causeof my sadness I will seek to injure or eliminate you But that means I will be identified in yourmind as the cause of your sadness Enmity is a relation of reciprocal hatred just as friendship is arelation of reciprocal love Just as there is harmony between friends there is discord betweenenemies The fundamental task of a rational politics is easy to state it is to extend and intensifyfriendship and to reduce and mollify enmity

We have already seen that Spinoza identifies solidarity (generositas) as one of the twoforms of strength of mind (fortitudo) which is the virtue that belongs to the exercise of theintellect Solidarity is the desire to assist others and foster friendship on the basis of reason aloneThe friendship fostered by solidarity is a bond of active love The love of friends for one anotheris active when each person who loves is the adequate cause of his or her love To say that theperson is the adequate cause means that the cause of love is internal to the person who feels it inother words that the love is self-generated Active love differs from passive love in that thecause of passive love is at least partially something that exists outside the person who has theemotion The problem with passive love is that it need not be constant If the bodily dispositionof the person changes in a particular way then the object of erstwhile love will have a differentemotional effect Passive love can change into boredom or indifference or even hatred This isnot possible in the case of active love because it is self-generated Since love involves theexperience of joy no one actively abandons it

There seems to be something odd about the idea of a love between persons that isinternally generated by each of the partners in the relationship Is it not the case that part of theessence of love is the fact that the object of my love is the cause of my love Without denyingthis Spinoza identifies two forms of love that are self-generated in the Ethics One is myintellectual love of God It is indeed true that God is the cause of my love but only insofar as myintellect is part of the infinite intellect of God Thus the object that causes my love - ie God - isinternal to my mind and conversely my mind is internal to it Such reciprocal internality ndash hardas it is to visualize ndash is what Spinoza means by immanence God he tells us is the immanentcause of everything that exists Nothing can exist apart from God while God expresses himselfin all of the things that exist My love of God and Gods love of himself are one and the samebecause Godrsquos intellect is immanent in mine The second form of self-generated love is the

friendship that exists between me and others who love God through the exercise of the intellectThe reason is that the joy I feel in loving God is by the imitation of affects augmented by thejoy you feel in loving God But your love as well as mine is joy caused by the same immanentbeing Another way of saying this is that your intellect and mine are parts (ie finiteexpressions) of the infinite intellect of God Thus the relationship between friends who are boundtogether by the common exercise of the intellect and the love of God that flows from it is basedon an internal bond an internal object and cause of love In this kind of love you and I as itwere discover one another internally You are inside of me and I am inside of you Thus whenyou augment my love and I augment yours it is Gods power as the intellect immanent in us boththat causes the augmentation even though we remain finite individual beings In this state ofaffairs which is admittedly difficult to grasp we can see the rational meaning of the command tolove God by loving the neighbor In intellectual love God not insofar as he is infinite butinsofar as he expresses himself in my finite intellect loves God as he expresses himself in yourfinite intellect

For Spinoza the exercise of the intellect is very different than our ordinary experience ofthe world In the course of ordinary experience we encounter objects in a way that appearshaphazard disordered and incomplete This is so first of all because our encounters are part ofan infinitely complex chain of natural causes and effects of which we know only very limitedparts In addition our experience of objects has as much to do with the condition our bodies arein when we encounter them as it does with the nature of the objects themselves By contrast inexercising the intellect we arrange our ideas in an intelligible pattern that is internal to the mindand entirely different than the images we accumulate through sensory experience The ideas arean expression of our power while the images result from our hapless deliverance to chanceEmotions caused by objects we encounter in the course of ordinary experience are externallydetermined and therefore passive while emotions caused by acts of intellectual comprehensionare internally generated and therefore active That is why love as an active emotion has its originin the exercise of the intellect and the most satisfying form of friendship is based on thereciprocal experience of such love In a letter to Willem van Blyenberg Spinoza provides themost complete description of this kind of friendship to be found in his writings

For my part of all things that are not under my control what I most value is to enterinto a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth For I believe that such a lovingrelationship affords us a serenity surpassing any other boon in the whole wide worldThe love that such men bear to one another grounded as it is in the love that each hasfor knowledge of truth is as unshakable as is the acceptance of truth once it has beenperceived It is moreover the highest source of happiness to be found in things notunder our command for truth more than anything else has the power to effect a closeunion between different sentiments and dispositions

Spinoza says that a friendship based on the love of truth is not under our control But how

can that be if intellectual friendship involves a form of love internally generated by each friendIt would seem that the love we generate through the exercise of the intellect is fully under ourcontrol Spinoza however is referring to the fact that we are able to become friends only withpeople we actually meet which is something that occurs in the course of ordinary haphazarddisordered experience To a large extent our friendships are a matter of chance By way ofillustrating this point it turned out that Spinoza decided his initial judgment of Blyenberg wasmistaken He broke off their correspondence when he realized that the infinite chain of causesand effects had brought his way not a lover of truth but a dogmatic worshipper of the ldquopaperand inkrdquo of the Bible

People create commonwealths because the power of each to exist and act is increased byall others who transfer their rights to the sovereign For reasons we have already considered thepolitical bond is one of friendship ldquoIt is of the first importance to men to establish closerelationships and to bind themselves together with such ties as may most effectively unite theminto one body and as an absolute rule to act in such a way as serves to strengthen friendshiprdquo If

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

regarded on its own Throughout the book but especially in the Preface we find striking turns ofphrase from a writer not known for his literary flourishes ldquothe relics of manrsquos ancient bondagerdquo fighting for ldquoservitude as though for their salvationrdquo ldquoas if the whole of nature were as insaneas theyrdquo These and other characteristics that make the treatise unique stem from the fact thatSpinoza as author plays two quite different and seemingly incompatible roles that of thephilosopher who interrogates a complex subject-matter in order to discover and articulate truthand that of the militant who intervenes in a political situation with the intention of altering it in afundamental way The subject-matter of Spinozarsquos philosophical interrogation is the nature ofreligion the state and the relation between the two The political situation that is the object ofhis intervention is the struggle of conservative Calvinists to undermine and ultimately overthrowthe Dutch Republic and the reciprocal struggle of the Republic to persevere in its existence

The story of that struggle is complex in particular because it involves two additionalldquopartiesrdquo monarchists who were grouped around the noble House of Orange and liberalCalvinists In this epic conflict the Orangists were allied with the conservative Calvinists andthe liberal Calvinists with the republicans The split in Dutch Calvinism between liberal andconservative wings occurred in the early years of the seventeenth century with the writings andlectures of Jacobus Arminius and the remonstrance sent by his supporters to the States ofHolland Arminius and the ldquoRemonstrantsrdquo challenged the traditional Calvinist doctrine ofpredestination arguing instead for freedom of the will while also making a plea for religioustolerance The Counter-Remonstrants led by Franciscus Gomarius opposed them in both ofthese innovations The split within the Reform Church appeared to have been settled when theSynod of Dordrecht condemned the Remonstrants in 1618 and expelled Remonstrant ministersfrom their churches but the Remonstrants survived the purge and continued to develop theirinfluence not least because of their success in proselytizing prominent republicans Many joinedthe Collegiants Although the republicans were dominant in the political sphere the Counter-Remonstrants controlled the largest most powerful Church organization ndash the official ReformChurch including its various synods ndash and had the religious allegiance of the great majority ofthe Dutch population including nearly all of the common people Spinoza recognized this forwhat it was a case of divided sovereignty that could not last In the TPT he focuses his critiqueon the Counter-Remonstrants without ever naming them directly rather than the Orangists whowere the main political threat to the Republic He probably thought with some justification thatthe Orangists would not have been a serious problem had they not been backed by the ReformChurch In the Preface to his book he lays out his project with admirable clarity

For this purpose my most urgent task has been to indicate the main false assumptionsthat prevail regarding religion ndash that is the relics of manrsquos ancient bondage ndash and thenagain the false assumptions regarding the right of civil authorities There are many whowith an impudence quite shameless seek to usurp much of this right and under theguise of religion to alienate from the government the loyalty of the masses still proneto heathenish superstition so that slavery may return once more

Spinoza was not exaggerating There was a great deal at stake here In 1619 the Landrsquos

Advocate of Holland Johan van Oldenbarnevelt ndash a Remonstrant ndash was executed by the StatesGeneral under the influence of the Counter-Remonstrant stadtholder Maurice of Nassau Princeof Orange The stadtholder was head of state and commander of the armed forces an office thatwas hereditary in all but name and reserved for the House of Orange Under Oldenbarnevelt theposition of Landrsquos Advocate was essentially that of prime minister like the position of GrandPensionary under Johan De Witt A coup drsquoeacutetat in 1650 by Mauricersquos nephew and thenstadtholder William II failed when William died the same year The result was theldquostadholderless republicrdquo presided over by the Remonstrant Johan De Witt which lasted untilhis murder by a mob of Counter-Remonstrants and Orangists in the ldquoyear of disasterrdquo 1672 Thestadtholderless Republic was dominated by the regents leaders of Dutch cities who werenormally appointed by their predecessors and who came from the stratum of merchants bankersand traders on the stock exchange who made enormous fortunes during the Dutch ldquoGolden Agerdquo

Many were investors in the Dutch East India Company and many made their fortunes byimporting goods from the colonies In general the regents were from the wealthiest families inthe Netherlands Thus from 1650 to 1672 state power in the United Provinces including thenational legislature the States General was in the hands of the haute bourgeoisie The House ofOrange represented the class of rural aristocratic landowners but it also had a mass base ofsupport in the common people There are two reasons for this First the peasants artisans wage-workers and small retail merchants who comprised the common people were skeptical that theirinterests were well-served by the wealthy regents The second reason is that except in theCatholic parts of the Netherlands the common people were overwhelmingly Counter-Remonstrants The alliance of the House of Orange with the Reform Church ensured it a massbase that was indispensable for its aspirations to monarchical rule

By family background and friendships that appear to have included Johan De Witt andhis brother Cornelius as well as by philosophical principle Spinoza was inclined to support theRepublic against the alliance of Orangists and Counter-Remonstrants But he also understoodthat the weakness of the Republic lay in the fact that the regents who dominated it did not have amass base of support As nouveau riche and unlike the nobility they had no customaryobligations to the lower classes and little contact with them even as employers since wholesalemerchants bankers and stock traders had need for only a handful of employees As their wealthgrew to sometimes fabulous proportions the regents led lives that were increasingly isolatedfrom the rest of society The growing number of children from wealthy bourgeois families whoreceived a university education and the international connections that came from engaging intrade and finance gave the regents and their social milieu a cosmopolitan orientation They wereeasy targets for Dutch nationalism which was a powerful influence among the common peopleand championed by the House of Orange which had played a leading role in the war of nationalliberation from Spain But most of all the allegiance of the common people to the conservativeCalvinism of the Reform Church was an acute problem for the regents and their Republic ForCounter-Remonstrant Calvinism was without any question the most powerful ideological forcein the United Provinces of the seventeenth century The extensive network of parish churchesprovided the only education the common people received which was of course strictly religiousin character Its ministers knew the families in their congregations and were able to offer themadvice and spiritual support as well as charity in difficult times And every Sunday they had acaptive audience for preaching that easily shaded into political speech-making advocating thecensorship of this or that book condemning free-thinking intellectuals (Spinoza was certainlyamong them) or raking the regents over the coals Johan de Witt was the topic of more than afew fiery sermons

The antagonism between the Reform Church and the Republic was exceedinglydangerous because the Church was an ideological force with great influence on popular thinkingThe disastrous consequences of the split between Church and State had an important lesson toteach namely that the modern state needed to control the dominant ideological apparatus insociety in order to secure its rule Spinoza was the first philosopher to make this point And hewas also the first to show that the state could accomplish that task while granting its citizensfreedom of thought and expression In that respect it was Spinoza not Locke who was the mostimportant philosophical forerunner of the modern liberal republic precisely because headdressed the problem that Locke avoided with his advocacy of the ldquoseparation of church andstaterdquo As we will see Spinoza argued for state control of public religion with full freedom ofprivate worship But while the republic Spinoza wanted to see in the United Provinces wasliberal in the sense that it would protect individual freedom of thought and expression it wentwell beyond the liberal tradition by making the common people sovereign It would have beendemocratic ndash had it actually existed ndash in a far more radical sense than any of the so-calledldquoliberal democraciesrdquo that have taken root in the world since Spinoza wrote the TractatusTheologico-Politicus

In the TPT then Spinoza addresses himself to the most important political problem ofthe day namely how to reconcile religion and the Dutch Republic He does this by establishing adistinction between true religion and superstition It would make sense to call superstition a kindof disease of the mind were it not so much a part of the ordinary human condition Spinoza

likens it to hallucination and frenzy It is a mental state that involves a false even absurdconception of the world as a response to fears and hopes Spinoza is a strict determinist Thecourse of events is a chain of causes and effects in which each effect is the necessaryconsequence of the cause or confluence of causes that immediately precedes it But the chain ofcauses and effects is much too complex for the human mind to comprehend at least in any detailFear and hope stem from our ignorance concerning the future and from our desire to controlevents that are beyond our capacity to influence through realistic action ie through effectiveintervention in real causal sequences Superstition involves a false anthropomorphic conceptionof the divine The superstitious person regards God or the gods as possessing the same emotionsas human beings In order to influence the outcome of events it is necessary to placate divineanger or flatter the deity or make sacrifices to it Out of this spurious need the professions ofsoothsayer priest and minister arise people who make their living by interpreting the divineemotions responsible for difficult circumstances prescribing remedial essentially magicalactions and interceding with God or the gods on behalf of those who pay for their services Whatmakes superstition so difficult to expunge is the fact that it originates not only from ignorancebut from human misery In particular that is the reason the common people are so wedded tosuperstition or so says Spinoza They are ldquoeverywhere at the same level of miseryrdquo

Spinoza develops a conception of true religion in contrast with superstition asessentially moral in character That is the purpose of the detailed Biblical exegesis that comprisesthree-quarters of the TPT In the hands of the professional caste of church officials the Bible isthe most potent instrument of superstition They say it contains the answer to every questionworth asking even the questions philosophers and scientists raise It is supposed to harborsecrets and mysteries that only specialists can decipher It becomes an object of idolatry in thatpeople come to ldquoworship paper and ink rather than the word of Godrdquo But that word is writtenfirst of all in the human heart a Socinian doctrine Spinoza fully endorses Unlike the ldquolettersrdquo ofthe Bible the inwardly revealed word is not subject to the distortions or corruptions of textualtransmission over the course of centuries

There is a core of religious truth in the Bible that accords with the inner light but it hasnothing to do with superstition More broadly it must be distinguished from the beliefs that wereprevalent at the times its various books were written These include the beliefs of the prophets aswell as those of the common people who received their message The prophets were notaccomplished in philosophy or science and it would be a mistake to look for these disciplinesbetween the covers of the Bible Spinoza lists three characteristics that distinguished the prophetsfrom other people and none of them involve intellectual excellence a vivid and activeimagination the experience of a sign and a heart set on what is just and good Of these the lastis the most important The story of the creation of Adam and Eve and the events that transpire inthe Garden of Eden is a parable rather than a record of historical fact Joshua could not havestopped the sun in its motion through the sky because the sun does not revolve around the earthThe prophets disagreed with one another so that there is no possibility of a logically consistentreading of the Bible But none of this really matters In an audacious move Spinoza argues thatwe must neither add nor subtract anything from the Bible remaining content what it clearlyconveys We must read it ldquoliterallyrdquo except when there is linguistic evidence of the intentionaluse of metaphor In one sense then Spinoza is a ldquofundamentalistrdquo But he also argues that we arefree to believe or refuse to believe much of what the Bible says because it is ancillary to itsreligious message

The only claim of religion that can be justified on the basis of a proper reading ofScripture is that human beings ought to obey God by treating one another with justice and love(caritas) Although often rendered into English as ldquocharityrdquo caritas includes much more thangiving to those in need The Latin is a translation of the Koine Greek word agape which refersexpansively to the love of God for the human person the love of the person for God and thelove of people for one another as an extension of their love for God that is to say their desire tolove what God loves For Spinoza the Bible is an appeal to the beliefs and imagination of thecommon people by the prophets and apostles the purpose of which is to convey a moral messageso simple that ldquoeven the most sluggish mindrdquo can understand it In dramatic narrative languageand vivid imagery the authors of the Bible try to convince people to obey God by treating other

people with justice and love The purpose of their writing is to elicit obedience not articulatemetaphysical truth From the Bible we learn nothing about what God is or what his relation is tohuman beings or the universe as a whole The Bible conveys a moral truth in the sense that itcommands people to live in the way that is best for human beings In terms of the theory ofspeech acts John Austin developed in the twentieth-century the Biblersquos use of language isperformative rather than constative It is meant to do something rather than to state somethingalthough it implies the assertion that the best life is one in which we treat other people with loveand justice But it presents no arguments in support of that assertion other than that we must livein the way that God commands By contrast the discovery of metaphysical truth and itsexpression in deductive propositional form is the goal of philosophers According to Spinozathen there can be no conflict between philosophy and religion properly understood becausethey are dedicated to entirely different ends ldquobetween faith and theology on the one side andphilosophy on the other there is no relation and no affinityhelliprdquo

The same cannot be said of religion and the state There is indeed a relation between thetwo though it is in danger of degenerating into conflict because they occupy the same terrainboth demand obedience Of course Spinoza has in mind the fraught relationship between theReform Church and the Dutch Republic In an alliance with the House of Orange the Calvinistconsistories sought to alter the character of the state by abolishing the Republic and replacing itwith a monarchy that would make room for the authority of the Reform Church As long as aninfluential church independent of the state is involved in politics (considering its ability toinfluence the actions of thousands of believers) sovereignty is divided But as Hobbes pointsout in Leviathan it is impossible to divide sovereignty without undermining it The first plank inthe political program Spinoza develops in the TPT is that of subordinating the church to the stateThe sovereignty of the state must be absolute and that means that it must extend even toreligious doctrine and the details of public worship

Thus we cannot doubt that in modern times religionbelongs solely to the right of thesovereign No one has the right and power to exercise control over it to choose itsministers to determine and establish the foundations of the church and its doctrine topass judgment on morality and acts of piety to excommunicate or to accept into thechurch and to provide for the poor except by the authority and permission of thesovereign

Since this conclusion provocatively challenges the power of the Calvinist consistories their

violent reaction to the publication of the TPT is perfectly understandable And yet Spinozaargues that regulation of worship by the state ought to be minimized His purpose is not statedomination of religion but preventing religion from dominating the state He agrees withHobbes that sovereignty is absolute or it does not exist at all since a divided sovereignty isinherently unstable But he also agrees with Machiavelli that the state is sovereign only as longas it is able to retain its power There is a logic a psychology and a physics of political powerwhose most fundamental law is that power can sustain itself only when it does not provoke theindignation of the multitude

In the definition Spinoza gives in the Ethics indignation (indignatio) is hatred towardone who has injured another either someone we love or someone for whom we feel no emotionbut believe to be similar to ourselves It operates through the mechanism of the imitation ofaffects I imitate ndash ie empathetically feel ndash the emotions of those with whom I identify so that Iexperience harm to the other person as harm to myself Since hatred is pain along with the ideaof an external cause my imitation of the suffering of someone whom the sovereign has harmed isequivalent to my hatred of the sovereign The consequence of my hatred is a desire to injure thesovereign in order to diminish or destroy the perceived cause of pain If fear of the consequencesof defying the sovereignrsquos command is transformed into mass indignation then the authority torule disintegrates ldquohellip to slaughter subjects to despoil them to ravish maidens and the like turnsfear into indignation and consequently the civil order into a condition of warrdquo

One certain way to provoke indignation is for the sovereign to tell people what they must

believe and what they are allowed to say Indignation is inevitable if the state attempts to controlthought and expression not only because such attempts harm the multitude but also becausethey are futile Spinoza recognizes that it is possible for the state to deceive its citizens and toeffect their beliefs in other ways But he also assets that no state has the power to suspend thelaws of human nature by for example ordering its people to free themselves from anger to hatethose who have benefited them or to regard as false what they believe to be true Any attempt toexercise power in this fashion provokes indignation in part because of the emptiness of thepower it vainly seeks to assert All that it demonstrates is the sovereignrsquos weakness therebyencouraging the further spread of indignation It also makes enemies of those who refuse to hidetheir deepest beliefs and honors those who lie about what they believe which is both unjust tothose falsely reviled and dangerous to the state because it encourages duplicity and corruption inthose who hold political office Far from protecting the state the attempt to control thought andexpression undermines it

The remarkable thing about the theory of politics Spinoza develops in the TPT is that itderives liberal conclusions from absolutist premises The power of the state is absolute but it isnonetheless fragile No state Spinoza says has more to fear from external enemies than it doesfrom its own people Polices that avoid or minimize indignation are vital to its health Howeverwhile he advocates full freedom of thought and expression as necessary to preserving thepolitical community Spinoza draws the line at action which comes under the province of lawand command After all what else could sovereignty mean but the power to command orprohibit action Action includes such functions of a church as public worship and the provisionof charity both of which for this reason are appropriate objects of state control Most of allcivil peace requires the prohibition of church interference with government which would reversethe proper order of obedience and command Thus Spinoza identifies two conditions of stablepolitical power freedom of thought and expression and the iron will of the state to brook nochallenge to its sovereign authority over action especially from organized religion

If Spinozarsquos program for political reform is liberal it is liberalism of a unique kindUnlike the main currents in the liberal tradition it is based on neither a theory of rights nor oneof individual utility The concept of rights has no normative role to play in the TPT becauseSpinoza insists that rights are the same as powers For example there is no right of free speechunless there is the effective power to speak freely Thus the right cannot function as a normbecause it has no reality until it actually exists and whether or not it exists depends upon thebalance of political forces Moreover although the state is necessary to security and civil peaceno one chooses to create it in order to maximize his or her utility People are driven by self-interest but this is true no matter what their conditions of life happen to be Spinoza makes muchof the irrefutable but neglected point that people do not have the ability to survive withoutcombining their power with that of others There is no possible scenario in which isolatedindividuals choose for or against political organization in the interest of maximizing their utilityfor the simple reason that there are no isolated individuals

It is true that Spinoza argues that democracy is the only ldquonaturalrdquo form of governmentbecause it preserves collectively the right to make decisions that each person enjoys individuallyin the ldquostate of naturerdquo For this reason it is the form of government most compatible withfreedom But the idea of a state of nature that precedes political organization and the associatedidea of natural rights are no more than hypothetical because it is precisely in a state of naturethat people would be unable to protect their rights against the aggression of others But forSpinoza this is the same as saying that these rights do not exist The idea of natural rights in apre-political condition is purely notional The only way to enjoy rights effectively ndash which is tosay the only way to exercise the powers they involve ndash is to entrust them to a sovereign authoritycapable of replacing unbridled aggression with the rule of law If ever there were a socialcontract theorist who employed the concept of the state of nature as an hypothesis in a thoughtexperiment without taking the myth of an original condition seriously it is Spinoza The idea thatdemocracy is the most natural form of government simply means that it comes closest to thehypothetical freedom of the state of nature In a democracy people retain their power to decidewhat actions to take but as members of the sovereign authority ndash ie as citizens ndash while theyare bound as subjects to obey the laws that result from their collective deliberations ldquoIn a

democratic state nobody transfers his natural right to another so completely that thereafter he isnot to be consulted he transfers it to the majority of the entire community of which he is partrdquo

In addition to the claim of naturalism in his advocacy of democracy in the TPT Spinozaargues that democratic governments are less prone to irrationality than monarchical oraristocratic ones A large number of people is less likely to endorse the same irrational decisionthan a small council (aristocracy) or a single person (monarchy) ldquohellip In a democracy there is lessdanger of an assembly behaving unreasonably for it is practically impossible for the majority ofa single assembly if it is of some size to agree on the same piece of follyrdquo The sentence thatfollows the one just quoted throws some light on what ldquothe same piece of follyrdquo means byreferring to ldquothe follies of appetiterdquo Spinozarsquos claim is that a democratic state is more rationalthan the alternatives in that it does the best job avoiding the foolish decisions people make whenled by their appetites

Spinoza does not provide an argument in support of this claim in the TPT but in thePolitical Treatise which he began to write two years later there is a passage that that helpscorrect the omission It concerns the wisdom of establishing a governing council with a largenumber of members in an aristocratic state Although an aristocracy excludes the commonpeople from political power reserving it for an elite Spinoza argues that it is capable ofguaranteeing liberties similar to those of democratic government provided that the members ofits governing council are sufficiently numerous

The fact that sovereignty is conferred absolutely on the council need not give thecommon people [plebi] any reason to fear oppressive slavery at its hands For when acouncil is so large its will is determined by reason rather than mere caprice becauselusts [libidine] draw men asunder and it is only when they have as their objective whatis honorable or at least appears so that they can be guided as if by one mind

Spinozarsquos argument is more complicated than a quick reading might indicate It is

impossible he claims for the members of a large council to come to agreement on the basis oftheir libidine because these affects draw them in different and incompatible directions Whilelibidine generally refers to sexual appetites Spinoza uses the word in this context to refer to thefull range of disreputable passions The corresponding point in the TPT is that it is ldquopracticallyimpossiblerdquo for the members of the democratic council to endorse the same ldquopiece of follyrdquo Inorder to reach agreement the members of the governing council in an aristocratic state must takeas their goal ldquowhat is honorable or at least appears sordquo In the Ethics Spinoza defines thehonorable (honestum) as ldquowhat is praised by men who live by the guidance of reasonrdquo and hemakes it clear that what such men praise is ldquothe desire to establish friendshiprdquo In accordancewith this definition the objective of the council members in an aristocracy is not so much to actwith reason as to be regarded by the reasonable as acting with reason ie as promotingfriendship That is why they are able to reach agreement even when their objective appears to behonorable although it is not But with whom do they wish to be or appear to be friends SinceSpinoza intends his argument to allay the fear of the plebs it seems obvious that it is theirfriendship that the council members seek But why would aristocrats be interested in makingfriends with commoners Although Spinoza does not tell us why in this passage the answer canbe found elsewhere in the Political Treatise The reason that the council members must seek thefriendship of the common people is that aristocratic government is not nor can it be absolute inthe full sense of the word in other words it cannot hold a complete monopoly on powerAlthough they have no institutional role in an aristocratic regime the common people retain thepower to undermine state authority by refusing to obey it or even by waging war against it Therulers recognize that power in the fear with which they regard the masses

In the Introduction to the Political Treatise Spinoza dissociates himself from the rosyview of human nature held by the authors of utopias In order to develop a political philosophythat is useful in the world of actual human affairs it is necessary to design institutions inaccordance with which those in government realize the rational end of politics ndash ie the common

good ndash whether or not that is their intention The desire of the members of the council to be seenas seeking the friendship of the masses ensures the rationality of the formerrsquos decisions becauseit causes them to seek the common good even if they do so from fear rather than dedication toreason One might object that appearing to seek the friendship of the masses entails only that thecouncil appear to seek the common good not that it actually does so But it is not possible for thecouncil to neglect the common interest over the long run without dire consequences unless weassume that the masses are so benighted that they are unable to discern the consistent violation oftheir interests The appearance and reality of seeking the friendship of the masses areindistinguishable as proved nearly two hundred years later by a theorem of Abraham LincolnsIt is possible to fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the timebut not all of the people all of the time If that theorem were not true then there would be nolimit to the power of tyrants while Spinoza is fond of quoting Tacitus that tyrannies never lastlong Once again the reason for their inevitable downfall is the indignation they provokethrough the harm they cause to the interests of the multitude

Although Spinoza does not make the point explicitly it is easy to see that a democraticcouncil does not require the same concern with the honorable as an aristocratic one because fearof the masses has no role to play in a democracy Since the common people who are the vastmajority of society are empowered to make decisions they have no need to evoke fear indecision-makers different than themselves in order to protect their own interests Thus in the caseof a democratic council the impossibility of a large number of people agreeing on ldquothe samepiece of follyrdquo is enough to secure political rationality ie the discovery and implementation ofthe common good

An implication of Spinozarsquos emphasis on the affinity between democracy and reason isthat democracy is a kind school for developing rationality The need to make and assess publicarguments about the common good requires clarity of thought and some understanding of theprinciples of logical implication In addition while citizens of a democracy agree to obey the lawor decree established by a vote of the majority they retain their freedom of judgment includingthe right to argue in favor of reversing decisions already made Thus there is no point in ademocracy at which citizens must give up their efforts to influence collective decisions andtherefore no point at which rationality becomes irrelevant However reason is not simply ameans of achieving the common good as an external end It is part of the common good forhuman beings and therefore itself one the ends it seeks to achieve The highest good is theintellectual love of God ndash so Spinoza argues in the Ethics ndash which we cannot attain withoutexercising reason Democracy then turns out to be not only the best way of securing thecommon good of the members of a polity but the best way of advancing the ultimate goodappropriate to human beings in general

Spinozarsquos advocacy of democracy was exceedingly radical at a time when monarchy wasthe political norm in Europe and even the oligarchic regent-dominated Dutch Republic waswidely regarded as an ultra-left anomaly But it sits uncomfortably with another aspect of theTPT namely its apparently low opinion of ldquothe multituderdquo (multitudo) In the Introduction to thebook which was written in Latin Spinoza tells his readers that he would prefer that ldquothecommon peoplerdquo (plebs) not read the work since they are incapable of understanding it andlikely to distort its meaning He pictures its members as entirely driven by their passions andincapable of using reason

I know how deeply rooted in the mind are the prejudices embraced under the guise ofpiety I know too that the masses [vulgo] can no more be freed from their superstitionthan from their fears Finally I know that they are unchanging in their obstinacy thatthey are not guided by reason and that their praise and blame is at the mercy of impulse

But this judgment throws into question the affinity between democracy and reason that

Spinoza affirms in the TPT For in order for such an affinity to exist the common people mustbe able to make decisions on the basis of reason Is the negative picture he paints of the masses

in the Introduction to the TPT simply a rhetorical device meant to appeal to the vanity of hiseducated readership It does not seem to be because a similarly low opinion appears again in theEthics and in some of his letters where there is no need to appeal to anyonersquos vanity Instead offunctioning simply as a rhetorical ploy Spinozarsquos generally negative view of the vast majority ofsociety and the positive view he develops in his advocacy of democracy indicate a tension in hispolitics

In the Ethics and TPT Spinoza uses the words vulgus plebs and multitudointerchangeably When any of the three word appears it is usually accompanied by suchqualifiers as ldquoirrationalrdquo ldquoignorantrdquo ldquouneducatedrdquo ldquosuperstitiousrdquo and ldquogoverned by passionsrdquoStill for Spinoza reason is not the possession of a natural elite Rather it is a universally humancapacity whose occurrence among people in developed form is rare Above all the cultivation ofreason requires free time There are two references to this requirement in the TPT that bear onthe ability of the multitude to develop their rational capacities One passage refers to ldquothecommon peoplerdquo as ldquofor the most part knowing nothing of logical reasoning or without leisurefor itrdquo Another refers to Spinozarsquos method of biblical exegesis noting that ldquoour own methoddemands a knowledge of Hebrew for which study the common people can likewise have noleisurerdquo A third passage which we have already referred to is relevant to the relationshipbetween leisure and the cultivation of reason while not mentioning it directly ldquothe multitude arealways at the same level of miseryrdquo Although Spinoza does not specify what he means by thelast statement it is likely that he is referring at least in part to the misery of onerous labor Thepoverty of the multitude demands that they spend most of their time engaged in hard physicalwork and the resulting absence of leisure prevents them from acquiring knowledge anddeveloping rational skills Lacking developed reason it is easy for them to fall under the sway ofthose who manipulate their fears and hopes for their own personal advantage the priestsministers rabbis and other religious officials In Spinozarsquos view fears and hopes make themultitude credulous and willing to accept superstitious beliefs (in divination the ability ofprayer to change the natural course of events the purchase of indulgences etc) that promisecontrol of an uncertain future For clerics the key to power and money is manipulation of thegreat majority of society through the instrument of superstition masked as religion

While the words plebs vulgus and multitudo do not designate a particular social classthey are not free of class reference either Spinoza uses the word plebs much as it was used in theearly Roman Republic to refer to the free subjects of a state who have no right to participate ingovernment Although plebs designates a political status rather than an economic class Spinozais clear that the group it refers to consists largely in those who work with their hands Forexample in the Political Treatise he identifies artisans as an example of the plebs the onlyexample in any of his writings Undoubtedly he would also have included peasants and wageworkers in that category and probably small retail merchants who were also politicallydisenfranchised Patricians by contrast certainly include nobles but may also include at least thewealthier burghers as was the case in the United Provinces Germany and much of the rest ofEurope The word vulgus as Spinoza uses it refers to the same members of society as the wordplebs but with the specific connotation of a lack of education and culture whose most extremeexpression is the unruly and irrational behavior of mobs In fact depending upon the contextvulgus is sometimes best translated as ldquocrowdrdquo or ldquomobrdquo Multitudo means ldquothe manyrdquo Spinozauses it to designate any group with numerous members including for example the simplebodies that make up a chemical substance In the context of political theory he uses the word torefer to the same people who comprise the plebs or vulgus but with the specific connotation ofbeing the vast majority of society Thus plebs vulgus and multitudo have the same referentalthough their principal connotations differ However in Spinozarsquos usage each word tends tobecome a synecdoche for the combined meaning of all three Thus in general the plebs vulgusor multitudo comprise the vast majority of society comprised largely of those who work withtheir hands are denied political rights except in democracies lack culture and education and aregiven to uncouth irrational or unruly behavior

The tension in Spinozarsquos politics between his critical view of the multitude and hisadvocacy of a democratic state in which it is sovereign can be explained by drawing a distinctionbetween the multitude as it is under the conditions of the actually existing Dutch Republic and

the multitude as it could be were Spinozarsquos reforms to be implemented With an uncontrolledReform Church and a Republic dominated by regents who represent the wealthy burghers themultitude has no chancing of shedding its superstitions or developing its rational capacities TheChurch manipulates their hopes and fears through the instrument of superstition and therepublican oligarchs block their participation in political decision-making which is the only waythey can develop rationality on a significant scale The story would be very different however ifthe state were both democratic and prohibited the Church from involvement in politics Twomajor conditions would then exist for the development of reason on a mass scale

The idea of a democracy raises the problem of how people without significant materialresources are to participate in making decisions when they must spend their lives in toil It mightbe thought that the problem can be solved by a universal franchise enabling all citizens to votefor representatives to a legislative assembly and other state offices But even if measures were inplace to prevent the wealthy minority from exercising unequal influence in elected bodiesrepresentative government is not Spinozarsquos idea of democracy Like Plato and Aristotle when heuses the term ldquodemocracyrdquo he has in mind a state such as the Athenian polis in which all adult(male) citizens were empowered to vote directly on legislation and other public matters Spinozamakes this clear in the unfinished chapter on democracy in the Political Treatise

hellipin this state all who are born of citizen parents or on native soil or have done serviceto the commonwealth or are qualified on any other grounds on which the right ofcitizenship is granted by law all I say can lawfully demand for themselves the right tovote in the supreme council and to undertake offices of state nor can they be refusedexcept for crime or dishonor

At a relatively advanced stage in its development the Athenian polis solved the problem

of the multitudersquos participation in government by paying citizens to attend sessions of theAssembly thereby compensating them for missed days of work If Spinoza was aware of theAthenian solution he gives no indication of it in his writings although it is likely that he wouldhave considered the problem of participation in politics by those without leisure in the part of thePolitical Treatise he left unfinished at his death Following the pattern of the completed chapterson monarchy and aristocracy the unfinished chapters on democracy would undoubtedly havespecified the institutional structures and practices necessary to sustain a democratic state In anyevent without something like the Athenian solution the idea of a democratic republic in theUnited Provinces would have been no more than the sort of utopian dream Spinoza rejects in theIntroduction to the Political Treatise

Returning to the earlier work the program for reforming the Dutch Republic that emergesin the TPT has three planks 1) establish state control over the churches as public institutions 2)guarantee freedom of thought expression and private worship and 3) democratize the oligarchicRepublic Although Spinozarsquos book is a work of philosophy it is equally a political interventionin a concrete historical situation a fact that he indicates in his letter to Jelles by referring to theldquocauserdquo he asks his friend to serve by blocking the Dutch translation of the book But in order toact as a political intervention the book must influence the beliefs and through them the actionsof people That raises the question To whom is the TPT addressed Since the decision to write inLatin effectively prevented the multitude from reading the work (which as we have seen wasSpinozarsquos intention) and on the assumption that not many aristocrats were likely to be swayedby its radical arguments the addressee of the book can only have been the educated section ofthe bourgeoisie Since Spinoza was unlikely to sway many conservative Calvinists with hisrationalist conception of religion there were only two groups within the bourgeoisie ndash at leastsome of whose members were capable of reading Latin ndash that the work could effectively addressThe first consists in republicans including the regents who hesitated to support the kind of stateauthority over religion that Spinoza advocated for ideological or pragmatic reasons The secondconsists in Orangists who were liberals in matters of religion and so in conflict with the ReformChurch As odd as it may seem there were a good number of people who fit into the secondcategory Even many of the Collegiantrsquos were loyal to the House of Orange in spite of theirpronounced religious liberalism

Had the TPTrsquos program been limited to its first two planks ndash state control of the churchesand freedom of thought and expression ndash it would have been politically coherent But where doesthe idea of democratizing the United Provinces fit into this picture Neither bourgeoisrepublicans nor religious liberals were apt to be sympathetic to the idea of a democratic republicthat would place power in the hands of the multitude If Spinoza wanted to make an appeal to therepublican and liberal Orangist sections of the bourgeoisie he ought to have been defending theexisting oligarchic Republic against its conservative Calvinist and monarchist enemies ratherthan elaborating an argument for its democratization There is only one audience who wouldhave been sympathetic to that argument namely the peasants artisans wage-workers and smallmerchants who comprised the multitude But that is precisely the readership Spinoza deniedhimself by writing in Latin

And yet Spinoza understood that the only way the Republic could survive in face of thealliance between the Reform Church and the House of Orange was to shift the allegiance of themultitude by winning its support Thus the contradiction in Spinozarsquos program is not a theoreticalflaw but a reflection of the real contradiction involved in the stadtholderless Republic or if youprefer the instability in the balance of social forces that enabled it to exist The Republic couldsurvive only by means of an impossible alliance between the multitude and the regents IfSpinoza erred it was in believing that it was possible to convince the regents to democratize bythe force of his arguments But this was the same as asking them to commit political suicidesince their power on the urban and national levels depended upon their ability to defend theirmonopoly on state offices The only alternative which Spinoza rejected was a popularrevolution that would create a new and radically democratic republic But that republic wouldshare with the existing one no more than the name like the animal dog and the dog star thatSpinoza refers to in a different context For that reason it would have fallen under his warningthat those who attempt to change the form of the state are likely to see it restored in a morerepressive version (see page 25 below) In short there was no solution to the problem the TPTattempted to solve or at least none within the limits of Spinozarsquos thinking As a political theoryand a theory of biblical hermeneutics the book is a brilliant work that went on to influencephilosophers and ironically theologians for the next three centuries As an intervention in theextraordinarily difficult and complex political situation of the seventeenth-century Netherlands itwas and had to be an utter failure

There are in fact two political programs in the TPT an overt program and a latent oneThe overt program is liberal republican and bourgeois in the sense that its addressee andintended agent of change is the educated bourgeoisie The latent program lies quite a bit furtherto the left It is radically democratic and its only possible agent of change is the multitude Letter44 makes a contribution to the latent program that moves in an even more radical direction

The Communist Idea

In his letter to Jelles Spinoza develops an idea of the highest good for human beings as

an alternative to what he argues is the false conception of Homo Politicus For the author of thatbook wealth and honors comprise the highest good But Spinoza claims in the letter thatcommonwealths devoted to the pursuit of wealth and honors ldquomust necessarily perish and haveperishedrdquo He then writes

How far superior indeed and excellent were the reflections of Thales of Miletus compared with this writer is shown by the following account All things he said are incommon among friends

The fact that this paragraph follows Spinozarsquos critique of Homo Politicus while proposing

an alternative to the apparent position of its author justifies an interpretation that takes it in apolitical sense Spinoza should be read as offering the saying of Thales as an addendum to the

latent program he articulates in the TPT Like democracy common ownership could have onlyone social basis in the Netherlands of the seventeenth century ndash namely the peasants artisanswage-workers and small retail merchants The problem this raises is how to make the transitionfrom a multitude given to irrationality and superstition ndash and therefore under the sway of theReformed Church ndash to one capable of the rationality necessary to create the democraticcommunism (the content of which we have yet to define) that Letter 44 implies when consideredalong with the TPT Spinoza saw no answer to this problem That is why he suppressed his latentproject in favor of the overt one for a liberal republic able to assert its sovereign authority overthe Church It seemed to him that the educated bourgeoisie had political capacities that themultitude lacked

Spinozarsquos judgment on this matter is similar mutatis mutandis to that of FrederickEngels in the Peasant War in Germany For Engels the Peasant War of the sixteenth century wasa heroic but premature revolution Under the leadership of Thomas Muumlntzer the peasantsadopted a program that included the expropriation of ecclesiastic and aristocratic property andthe common ownership of goods But the princes were the only group with the wealth andmilitary resources necessary to benefit from the ensuing turmoil while their rivals for power ndashthe Catholic prelates and lesser nobility ndash were ruined by the confiscation of property andplundering or destruction of fixed wealth by the peasant masses The rising bourgeoisie was ableto frame an independent liberal political program but did not yet have the social weightnecessary to play a leading role in the economy and the state According to Engels the peasantrywas incapable of mastering the new forces of production unleashed by the world market and theonly class that might have played a progressive role alongside the peasants ndash the proletarianwage-working element in the towns ndash was a very small part of laboring population It would takeanother three centuries for the proletariat to develop along with industry to the point where itwould be able to draft a meaningful equivalent of the communist program first framed by thesixteenth-century German peasantry Spinoza certainly had no idea that industrialization and asizeable proletariat were on their way But he shared with Engels a pessimistic assessment of thechances for a successful social transformation led by peasants and their allies Perhaps with thedisastrous defeat of the German peasants in mind (as well as the allegiance of the Dutchmultitude to the Reformed Church) Spinoza judged that relying upon the common people as anagent of social and political change in his own century would have been equally futile

Why then does Spinoza raise the issue of common ownership in Letter 44 The answer isthe same as for why he discusses democracy in the TPT when it makes no contribution to hispolitical intervention but on the contrary damages it We could say that Spinoza is either a badmilitant or a good philosopher The truth is he is both Like Platorsquos attempt to influence thecourse of events in Syracuse or Aristotlersquos decision to tutor Alexander the Great Spinozarsquos faithin the political efficacy of philosophical reasoning was misguided There is ample historicalevidence that the philosopher who attempts to be politically effective as a philosopher is doomedto defeat That is why Marx ceased considering himself a philosopher in 1845 as he indicates inthe eleventh of his Theses on Feuerbach ldquoUntil now philosophers have only attempted tounderstand the world the point however is to change itrdquo The project of changing the world isdifferent than that of understanding it from a purely theoretical perspective Of course it ispossible for philosophers to influence statesmen as Locke influenced the drafters of the USConstitution But Lockersquos influence was effective more than a century after he wrote the SecondTreatise on Civil Government and so can hardly be called a political intervention The attempt tointervene politically in a concrete situation in which multiple forces and complex structures arein play is something very different than the delayed influence on the drafters of a constitutionwho have had an opportunity to ponder at leisure the meaning of a philosopherrsquos work The mostimportant question of politics is not so much ldquoWhat is to be donerdquo as ldquoWho is to do itrdquoSpinoza may have been right that the multitude was not the collective subject to defendrepublican liberty That is why he appealed to the Dutch bourgeoisie through its philosophicallyliterate elements But he was too much the philosopher to suppress his argument that ademocratic republic is the kind of state that best preserves freedom and encourages rationalityand he was willing to make his point even at the cost of alienating the collective agent he wasattempting to influence

The reference to common ownership in Letter 44 would have had an even more negativeeffect on his readers should Spinoza have made it in the TPT In private communication withJelles however he was able to raise the topic without risking further political difficultiesSpinozarsquos reference presumes an intellectual history with roots in both ancient Greek philosophyand early Christianity a history that was renewed practically as well as theoretically in earlymodern Europe In the passage from Letter 44 where he introduces the theme of commonownership he goes on to elaborate the position he attributes to Thales Here is the passage in fullthat we have already quoted partially

How far superior indeed and excellent were the reflections of Thales of Miletuscompared with this writer is shown by the following account All things he said are incommon among friends The wise are the friends of the Gods and all things belong tothe Gods therefore all things belong to the wise In this way the wise man makeshimself the richest by nobly despising riches instead of greedily pursuing them

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo (Amicorum communia omnia) is

the first entry in his book Adages by the late Renaissance humanist and reform-minded Catholicscholar Desiderius Erasmus The Adages were widely available in Spinozarsquos day and it is likelythat both Spinoza and Jelles had read them although the former must have also consultedErasmusrsquo source for the saying ndash Lives of the Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius We will seewhy in a moment Erasmus cites the same deduction from the maxim as Spinoza does in Letter44 except that he attributes it to Socrates rather than Thales

From this proverb Socrates deduced that all things belong to all good men just as theydo to the gods For to the gods he said belong all things good men are friends of thegods and among friends all possessions are in common

The fact that Spinoza refers to wise men while Erasmus refers to good men does not

indicate any real difference between them because both accepted the ancient Greek and biblicalequivalence between human goodness and wisdom The difference in attributing the deductiveconsequences of the proverb to Thales on the one hand and Socrates on the other also does notindicate any substantive disagreement between Spinoza and Erasmus although it does signify adifference in intellectual vocation and emphasis Interestingly however the attribution in bothcases is incorrect Their common source the Lives of the Philosophers places the argument intothe mouth of Diogenes the Cynic rather than Socrates or Thales Thus both Spinoza and Erasmushave had a failure of memory and probably for the same reason The author of Lives makes itclear that although Diogenes the Cynic despised the pursuit of wealth he was not a veryappealing character he was arrogant and could be verbally and physically abusive to those hejudged to be unwise It is understandable then that the figure of Diogenes would drop out of thememory of both Erasmus and Spinoza and be replaced by a philosopher with whom each tosome extent identified Erasmus the Renaissance humanist undoubtedly found Socrates well-suited to stand in for the part of Diogenes the Cynic because Socrates was a moral philosopherand the teacher of Plato whose influence on the Renaissance was profound As an admirer of thenatural sciences and a maker of telescopes Spinoza would have felt the same way about Thaleswho was an astronomer as well as a philosopher

In Letter 44 a story from Lives follows the identification of Thales as the figureresponsible for the drawing the deductive consequences of the proverb In order to demonstratethat his rejection of the pursuit of wealth was not an alibi for poverty Thales made use of hisexpert knowledge of the heavens Foreseeing a bountiful olive crop after the previous harvestrsquosdearth he rented all of the olive presses in Greece cheaply and then hired them out at a highprice to farmers who needed them to press the oil from their olives In this way he amassed agreat deal of wealth within a single year which ldquohe then distributed with a liberality equal to the

shrewdness by which he had acquired itrdquo Spinozarsquos memory of the story must have acted as abridge for the mistaken identification

The similarity between the ancient Greek proverb and the passages from Acts about thecommunal practices of the early Church with respect to property must have been evident to thebiblical scholar Spinoza Rendered into Latin by Erasmus the proverb ldquoAll things are incommon among friendsrdquo is amicorum communia omnia In Acts 244 ndash ldquoAll that believed weretogether and had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquohad all things in commonrdquo appears in theLatin Vulgate as habebant omnia communia In Acts 432 ndash ldquoNo one claimed that any of theirpossessions was their own but they had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquothey had all thingsin commonrdquo appears in the Vulgate as erant illis omnia communia The equivalence between thecommunia omnia of the proverb and the omnia communia of the two verses from Acts wouldhave been perfectly clear to Spinoza on linguistic grounds alone

In Adages Erasmus is more explicit than Spinoza in connecting the proverb with theverses from Acts He discusses the proverb in its appearance in book 5 of the Laws where Platoappeals to it in order to demonstrate that the best condition of society consists in the communityof possessions Erasmus writes

But it is extraordinary how Christians dislike this common ownership of Platorsquos how infact they throw stones at it although nothing comes closer to the mind of Christ

Further on Erasmus identifies the inventor of the proverb as Pythagoras who he saysestablished a community in which life and property were shared

hellipwhich is the very thing Christ wants to happen among Christians For all those whowere admitted by Pythagoras into that well-known band who followed his instructionswould give to the common fund whatever money and family property they possessed

Even apart from Erasmus the similarity between the Greek philosophersrsquo proverb and the

New Testament passages would have been evident to the Mennonite Jelles from MennoSimonrsquos discussion of the communal practice described in Acts (more on this below) Jelleswould also have found the parallel especially appealing because it makes the principle ofcommon ownership part of that rational philosophical version of Christianity that he and theother Waterlander Mennonites and Collegiants were seeking to establish

Although Erasmus was an advocate of religious reform he never joined the ProtestantReformation remaining a loyal Catholic until his death It is ironic then that during hislifetime the only vigorous champions of the common ownership he espoused were members ofthe most radical wing of the Reformation ironic but completely intelligible since the radicalsrsquoproject was to restore the Church to its original apostolic condition before its accommodationwith worldly power and wealth under Constantine

The Latin phrase designating Anabaptist communism in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies is Omnia sunt communia (for example it appears in this form in the confession theauthorities extracted from Thomas Muumlntzer under torture) It translates into English as ldquoAllthings are commonrdquo which is the present tense version of the phrase in Acts 432 ldquoall thingswere commonrdquo (ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά) to the members of the Church in Jerusalem Theparallel formulation in Acts 244 is slightly different although the distinction is lost in the LatinVulgate It reads that the members of the apostolic Church ldquohad all things in commonrdquo (εἶχονἅπαντα κοινὰ) In the second formulation εἶχον (had) seems to suggest a specific mode ofpossession or even an established quasi-legal form of property But it would be a mistake tointerpret it this way In both verses the anonymous author of Acts is articulating a generalprinciple rather than specifying a form of its implementation As we shall see the concreteapplication of the principle in the first century Church involved not a mode of possession orform of property but rather a practice of redistribution

Within the Anabaptist movement there was a broad range of beliefs and practices thatinvolved specific applications of the principle Omnia sunt communia We need to recognizetheir breadth in order to grasp just how subtle and variegated Anabaptist communism could beFor this purpose it is important to distinguish between communism as 1) a principle ofredistribution 2) a form of joint or communal property 3) a mode of the organization of workand 4) a kind of mutual aid In general all Anabaptist applications of Omnia sunt communia areintended to realize in different ways a communal and spiritual life in which all things arecommon We could say if we like that each of the four categories serves as a means for realizingthe end designated by that principle as long as we keep in mind that in this case the meanscannot be discarded once the end has been achieved Communism as a principle of redistributiona form of communal property a mode of the organization of work a kind of mutual aid ndash orsome combination of these ndash are the concrete ways in which communism as a mode ofcommunal and spiritual life is realized In this case the means are internal to the end That isbecause there can be no fellowship no community of the spirit unless those participating sharesomething ie have it in common Greek recognizes this internal relationship between acommon life and something shared in the word translated into English as fellowship κοινωνίαthe root of which is κοινός which means ldquocommonrdquo Its antonym ἴδιος means ldquobelonging toonerdquo It is the word κοινός that appears in the passages from Acts that refer to the practice ofsharing material wealth

244 ldquoAll who believed were together and had all things in common (Πάντες δὲ οἱπιστεύοντες ἦσαν ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό καὶ εἶχον ἅπαντα κοινὰ)

432 ldquoThe multitude of believers were one in heart and soul (Τοῦ δὲ πλήθους τῶνπιστευσάντων ἦν καρδία καὶ ψυχὴ microία) and no one claimed anything as his ownpossession but to them all things were in common (καὶ οὐδὲ εἷς τι τῶν ὑπαρχόντωναὐτῷ ἔλεγεν ἴδιον εἶναι ἀλλrsquo ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά)

Both verses affirm an internal relationship between living a common life and things

being in common or people having things in common But this is true of any collectiveendeavor A chess club for example is only possible if the members have a common interest inplaying chess But the verses from Acts mean to assert more than this They affirm the intensityand universality of the common life experienced in the early Church (being ldquoone in heart andsoulrdquo) They indicate this by referring to the fact that in the Church in Jerusalem all things areheld in common (ἅπαντα κοινά) Although ldquoall thingsrdquo (ἅπαντα) is not limited to materialpossessions the succeeding verses in chapters 2 and 4 of Acts indicate the depth of thecommitment the early Christians had to sharing a common life by referring to the practice inwhich they enacted it

245 And they sold their possessions and goods and divided them among everyoneaccording to need (καὶ τὰ κτήmicroατα καὶ τὰς ὑπάρξεις ἐπίπρασκον καὶ διεmicroέριζον αὐτὰπᾶσιν καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

434 There was no one among them in need as many as owned land or houses soldthem and brought the values of what was sold (οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐνδεής τις ἦν ἐν αὐτοῖς ὅσοιγὰρ κτήτορες χωρίων ἢ οἰκιῶν ὑπῆρχον πωλοῦντες ἔφερον τὰς τιmicroὰς τῶνπιπρασκοmicroένων) 435 and laid them at the feet of the apostles and distribution wasmade to each in accordance with need (καὶ ἐτίθουν παρὰ τοὺς πόδας τῶν ἀποστόλωνδιεδίδετο δὲ ἑκάστῳ καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

The needs of others are what break the bonds of individual ownership allowing the

transition from the private (ἴδιος) to the common (κοινά) Acts refers to making material goods

common rather than for example communicating private knowledge publicly presumablybecause of the difficulty people experience parting with private property and the correlativesignificance of the act of doing so For material possessions are the means by which they satisfytheir basic needs ndash for food shelter clothing and so on ndash and when possible their desire forluxuries The act of handing over possessions has two consequences The first is that thedistinction between rich and poor wealthy and needy owner and propertyless is abolished andthe members of the community come to stand on level ground The second consequence involvesa more fundamental risk on the part of property-owners By handing over their property theymake a leap of faith that the community will henceforth satisfy their needs as well through thesame practice of redistribution When applied in this fashion the general principle of being incommon or having in common results in an example of the first category of communism asspecified above ie communism as a principle of redistribution

Redistribution of property by the apostles creates occasions for active sharing asexpressions of the new form of common life 246 says that the members of the Church inJerusalem ldquoalso broke bread in each otherrsquos homes and took their meals in exaltation andsimplicity of heartrdquo (κλῶντές τε κατrsquo ο ἴκον ἄρτον microετελάmicroβανον τροφῆς ἐν ἀγαλλιάσει καὶἀφελότητι καρδίας) The value of sharing meals lies not merely in the fact that everyone is fedbut also in the experience of exaltation or ecstatic delight (ἀγαλλιάσεις) and sincerity orsimplicity of heart (ἀφελότητι καρδίας) The experience in common of exaltation and sincerity isat least as important as the act of satisfying needs although the two can be distinguished onlynotionally

The experience has its meaning in relation to the power (δυνάmicroις) that brings together themembers of the new community and inspires them to share their property The gathering of JewsGreeks and those from other nations (the circumcised and the uncircumcised as Paul says)occurs in the period following Pentecost when the Holy Spirit is supposed to have descended incloven tongues of flame upon the twelve apostles endowing them with the ability to speak inevery language Pentecost in turn follows by several weeks the resurrection of Christ and hisbodily ascension into heaven The gift of being able to speak in every language permits theapostles to convey their message to all nations That message ndash confirmed by ldquosigns andwondersrdquo ndash is testimony of their own first-hand witness to the Resurrection It is accompanied bythe baptism of the new members of the Church which repeats the Pentecostal experience byfilling them with the grace and power of the Holy Spirit

433 ldquoAnd with great power the apostles were giving witness to the resurrection of theLord Jesus and abundant grace was upon them all (καὶ δυνάmicroει microεγάλῃ ἀπεδίδουν τὸmicroαρτύριον οἱ ἀπόστολοι τοῦ Κυρίου Ἰησοῦ τῆς ἀναστάσεως χάρις τε microεγάλη ἦν ἐπὶπάντας αὐτούς)

The ecstatic delight and simplicity of heart that the members of the Church in Jerusalem

experience by sharing a common life is their enjoyment of this ldquoabundant gracerdquo (χάρις τεmicroεγάλη) The new community is built upon faith in the apostlesrsquo testimony that Jesus triumphedover death and that his victory promises an eternal life to all who believe That is the gift of theHoly Spirit Yet the ldquospiritualrdquo (πνευmicroατικός) content of early Christian experience does not denyits simultaneously material character For the significance of the Resurrection and the Ascensioninto Heaven is precisely that they concern the physical body of Christ When he appears toThomas who doubts that he has returned Jesus invites his disciple to place his hands into thewounds received from the Crucifixion The point is to show not only that the man standing infront of Thomas is not an imposter but also that the risen Christ is no disembodied ghost Andwhen the apostles witness the Ascension what they see is the physical body of Jesus rising toheaven There is little suggestion of soul-body dualism in Acts The spirit (πνεῦmicroα) infuses andtransfigures the body it does not exist apart from it In this respect it is similar to the life-givingbreath to which the word πνεῦmicroα originally referred Dualism is the result of a Platonizinginterpretation of Christianity that comes later The bodily character of the Resurrection extends tothe promise of eternal life for believers as well The promise is not that their souls will exist apart

from their bodies but that their bodies will rise up from the grave like that of their Savior Giventhis early Christian materialism it is not surprising that commonality of material goods wouldserve as a fundamental expression of the new life of the believers

As we already know the project of the sixteenth-century Anabaptists was to restore theChurch to its original apostolic condition by undoing the corruption they believed had set inwhen it made its peace with worldly wealth and power under Constantine Given the nature ofthe Anabaptist project it would seem that making material things common as described in Actswould follow as a matter of course However there is a long tradition ndash one that began aroundthe middle of the sixteenth century ndash of denying that Anabaptism has anything to do withcommunism regarding it as an accusation brought against the Anabaptists by their enemies It isunderstandable that this should be so The Anabaptists were the victims of a ldquored scarerdquo thatgripped the ruling classes of Europe in the aftermath of the Peasant War and the Muumlnstercommune It is impossible to explain the horrendous tortures forced relocations andinnumerable executions Anabaptists faced on the basis of heretical belief alone Nothing of aremotely similar scale was visited upon other schismatics The fact that the Anabaptistschallenged prevailing property relations is what made them victims of near-genocide It was amatter of survival then to create some distance between themselves and the charge ofadvocating common ownership of goods that came from Luther Zwingli and those whoextracted the confession from Thomas Muumlntzer that he held to the principle of Omnia communiasunt Recent scholarship however has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that having thingsin common was indeed a basic and widespread principle of Anabaptism at its origin just as it hasdemonstrated the influence veterans of the Peasant War had among the early Anabaptists

The dominant form of communist practice in early Anabaptism was appropriatelymodeled on the description of redistribution in Acts In Switzerland where the movementoriginated converts were often asked or required to make contributions to a ldquocommon purserdquoafter receiving adult baptism Some especially pious initiates went so far as to sell their land andhouses for that purpose in accordance with the biblical precedent When necessary officialsdistributed the contents of the purse to members of the community who were in need

Both proponents and enemies of Anabaptist communism often confused the redistributionof wealth with joint or communal property However except for the taking of meals in commonthere is no indication in Acts that redistribution collectivized ownership of wealth in this fashionbut only that it transferred wealth from the better-off members of the community to the worse-off Nevertheless some Anabaptists took joint or communal property as a paradigm for newproperty relations For example the visionary writing of the Nuremberg printer Hans Hergotwho was executed for rebellion in 1527 includes the following passage

And everything that grows on the land belongs to the church and the people who livethere Everything is bestowed for common use so that the people will eat from one potdrink from one vesselhellip And all things will be used in common so that no one is betteroff than another

The ldquowar communismrdquo of the city of Muumlnster involved an ad hoc form of communal propertythrough the edict that the doors to all homes be left open and the owners take in anyone whowished to reside with them But the most significant successful and long-lasting attempt toimplement communal property was that of the Hutterites

The Hutterites took their name from the charismatic hat-maker and Anabaptist leaderJacob Hutter However at their origins they were influenced by the revolutionary bookbinderHans Hut Hut shared Thomas Muumlntzerrsquos sanguinary apocalyptic view of social change andadvocated community ownership of goods in accordance with his own understanding of ActsHe survived the battle of Frankenhausen in which the peasant rebels were finally defeated butwas tortured and executed a few years later In the aftermath and under the influence of JacobHutter the Hutterites adopted pacifism and a strategy of creating autonomous communities Inorder escape persecution thousands of the brethren emigrated from Switzerland and Germany to

the more tolerant Moravia where they created hundreds of Bruderhofs farms and vineyards inwhich land houses farm implements produce and even objects of personal use were ownedcollectively The center of Bruderhof life was a large communal house in which craft productionoccurred on the ground floor and couples lived in small apartments on the upper levels The menengaged in farm labor and craftwork while the women were limited to traditional domesticduties in spite of the fact that children were raised communally apart from their parents TheBruderhofs enjoyed great economic success for a number of reasons People worked hard andconsumed little resulting in a surplus that could be used to purchase additional land seed andtools The size of the communities and of their agricultural production also enabled them to sellcheaply and to pay for supplies at generous prices both of which made the communitieseconomic assets to the areas in which they were located The Hutterites also organized both farmlabor and craft production cooperatively including the education boys were given in thenecessary skills They were therefore practitioners of the second and third forms of communismwe have identified namely communal ownership and cooperative organization of work Whenthey were ultimately forced out of Moravia by the triumph of Catholic forces in the Thirty YearsWar the Hutterites migrated eastward many finally relocating to Canada and the United Stateswhere the Bruderhofs continue to exist to this day

Communism as a kind of mutual aid was the contribution of the other major form ofAnabaptism that of the Mennonites With great political intelligence and skill Menno Simonswas able to reformulate the meaning of Omnia communia sunt in such a way as to avoidthreatening the property interests of nobles and clerics He did this in his book A Humble andChristian Justification and Replication First he denied that Mennonites were advocates ofcommunal property

This accusation is false and without all truth We do not teach and practice communityof goods but we teach and testify the Word of the Lord that all true believers in Christare of one body (1 Corinthians 1213) partakers of one bread (1 Corinthians 1017)have one God and one Lord (Ephesians 4)

In his assertion that the believers are of one body and partakers of one bread Simons is affirmingwhat we have called the general principle of communism while denying that Mennonitesembrace it in the specific form of communal property But he goes further by denying thatMennonites advocate a contemporary version of the apostolic redistribution of wealth

For although we know that the apostolic church had this practice in the beginning ascan be seen in the Acts of the Apostles nevertheless we note from their epistles that itdisappeared in their time and was no longer practiced

Instead of communal property or centralized redistribution of wealth the Mennonites derivefrom the general principle of Christian communism an alternative practice

Seeing then that they are one as said it is Christian and reasonable that they also havedivine love among them and that one member cares for another for both the Scripturesand nature teach this They show mercy and love as much as is in them They do notsuffer a beggar among them They have pity on the wants of the saints They receive thewretched They take strangers into their houses They comfort the sad They lend to theneedy They clothe the naked They share their bread with the hungry They do not turntheir face from the poorhellip

In the subsequent history of Mennonism the practice Simons describes came to be calledldquomutual aidrdquo Note that it is different from charitable giving and this in two ways First thereferences to receiving the wretched taking in strangers sharing bread and so on indicate a farmore personal even intimate form of involvement than simple charitable donation Second

there is the suggestion of reciprocity or mutuality (ldquoone member cares for anotherrdquo) that tends todeny the difference in status between the charitable giver and the recipient of charity Thepractice Simons describes is similar to what some anthropologists have called ldquogeneralizedreciprocityrdquo in which my obligation to give to you when you are in need corresponds to yourobligation to give to me when I am in need In a sense this is a form of redistribution inaccordance with need but it is enacted directly between individual members of the communityrather than administered centrally through a common purse

In line with his political purpose Simons is careful to distinguish between mutual aid andthe expropriation of private property

This is the kind of brotherhood we teach and not that some should take over andpossess the land soil and properties of others as we are falsely maligned accused andlied about by many

In this way he detaches the Mennonite version of communism from any revolutionary intentionThat was the prerequisite for communal survival during the long counter-revolution thatfollowed the Peasant War Still Simons never abandons the general principle Omnia communiasunt nor does he even really reject the practice of the early Church

Since we do not find it a permanent practice with the apostles we have not taught orpracticed community of goods but we urge earnestly and zealously to practice liberalgiving love and mercy as the apostolic writings teach and testify abundantly Andeven if we had taught and practiced community of goods as we are falsely accused ofdoing we would still not be doing otherwise than the holy apostles full of the HolySpirit themselves did in the former church at Jerusalem in the beginning of the holyChristian Church although they stopped the practice as has been said

Like the Hutterites Mennonite communities prospered once they managed to survive the

bloody period of reaction In Holland the Mennonite population consisted largely in successfulmerchants along with a number of lawyers doctors and other professionals Most of thepeasant artisan and laborer families who had started as Mennonites in the sixteenth century hadlong since converted to the Reform Church which is one reason Spinoza faced the problem ofpolitical agency in the TPT Although the idea of mutual aid persisted among the DutchMennonites it took the form predominantly of organized international philanthropy in which thecommunity made contributions not only to Mennonites abroad but to other populations in needThere was no escaping the fact however that in this philanthropic form mutual aid becamehardly distinguishable from conventional charity

Jarig Jelles was born into the Dutch Mennonite community around a century afterSimmons wrote his book when this process of slippage was well underway But there is littledoubt that Jelles knew the Mennonite teaching on mutual aid and its origin in the generalprinciple of Christian communism Even if Jelles never read Erasmusrsquo Adages Spinozarsquosreference to the supposed communism of Thales was likely to resonate with him on the basis ofhis own religious tradition

We cannot be certain how much Spinoza knew in detail about the communist practices ofthe Anabaptists but it is probably not a coincidence that he recommends three of the four atvarious places in his writings In Part 4 of the Ethics ldquoOf Human Bondage or the Strength of theEmotionsrdquo he identifies the chief virtue of the intellect as ldquostrength of the mindrdquo (fortitudo)According to him it takes two forms one directed to the self and one directed to others He callsthe inwardly directed form ldquocouragerdquo defining it as ldquothe desire whereby every individualendeavors to preserve his own being according to the dictates of reason alonerdquo The outwardlydirected form is generositas which Shirley translates as ldquonobilityrdquo though ldquosolidarityrdquo is closerto what Spinoza is getting at He defines it as ldquothe desire whereby every individual according to

the dictates of reason alone endeavors to assist others and make friends of themrdquo When twopeople in contact with one another possess the virtue of generositas they will clearly exhibit itreciprocally in the form of mutual aid the fourth communist practice

In Part 4 of the Ethics Spinoza also formulates a version of the first communist practicethat of the redistribution of wealth in accordance with need

Again men are won over by generosity especially those who do not have thewherewithal to produce what is necessary to support life Yet it is far beyond the powerand resources of a private person to come to the assistance of everyone in need For thewealth of a private person is quite unequal to such a demand It is also a practicalimpossibility for one man to establish friendship with all Therefore the care of the poordevolves upon society as a whole and looks only to the common good

The fact that society as a whole has responsibility for meeting the needs of the poor makes thepractice Spinoza recommends in this passage a version of the centralized redistribution of wealthdescribed in the Acts of the Apostles and institutionalized in Anabaptist form as the ldquocommonpurserdquo More than that the fact that society as a whole must take on this responsibility ratherthan a church or other sub-community makes Spinoza an early advocate of what will becomethree centuries later the European welfare state In our own period as the welfare state is beingdismantled it is easy to see that what neoliberals object to concerning it is precisely its implicitcommunism ie its practice of distribution in accordance with need

Spinoza advocates a third communist practice in his unfinished final work the PoliticalTreatise The context is his discussion of a maximally democratic version of monarchy in whichthe entire citizen body is armed and the king forbidden from making any decision contrary to thewill of a massive council of ordinary citizens In such a state

The fields and the soil and if possible the houses as well should be public property thatis should belong to the sovereign by whom they should be let at an annual rent tocitizens whether townsmen or country-dwellers Apart from this all citizens should befree or exempt from any form of taxation in time of peace Of this rent part should beallocated to the defense works of the commonwealth part to the kings domestic needsFor in time of peace it is still necessary to fortify cities as for war and to have in a stateof readiness ships and other armaments

Ownership of land and buildings by the sovereign is a form of communal property first becausethe citizens of the commonwealth delegate to him or them the property they hold in commonand second because that delegation occurs with the understanding that the sovereign will use theproperty in service of the common good

Spinoza supplies an argument based on more than simple utility for the practice ofholding land and buildings in common

hellip in a state of Nature the one thing a man cannot appropriate to himself and make hisown is land and whatever is so fixed to the land that he cannot conceal it anywhere orcarry it away where he pleases Thus the land and whatever is fixed to it in the way wehave described is especially the public property of the commonwealth that is of allthose who by their united strength can claim it or of him to whom all have delegated thepower to claim it

To state the argument differently since rights are the same as powers no individual has a naturalright to appropriate privately the land or any of its fixed structures because none has the powernecessary to do so The only response an individual can make to incursions by a more powerfulperson or group of people is flight in which he must leave the land and its buildings behind It is

only by entering into a community in which the strength of each is combined for the purpose ofdefense that people can effectively possess fixed property but they do so as a members of thecommunity rather than as an separate individuals According to Spinozarsquos theory of rights onlythe community has the right to own the land and its structures because only the community hasthe required power

The communal ownership of land houses and other buildings is a version of the secondcommunist practice on our list of which Hutterite joint ownership is the most developedhistorical example When adopted by a polity rather than a small community though thepractice has an added advantage Under those circumstances communal possession of fixedproperty eliminates the need for taxes except in time of war What takes their place is ageneration of revenue pegged to wealth since the members of society who are able to rent themost expensive and largest amounts of communal property will obviously pay the most in rentIn this way the form of communal ownership of land and buildings that Spinoza recommendsalso acts as a mechanism for the redistribution of wealth

The only communist practice of the Anabaptists that does not find an equivalent inSpinozarsquos writings is that of the cooperative organization of work The absence is related toSpinozarsquos inability to resolve the problem of political agency in the TPT An attempt to mobilizethe multitude on behalf of democratic social change would need to address the organization ofwork in such a way as to alleviate the burden of toil Reducing the number of hours spent inonerous labor is the only way to provide the multitude with the free time necessary to participatein institutionalized democratic politics Along with the redistribution of wealth and thedevelopment of communal property the cooperative reorganization of work would need to beincorporated as a plank in the latent political program that makes its first democratic appearancein the TPT and is extended in a communist direction in the passages from the Ethics and thePolitical Treatise that we have just examined But that would constitute an explicit anddangerous appeal to the multitude as the agent of political and social transformation an appealthat Spinoza consistently rejects It would involve nothing less than the revival of therevolutionary energies of the Peasant War on a new seventeenth-century foundation

In spite of his radicalism Spinoza doubted that revolution was capable of reconstructingsociety and the state in the way revolutionaries wanted In Chapter 18 of the TPT he takes aposition that is at least on the surface opposed to revolution or any attempt to change the formof the state fundamentally The context is a discussion of the transition from the early Hebrewcommonwealth in which the people held sovereignty to the rule of kings Spinoza tells us thatthe first period saw only a single civil war and concluded with a compassion for the vanquishedthat resulted in lasting peace By contrast the period of kings was marred by multiple warswaged only for the glory of the rulers and involved the massacre of hundreds of thousandsDuring the first period few prophets arose to rebuke the Jews while a great many emergedduring the time of the monarchies From this example Spinoza reasons that it is fatal for peopleaccustomed to popular sovereignty and governed by settled laws to adopt a new monarchicalform of government On the one hand they will be unable to tolerate the arbitrary exercise ofpower by a single individual while on the other the new monarch will be compelled to abolishthe existing laws because they did not originate by his own authority But it is just as dangerousaccording to Spinoza for the subjects of a monarch to attempt his replacement with popular ruleThis is because a popular revolution must advance to the point where it annihilates the king thekingrsquos family and the friends of the king in order to prevent the restoration of royal power But inthe process the revolutionary authority must assume a power even more draconian then thatpreviously exercised by the king In addition having committed regicide the new popularauthority faces the danger that it will fall victim to its own precedent For this reason as well andin the interest of survival it must wield power more repressively than the deposed sovereignSpinoza illustrates his point with reference to the English revolution which eliminated themonarch Charles I only to replace him with the Lord Protector Cromwell who was monarch inall but name and more repressive than Charles

Spinozarsquos point seems unassailable especially since the pattern he describes in the caseof the English Revolution repeated itself over the course of the next three centuries in the French

and Russian Revolutions It is at least arguable that Napoleon if not Robespierre was a newLouis XVI and Stalin a new Tsar even if this understates the more fundamental social changesthat resulted form the two revolutions Still Spinoza does not absolutely proscribe therevolutionary overthrow of a tyrannical government but says instead that there is a great dangerin making the attempt Besides his analysis of the conditions necessary for retaining sovereigntydoes not leave the decision about whether to engage in revolution up to militants He argues thatno state can survive that creates mass indignation in its people and this is precisely theunavoidable result of tyrannical government Spinozarsquos real purpose in Chapter 18 is to opposethe Orangist-Calvinist project of replacing the Dutch Republic with a monarchy ldquoAs for theEstates of Hollandrdquo he writes ldquoas far as we know they never had kings but counts to whom theright of sovereignty was never transferredrdquo His point is that the Dutch War of Independenceagainst Spain was justified because it restored the sovereignty of the people against the attemptby the Spanish ldquocountrdquo (King Philip II) to abolish it However any attempt to replace theRepublic with a monarchy would change the form of the state disastrously by divesting thepeople of their former rights

When Spinoza wrote his treatise the only revolutionary forces that existed were on theRight The danger he warns about in Chapter 18 of the TPT did indeed come to pass only oneyear after his letter to Jelles In 1672 a Calvinist-Orangist mob hacked Johan De Witt and hisbrother Cornelius to death at a time when Holland was invaded by the French army Streetorators stirred up the mob by claiming that the invasion was the result of the brothersrsquo treason Inthe aftermath of the murders William III prince of Orange was elevated to the position ofstadtholder of Holland Although William went on to become King of England he stopped shortof claiming a Dutch throne However in actuality he substituted his own power for much of thatwhich had belonged to the Estates General while the Reformed Church gained considerableinfluence in Dutch government According to a story made famous by Spinozarsquos earliestbiographer Johannes Colerus when the De Witt brothers were murdered Spinozarsquos landlordthwarted his attempt to go the site of the assassinations where the bodies of the brothers werestill on gruesome display in order to plant a sign reading Ultimi Barbarorum (the ultimatebarbarians) In this way the landlord undoubtedly saved the philosopherrsquos life It was the onlytime we know of when the mature Spinoza gave in to his passive affects in a significant way

There is a passage in Chapter 18 of the TPT that uncannily anticipates the murders

Tyranny is most violent where individual beliefs which are unalienable rights areregarded as criminal Indeed in such circumstances the anger of the common people[plebis] is usually the greatest tyrant of allhellip the vilest hypocrites urged on by that samefury which they call zeal for Gods law have everywhere persecuted men whoseblameless character and distinguished qualities have excited the hostility of the commonpeople [plebi] publicly denouncing their beliefs and inflaming the savage multitudersquos[multitudinem] anger against them

Spinoza was the first political philosopher who grappled with the problem of a mass-

based politics of the Right The problem would occur again with the fascist movements of the1920s and 1930s and with the return of the rightwing religious fundamentalisms of our own dayndash Jewish Christian Muslim and Hindu It is not surprising that he failed to solve the problemdefinitively since it continues to remain unsolved The remarkable thing about Spinoza thoughis not that he was skeptical about the liberatory possibilities of revolution by the masses but thathe defended the idea of a popular democracy nonetheless And this he continued to do even inthe aftermath of the De Witt murders In his work on the Political Treatise in the final year of hislife Spinoza developed a powerful critique of the elitist claim that the multitude are incapable ofgoverning

Yet perhaps our [democratic] suggestions will be received with ridicule by those whorestrict to the common people the faults that are inherent in all mankind saying There

is no moderation in the mob they terrorize unless they are frightened and Thecommon people is either a humble servant or an arrogant master there is no truth orjudgment in itrdquo and the like But all men share in one and the same nature it is powerand culture that mislead us with the result that when two men do the same thing weoften say that it is permissible for the one to do it and not the other not because of anydifference in the thing done but in the doer hellipThen again There is no moderation inthe mob they terrorize unless they are frightened For freedom and slavery do not gowell together Finally that there is no truth or judgment in the common people is notsurprising since the important affairs of state are conducted without their knowledgeand from the little that cannot be concealed they can only make conjecturehellip Howeveras we have said all men have the same nature ndash all grow haughty with rule terrorizeunless they are frightened ndash and everywhere truth becomes a casualty through hostilityor servility especially when despotic power is in the hands of one or a few who in trialspay attention not to justice or truth but to the extent of a persons wealth

Surprisingly Spinoza develops this democratic argument while discussing the institutions

appropriate to a monarchy But the key point he makes in the discussion is that a condition ofeffective monarchical rule is expansion of the democratic element within the state in the form ofa sizeable legislative council whose members are drawn from the general population of citizensover the age of fifty On Spinozarsquos view the mistake those who oppose democracy make isassuming that the faults exhibited by the common people ndash such as poor judgment arroganceand hostility ndash belong only to them while they are in fact typical of human beings Actually it iselitist politics that magnifies these all-too-human faults by restricting political power to a limitednumber of people while democratic politics minimizes them through the principle of majorityrule among numerous decision-makers The reason as we already know is that passions pullpeople in different directions making it nearly impossible for the members of a large council toagree on a common position unless they make decisions based not on passion but an idea of thecommon good On Spinozarsquos view it is when government is in the hands of a single person oronly a few people that the dangers the critics of democracy attribute to the common people are infact the greatest

Spinoza also argues against the claim that the common people are not qualified to makepolitical decisions because they lack the necessary education or degree of intellect There is noone he says who has been engaged in an occupation until the age of fifty who lacksunderstanding of his sphere of work ldquoevery man is reasonably competent and sagacious inmatters in which he has been long and attentively engagedrdquo So each is qualified at least to giveadvice in the kingrsquos council concerning his own business especially if given the time necessaryto reflect on the matter under discussion

Most of all the plebs are the group best suited to serving on the council because theirinterest is that of society as a whole ldquoHence it follows that counselors must necessarily beappointed whose private fortune and advantage depend on the general welfare and the peace ofallrdquo For example Spinoza emphasizes the idea that the common people have the highest stake inavoiding war or concluding an existing war with a settlement that brings lasting peace Thereason is they are ones who bear the heaviest burdens of war Unlike the wealthy well-bornmembers of society it is the common person whose occupation is most likely to be interrupted itis his taxes that are raised to onerous levels and it is his son who dies Thus the common interestof society in peace is best served not by a wealthy or educated elite but rather by those whohave the most to lose from war

At the end of the long paragraph defending popular power quoted above Spinozaconnects the question of who holds power within the state to that of who owns property Truthand justice he says are casualties in states where power is held by one person or a handful ofpeople who conduct courtroom trials that favor the rich The implication is that elitist politicalpower and ownership of wealth are intrinsically connected One of the reasons Spinozarecommends public ownership of land and buildings in a monarchy is to prevent the rise of aclass of wealthy landowners with interests different than those of the rest of society Under the

conditions of common ownership ldquothe greatest part of the council will generally have one andthe same attitude of mind towards their common interests and peaceful activitieshelliprdquo And yethaving gone this far he has trouble imagining a state where fixed property is owned collectivelyin which the actually existing multitude holds power The peasants artisans and urban poor whoconstitute the common people of the United Provinces drop out of the picture in the democratic-communist monarchy he describes and nearly everyone makes his living by selling merchandiseor lending money to countrymen ldquoall will have to make a living by engaging in trade or bylending money to their fellow citizensrdquo He seems to assume that the collectivization of land andfixed property would eliminate the occupations of peasant and artisan leaving trade and loaningat interest the only remaining possibilities of work But that of course is not true The fact thatpeople would have to rent farm land would not prevent them from farming any more than theneed to rent workshops in the cities and towns would prevent artisans from plying their tradesBut Spinoza finds the idea of a commonwealth based on commercial enterprise politicallyappealing This is because he regards commercial occupations as contributing to harmony andpeace since he claims they establish connections between people that further the interests of allwhile those who engage in them prosper only in peacetime Both of these assumptions are asquestionable as the expectation that non-commercial occupations will die out After all even inSpinozarsquos day colonialism and the struggle for colonies between imperialist states led to warsbetween the great powers including the United Provinces not to mention the military and otherforms of violence involved in subjugating the colonies The East India Company was not exactlya force for peace What seems to be at work here instead is a failure of social imaginationthough one we may find understandable given the fact that the capitalist economy was still at anearly stage in its development However this may be there is no denying the fact that despite hispowerful arguments in favor of democratic rule and communal property it is still a bourgeoissociety and state that Spinoza envisions

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of what we should not hesitate to call Spinozarsquoscommunism is the critique of private ownership he develops in the Ethics based on his theory ofaffects For him there is a paradox involved in social and political life It stems from the fact thaton the one hand people can survive and develop their capacities only by joining with oneanother in societies and states But on the other hand the necessity of combining with oneanother does not prevent them from seeking their own advantage above that of their fellowsbeing quarrelsome or hateful and erecting obstacles to each otherrsquos happiness Spinoza identifiesthe reason for these deep-rooted problems of social coexistence in Part IV Proposition 35 of theEthics ldquoInsofar as men are assailed by emotions that are passive they can be contrary to oneanotherrdquo Emotions are states of the body characterized by a transition from a lower degree of thepower to exist and act (conatus) to a higher one or conversely from a higher degree to a lowerone The first transition is the affect of joy while the second is that of sadness Passive emotionsare caused by an object external to the body or more precisely external to its essential natureSpinoza conceives of that nature as a specific proportion of motion-and-rest that the parts of thebody exhibit in relation to one another While joy is an increase in our capacity to preserve theproportion of motion-and-rest essential to our body (ie to exist and act as we do) sadness is adecrease in that capacity The political problem created by the passive emotions is that evenwhen they are joyful they are not under the control of the person who experiences themMoreover different people are affected by the same external object in different ways because theparts of their bodies and their proportionate relations of motion-and rest-differ The same objectmay elicit anger in one person and pity in another or love in one and hatred in another and soon And because people differ in their emotional reactions to the same things they also differ inthe judgments they frame on the basis of these reactions What one person praises anotherperson blames what one regards as fearless another believes to be timid etc Finally sincepeople act upon their judgments seeking to foster what they judge to be good and destroy whatthey judge to be bad their differing judgments can result in actions that are in conflict with oneanother In short ldquoinsofar as they are assailed by passive emotions [people] can be contrary toone anotherrdquo

In Proposition 34 Spinoza gives an example of the contrariety caused by the passiveaffects Suppose Peter has sole possession of something Paul loves Deprivation of the loved

object causes sadness in Paul with the idea of Peter as its cause In accordance with Spinozarsquosdefinition of hatred Paul will hate Peter and therefore seek to injure or destroy him in order toremove the cause of his Paulrsquos sadness Spinoza says that this example may seem wrong becausePaul and Peter appear to be contrary to one another because of something they share ndash ie theirlove for the thing Peter possesses But that is not the case Paul has an image of himself aslacking the loved object while Peter has an image of himself as possessing the loved object Sothey in fact differ from one another by virtue of the different images they have rather than bypossessing something in common It is clear from the example that the root of this contrariety ndashie this enmity ndash between Paul and Peter is the fact that the object can be possessed by only oneof them so that what one has the other must lack The difficulty with private property is that it isexclusive to the one who possesses it which means that what I experience as possession othersexperience as deprivation It may seem that there is no problem if other people are indifferent tothe thing I possess However in accordance with Spinozarsquos theory of the imitation of affects themere fact that I love the thing I own other things being equal will cause you to love it as wellMy exclusive possession of the thing will therefore cause sadness in you that takes the form ofhatred or more precisely the kind of hatred called envy which involves pain at the good fortuneof another ldquohuman nature is in general so constituted that men pity the unfortunate and envy thefortunate in the latter case with a hatred proportionate to their love of what they think anotherpossessesrdquo

Common Possession Friendship and Philosophy

In the Ethics Spinoza does not follow his analysis of the antagonisms of private property

by considering the collective possession of material goods (although he does advocateredistribution of wealth to the poor in Part 4 as we have seen) But the theme of commonpossession figures large in the book anyway in his treatment of the intellectual love of God Inorder to understand the connection between common possession and amor Dei intellectualis itwill be necessary to engage in a detailed analysis of Spinozarsquos metaphysics We will begin thattask in earnest in the next chapter At this point we will simply introduce the theme byexamining the relationship between friendship and common possession in the letter to Jelles andsome related writings

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo unlike the similar passages fromActs has its provenance among philosophers Spinoza mistakenly attributes it to Thales but itoccurs in Platorsquos Phaedrus and Laws and is present though not in so many words in thediscussion in the Republic of common ownership of property by the guardian class Thetradition cited by Erasmus that traces the proverb back to Pythagoras is plausible when weconsider the influence the Pythagorean community in Sicily had on Plato in the aftermath ofSocratesrsquo death Erasmus sees the supposed use of a common fund by the Pythagoreans as ananticipation of the similar practice in Acts But Spinozarsquos approach is different What interestshim in the letter is common ownership not as a religious practice but as a matter of thephilosopherrsquos relation to the world Remember the deductive consequences of the proverb sinceall things are in common among friends everything belongs to the wise because the wise arefriends of the gods and all things belong to the gods But what does it mean to say that the wiseare friends of the gods

Although Spinoza uses the word ldquofriendshiprdquo often in his writings he never supplies aformal definition However we can reconstruct the wordrsquos meaning from the contexts in whichhe uses it So for example Proposition 35 of Part III of the Ethics reads

If anyone thinks that there is between the object of his love and another person the sameor a more intimate bond of friendship than there was between them when he alone usedto possess the object loved he will be affected with hatred toward the object loved andwill envy his rival

According to the proposition friendship is an intimate bond between a person and the

object he loves I hate an object of love that I alone once possessed when it wounds my vanity byloving someone else more than me So the object of love must be capable of loving whichmeans that the bond of friendship is a relation of reciprocal love between persons Nowaccording to Spinoza I love something when I have the idea of that thing as the cause of myexperience of joy Joy is an increase in conatus which Spinoza defines as the tendency to persistin being or equivalently the ability to exist and act So friendship is a relation in which Iidentify the other person as the cause of an increase in my conatus and the other personidentifies me as the cause of a similar increase in his or hers Two things each of which causesan increase in the ability to exist and act of the other are said by Spinoza to be in harmony Sincetwo entities in harmony have more combined power than either does singly it is to the advantageof each to be in harmony with the other There is even greater advantage in entering intoharmonious connection with a third individual and the greatest advantage in combining with asmany individuals as possible This is a universal metaphysical principle For example it pertainsjust as much to chemical combination or herding among animals as it does to social relationsbetween people In the case of human relationships it is the fundamental basis of politics orrather one of its two bases the other one being the tendency human beings have to conflict withone another When the state is functioning well it involves not a random collection ofindividuals and certainly not the war of each against all but a group whose members are boundto one another by friendship the human form of harmony Thus for Spinoza friendship is apolitical virtue as it was for Plato and Aristotle

The opposite of friendship is enmity That person is my enemy whom I regard as thecause of my sadness or pain which is the same as saying the cause of a decrease in my abilityto exist and act Like friendship enmity is a reciprocal relationship If I identify you as the causeof my sadness I will seek to injure or eliminate you But that means I will be identified in yourmind as the cause of your sadness Enmity is a relation of reciprocal hatred just as friendship is arelation of reciprocal love Just as there is harmony between friends there is discord betweenenemies The fundamental task of a rational politics is easy to state it is to extend and intensifyfriendship and to reduce and mollify enmity

We have already seen that Spinoza identifies solidarity (generositas) as one of the twoforms of strength of mind (fortitudo) which is the virtue that belongs to the exercise of theintellect Solidarity is the desire to assist others and foster friendship on the basis of reason aloneThe friendship fostered by solidarity is a bond of active love The love of friends for one anotheris active when each person who loves is the adequate cause of his or her love To say that theperson is the adequate cause means that the cause of love is internal to the person who feels it inother words that the love is self-generated Active love differs from passive love in that thecause of passive love is at least partially something that exists outside the person who has theemotion The problem with passive love is that it need not be constant If the bodily dispositionof the person changes in a particular way then the object of erstwhile love will have a differentemotional effect Passive love can change into boredom or indifference or even hatred This isnot possible in the case of active love because it is self-generated Since love involves theexperience of joy no one actively abandons it

There seems to be something odd about the idea of a love between persons that isinternally generated by each of the partners in the relationship Is it not the case that part of theessence of love is the fact that the object of my love is the cause of my love Without denyingthis Spinoza identifies two forms of love that are self-generated in the Ethics One is myintellectual love of God It is indeed true that God is the cause of my love but only insofar as myintellect is part of the infinite intellect of God Thus the object that causes my love - ie God - isinternal to my mind and conversely my mind is internal to it Such reciprocal internality ndash hardas it is to visualize ndash is what Spinoza means by immanence God he tells us is the immanentcause of everything that exists Nothing can exist apart from God while God expresses himselfin all of the things that exist My love of God and Gods love of himself are one and the samebecause Godrsquos intellect is immanent in mine The second form of self-generated love is the

friendship that exists between me and others who love God through the exercise of the intellectThe reason is that the joy I feel in loving God is by the imitation of affects augmented by thejoy you feel in loving God But your love as well as mine is joy caused by the same immanentbeing Another way of saying this is that your intellect and mine are parts (ie finiteexpressions) of the infinite intellect of God Thus the relationship between friends who are boundtogether by the common exercise of the intellect and the love of God that flows from it is basedon an internal bond an internal object and cause of love In this kind of love you and I as itwere discover one another internally You are inside of me and I am inside of you Thus whenyou augment my love and I augment yours it is Gods power as the intellect immanent in us boththat causes the augmentation even though we remain finite individual beings In this state ofaffairs which is admittedly difficult to grasp we can see the rational meaning of the command tolove God by loving the neighbor In intellectual love God not insofar as he is infinite butinsofar as he expresses himself in my finite intellect loves God as he expresses himself in yourfinite intellect

For Spinoza the exercise of the intellect is very different than our ordinary experience ofthe world In the course of ordinary experience we encounter objects in a way that appearshaphazard disordered and incomplete This is so first of all because our encounters are part ofan infinitely complex chain of natural causes and effects of which we know only very limitedparts In addition our experience of objects has as much to do with the condition our bodies arein when we encounter them as it does with the nature of the objects themselves By contrast inexercising the intellect we arrange our ideas in an intelligible pattern that is internal to the mindand entirely different than the images we accumulate through sensory experience The ideas arean expression of our power while the images result from our hapless deliverance to chanceEmotions caused by objects we encounter in the course of ordinary experience are externallydetermined and therefore passive while emotions caused by acts of intellectual comprehensionare internally generated and therefore active That is why love as an active emotion has its originin the exercise of the intellect and the most satisfying form of friendship is based on thereciprocal experience of such love In a letter to Willem van Blyenberg Spinoza provides themost complete description of this kind of friendship to be found in his writings

For my part of all things that are not under my control what I most value is to enterinto a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth For I believe that such a lovingrelationship affords us a serenity surpassing any other boon in the whole wide worldThe love that such men bear to one another grounded as it is in the love that each hasfor knowledge of truth is as unshakable as is the acceptance of truth once it has beenperceived It is moreover the highest source of happiness to be found in things notunder our command for truth more than anything else has the power to effect a closeunion between different sentiments and dispositions

Spinoza says that a friendship based on the love of truth is not under our control But how

can that be if intellectual friendship involves a form of love internally generated by each friendIt would seem that the love we generate through the exercise of the intellect is fully under ourcontrol Spinoza however is referring to the fact that we are able to become friends only withpeople we actually meet which is something that occurs in the course of ordinary haphazarddisordered experience To a large extent our friendships are a matter of chance By way ofillustrating this point it turned out that Spinoza decided his initial judgment of Blyenberg wasmistaken He broke off their correspondence when he realized that the infinite chain of causesand effects had brought his way not a lover of truth but a dogmatic worshipper of the ldquopaperand inkrdquo of the Bible

People create commonwealths because the power of each to exist and act is increased byall others who transfer their rights to the sovereign For reasons we have already considered thepolitical bond is one of friendship ldquoIt is of the first importance to men to establish closerelationships and to bind themselves together with such ties as may most effectively unite theminto one body and as an absolute rule to act in such a way as serves to strengthen friendshiprdquo If

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

Many were investors in the Dutch East India Company and many made their fortunes byimporting goods from the colonies In general the regents were from the wealthiest families inthe Netherlands Thus from 1650 to 1672 state power in the United Provinces including thenational legislature the States General was in the hands of the haute bourgeoisie The House ofOrange represented the class of rural aristocratic landowners but it also had a mass base ofsupport in the common people There are two reasons for this First the peasants artisans wage-workers and small retail merchants who comprised the common people were skeptical that theirinterests were well-served by the wealthy regents The second reason is that except in theCatholic parts of the Netherlands the common people were overwhelmingly Counter-Remonstrants The alliance of the House of Orange with the Reform Church ensured it a massbase that was indispensable for its aspirations to monarchical rule

By family background and friendships that appear to have included Johan De Witt andhis brother Cornelius as well as by philosophical principle Spinoza was inclined to support theRepublic against the alliance of Orangists and Counter-Remonstrants But he also understoodthat the weakness of the Republic lay in the fact that the regents who dominated it did not have amass base of support As nouveau riche and unlike the nobility they had no customaryobligations to the lower classes and little contact with them even as employers since wholesalemerchants bankers and stock traders had need for only a handful of employees As their wealthgrew to sometimes fabulous proportions the regents led lives that were increasingly isolatedfrom the rest of society The growing number of children from wealthy bourgeois families whoreceived a university education and the international connections that came from engaging intrade and finance gave the regents and their social milieu a cosmopolitan orientation They wereeasy targets for Dutch nationalism which was a powerful influence among the common peopleand championed by the House of Orange which had played a leading role in the war of nationalliberation from Spain But most of all the allegiance of the common people to the conservativeCalvinism of the Reform Church was an acute problem for the regents and their Republic ForCounter-Remonstrant Calvinism was without any question the most powerful ideological forcein the United Provinces of the seventeenth century The extensive network of parish churchesprovided the only education the common people received which was of course strictly religiousin character Its ministers knew the families in their congregations and were able to offer themadvice and spiritual support as well as charity in difficult times And every Sunday they had acaptive audience for preaching that easily shaded into political speech-making advocating thecensorship of this or that book condemning free-thinking intellectuals (Spinoza was certainlyamong them) or raking the regents over the coals Johan de Witt was the topic of more than afew fiery sermons

The antagonism between the Reform Church and the Republic was exceedinglydangerous because the Church was an ideological force with great influence on popular thinkingThe disastrous consequences of the split between Church and State had an important lesson toteach namely that the modern state needed to control the dominant ideological apparatus insociety in order to secure its rule Spinoza was the first philosopher to make this point And hewas also the first to show that the state could accomplish that task while granting its citizensfreedom of thought and expression In that respect it was Spinoza not Locke who was the mostimportant philosophical forerunner of the modern liberal republic precisely because headdressed the problem that Locke avoided with his advocacy of the ldquoseparation of church andstaterdquo As we will see Spinoza argued for state control of public religion with full freedom ofprivate worship But while the republic Spinoza wanted to see in the United Provinces wasliberal in the sense that it would protect individual freedom of thought and expression it wentwell beyond the liberal tradition by making the common people sovereign It would have beendemocratic ndash had it actually existed ndash in a far more radical sense than any of the so-calledldquoliberal democraciesrdquo that have taken root in the world since Spinoza wrote the TractatusTheologico-Politicus

In the TPT then Spinoza addresses himself to the most important political problem ofthe day namely how to reconcile religion and the Dutch Republic He does this by establishing adistinction between true religion and superstition It would make sense to call superstition a kindof disease of the mind were it not so much a part of the ordinary human condition Spinoza

likens it to hallucination and frenzy It is a mental state that involves a false even absurdconception of the world as a response to fears and hopes Spinoza is a strict determinist Thecourse of events is a chain of causes and effects in which each effect is the necessaryconsequence of the cause or confluence of causes that immediately precedes it But the chain ofcauses and effects is much too complex for the human mind to comprehend at least in any detailFear and hope stem from our ignorance concerning the future and from our desire to controlevents that are beyond our capacity to influence through realistic action ie through effectiveintervention in real causal sequences Superstition involves a false anthropomorphic conceptionof the divine The superstitious person regards God or the gods as possessing the same emotionsas human beings In order to influence the outcome of events it is necessary to placate divineanger or flatter the deity or make sacrifices to it Out of this spurious need the professions ofsoothsayer priest and minister arise people who make their living by interpreting the divineemotions responsible for difficult circumstances prescribing remedial essentially magicalactions and interceding with God or the gods on behalf of those who pay for their services Whatmakes superstition so difficult to expunge is the fact that it originates not only from ignorancebut from human misery In particular that is the reason the common people are so wedded tosuperstition or so says Spinoza They are ldquoeverywhere at the same level of miseryrdquo

Spinoza develops a conception of true religion in contrast with superstition asessentially moral in character That is the purpose of the detailed Biblical exegesis that comprisesthree-quarters of the TPT In the hands of the professional caste of church officials the Bible isthe most potent instrument of superstition They say it contains the answer to every questionworth asking even the questions philosophers and scientists raise It is supposed to harborsecrets and mysteries that only specialists can decipher It becomes an object of idolatry in thatpeople come to ldquoworship paper and ink rather than the word of Godrdquo But that word is writtenfirst of all in the human heart a Socinian doctrine Spinoza fully endorses Unlike the ldquolettersrdquo ofthe Bible the inwardly revealed word is not subject to the distortions or corruptions of textualtransmission over the course of centuries

There is a core of religious truth in the Bible that accords with the inner light but it hasnothing to do with superstition More broadly it must be distinguished from the beliefs that wereprevalent at the times its various books were written These include the beliefs of the prophets aswell as those of the common people who received their message The prophets were notaccomplished in philosophy or science and it would be a mistake to look for these disciplinesbetween the covers of the Bible Spinoza lists three characteristics that distinguished the prophetsfrom other people and none of them involve intellectual excellence a vivid and activeimagination the experience of a sign and a heart set on what is just and good Of these the lastis the most important The story of the creation of Adam and Eve and the events that transpire inthe Garden of Eden is a parable rather than a record of historical fact Joshua could not havestopped the sun in its motion through the sky because the sun does not revolve around the earthThe prophets disagreed with one another so that there is no possibility of a logically consistentreading of the Bible But none of this really matters In an audacious move Spinoza argues thatwe must neither add nor subtract anything from the Bible remaining content what it clearlyconveys We must read it ldquoliterallyrdquo except when there is linguistic evidence of the intentionaluse of metaphor In one sense then Spinoza is a ldquofundamentalistrdquo But he also argues that we arefree to believe or refuse to believe much of what the Bible says because it is ancillary to itsreligious message

The only claim of religion that can be justified on the basis of a proper reading ofScripture is that human beings ought to obey God by treating one another with justice and love(caritas) Although often rendered into English as ldquocharityrdquo caritas includes much more thangiving to those in need The Latin is a translation of the Koine Greek word agape which refersexpansively to the love of God for the human person the love of the person for God and thelove of people for one another as an extension of their love for God that is to say their desire tolove what God loves For Spinoza the Bible is an appeal to the beliefs and imagination of thecommon people by the prophets and apostles the purpose of which is to convey a moral messageso simple that ldquoeven the most sluggish mindrdquo can understand it In dramatic narrative languageand vivid imagery the authors of the Bible try to convince people to obey God by treating other

people with justice and love The purpose of their writing is to elicit obedience not articulatemetaphysical truth From the Bible we learn nothing about what God is or what his relation is tohuman beings or the universe as a whole The Bible conveys a moral truth in the sense that itcommands people to live in the way that is best for human beings In terms of the theory ofspeech acts John Austin developed in the twentieth-century the Biblersquos use of language isperformative rather than constative It is meant to do something rather than to state somethingalthough it implies the assertion that the best life is one in which we treat other people with loveand justice But it presents no arguments in support of that assertion other than that we must livein the way that God commands By contrast the discovery of metaphysical truth and itsexpression in deductive propositional form is the goal of philosophers According to Spinozathen there can be no conflict between philosophy and religion properly understood becausethey are dedicated to entirely different ends ldquobetween faith and theology on the one side andphilosophy on the other there is no relation and no affinityhelliprdquo

The same cannot be said of religion and the state There is indeed a relation between thetwo though it is in danger of degenerating into conflict because they occupy the same terrainboth demand obedience Of course Spinoza has in mind the fraught relationship between theReform Church and the Dutch Republic In an alliance with the House of Orange the Calvinistconsistories sought to alter the character of the state by abolishing the Republic and replacing itwith a monarchy that would make room for the authority of the Reform Church As long as aninfluential church independent of the state is involved in politics (considering its ability toinfluence the actions of thousands of believers) sovereignty is divided But as Hobbes pointsout in Leviathan it is impossible to divide sovereignty without undermining it The first plank inthe political program Spinoza develops in the TPT is that of subordinating the church to the stateThe sovereignty of the state must be absolute and that means that it must extend even toreligious doctrine and the details of public worship

Thus we cannot doubt that in modern times religionbelongs solely to the right of thesovereign No one has the right and power to exercise control over it to choose itsministers to determine and establish the foundations of the church and its doctrine topass judgment on morality and acts of piety to excommunicate or to accept into thechurch and to provide for the poor except by the authority and permission of thesovereign

Since this conclusion provocatively challenges the power of the Calvinist consistories their

violent reaction to the publication of the TPT is perfectly understandable And yet Spinozaargues that regulation of worship by the state ought to be minimized His purpose is not statedomination of religion but preventing religion from dominating the state He agrees withHobbes that sovereignty is absolute or it does not exist at all since a divided sovereignty isinherently unstable But he also agrees with Machiavelli that the state is sovereign only as longas it is able to retain its power There is a logic a psychology and a physics of political powerwhose most fundamental law is that power can sustain itself only when it does not provoke theindignation of the multitude

In the definition Spinoza gives in the Ethics indignation (indignatio) is hatred towardone who has injured another either someone we love or someone for whom we feel no emotionbut believe to be similar to ourselves It operates through the mechanism of the imitation ofaffects I imitate ndash ie empathetically feel ndash the emotions of those with whom I identify so that Iexperience harm to the other person as harm to myself Since hatred is pain along with the ideaof an external cause my imitation of the suffering of someone whom the sovereign has harmed isequivalent to my hatred of the sovereign The consequence of my hatred is a desire to injure thesovereign in order to diminish or destroy the perceived cause of pain If fear of the consequencesof defying the sovereignrsquos command is transformed into mass indignation then the authority torule disintegrates ldquohellip to slaughter subjects to despoil them to ravish maidens and the like turnsfear into indignation and consequently the civil order into a condition of warrdquo

One certain way to provoke indignation is for the sovereign to tell people what they must

believe and what they are allowed to say Indignation is inevitable if the state attempts to controlthought and expression not only because such attempts harm the multitude but also becausethey are futile Spinoza recognizes that it is possible for the state to deceive its citizens and toeffect their beliefs in other ways But he also assets that no state has the power to suspend thelaws of human nature by for example ordering its people to free themselves from anger to hatethose who have benefited them or to regard as false what they believe to be true Any attempt toexercise power in this fashion provokes indignation in part because of the emptiness of thepower it vainly seeks to assert All that it demonstrates is the sovereignrsquos weakness therebyencouraging the further spread of indignation It also makes enemies of those who refuse to hidetheir deepest beliefs and honors those who lie about what they believe which is both unjust tothose falsely reviled and dangerous to the state because it encourages duplicity and corruption inthose who hold political office Far from protecting the state the attempt to control thought andexpression undermines it

The remarkable thing about the theory of politics Spinoza develops in the TPT is that itderives liberal conclusions from absolutist premises The power of the state is absolute but it isnonetheless fragile No state Spinoza says has more to fear from external enemies than it doesfrom its own people Polices that avoid or minimize indignation are vital to its health Howeverwhile he advocates full freedom of thought and expression as necessary to preserving thepolitical community Spinoza draws the line at action which comes under the province of lawand command After all what else could sovereignty mean but the power to command orprohibit action Action includes such functions of a church as public worship and the provisionof charity both of which for this reason are appropriate objects of state control Most of allcivil peace requires the prohibition of church interference with government which would reversethe proper order of obedience and command Thus Spinoza identifies two conditions of stablepolitical power freedom of thought and expression and the iron will of the state to brook nochallenge to its sovereign authority over action especially from organized religion

If Spinozarsquos program for political reform is liberal it is liberalism of a unique kindUnlike the main currents in the liberal tradition it is based on neither a theory of rights nor oneof individual utility The concept of rights has no normative role to play in the TPT becauseSpinoza insists that rights are the same as powers For example there is no right of free speechunless there is the effective power to speak freely Thus the right cannot function as a normbecause it has no reality until it actually exists and whether or not it exists depends upon thebalance of political forces Moreover although the state is necessary to security and civil peaceno one chooses to create it in order to maximize his or her utility People are driven by self-interest but this is true no matter what their conditions of life happen to be Spinoza makes muchof the irrefutable but neglected point that people do not have the ability to survive withoutcombining their power with that of others There is no possible scenario in which isolatedindividuals choose for or against political organization in the interest of maximizing their utilityfor the simple reason that there are no isolated individuals

It is true that Spinoza argues that democracy is the only ldquonaturalrdquo form of governmentbecause it preserves collectively the right to make decisions that each person enjoys individuallyin the ldquostate of naturerdquo For this reason it is the form of government most compatible withfreedom But the idea of a state of nature that precedes political organization and the associatedidea of natural rights are no more than hypothetical because it is precisely in a state of naturethat people would be unable to protect their rights against the aggression of others But forSpinoza this is the same as saying that these rights do not exist The idea of natural rights in apre-political condition is purely notional The only way to enjoy rights effectively ndash which is tosay the only way to exercise the powers they involve ndash is to entrust them to a sovereign authoritycapable of replacing unbridled aggression with the rule of law If ever there were a socialcontract theorist who employed the concept of the state of nature as an hypothesis in a thoughtexperiment without taking the myth of an original condition seriously it is Spinoza The idea thatdemocracy is the most natural form of government simply means that it comes closest to thehypothetical freedom of the state of nature In a democracy people retain their power to decidewhat actions to take but as members of the sovereign authority ndash ie as citizens ndash while theyare bound as subjects to obey the laws that result from their collective deliberations ldquoIn a

democratic state nobody transfers his natural right to another so completely that thereafter he isnot to be consulted he transfers it to the majority of the entire community of which he is partrdquo

In addition to the claim of naturalism in his advocacy of democracy in the TPT Spinozaargues that democratic governments are less prone to irrationality than monarchical oraristocratic ones A large number of people is less likely to endorse the same irrational decisionthan a small council (aristocracy) or a single person (monarchy) ldquohellip In a democracy there is lessdanger of an assembly behaving unreasonably for it is practically impossible for the majority ofa single assembly if it is of some size to agree on the same piece of follyrdquo The sentence thatfollows the one just quoted throws some light on what ldquothe same piece of follyrdquo means byreferring to ldquothe follies of appetiterdquo Spinozarsquos claim is that a democratic state is more rationalthan the alternatives in that it does the best job avoiding the foolish decisions people make whenled by their appetites

Spinoza does not provide an argument in support of this claim in the TPT but in thePolitical Treatise which he began to write two years later there is a passage that that helpscorrect the omission It concerns the wisdom of establishing a governing council with a largenumber of members in an aristocratic state Although an aristocracy excludes the commonpeople from political power reserving it for an elite Spinoza argues that it is capable ofguaranteeing liberties similar to those of democratic government provided that the members ofits governing council are sufficiently numerous

The fact that sovereignty is conferred absolutely on the council need not give thecommon people [plebi] any reason to fear oppressive slavery at its hands For when acouncil is so large its will is determined by reason rather than mere caprice becauselusts [libidine] draw men asunder and it is only when they have as their objective whatis honorable or at least appears so that they can be guided as if by one mind

Spinozarsquos argument is more complicated than a quick reading might indicate It is

impossible he claims for the members of a large council to come to agreement on the basis oftheir libidine because these affects draw them in different and incompatible directions Whilelibidine generally refers to sexual appetites Spinoza uses the word in this context to refer to thefull range of disreputable passions The corresponding point in the TPT is that it is ldquopracticallyimpossiblerdquo for the members of the democratic council to endorse the same ldquopiece of follyrdquo Inorder to reach agreement the members of the governing council in an aristocratic state must takeas their goal ldquowhat is honorable or at least appears sordquo In the Ethics Spinoza defines thehonorable (honestum) as ldquowhat is praised by men who live by the guidance of reasonrdquo and hemakes it clear that what such men praise is ldquothe desire to establish friendshiprdquo In accordancewith this definition the objective of the council members in an aristocracy is not so much to actwith reason as to be regarded by the reasonable as acting with reason ie as promotingfriendship That is why they are able to reach agreement even when their objective appears to behonorable although it is not But with whom do they wish to be or appear to be friends SinceSpinoza intends his argument to allay the fear of the plebs it seems obvious that it is theirfriendship that the council members seek But why would aristocrats be interested in makingfriends with commoners Although Spinoza does not tell us why in this passage the answer canbe found elsewhere in the Political Treatise The reason that the council members must seek thefriendship of the common people is that aristocratic government is not nor can it be absolute inthe full sense of the word in other words it cannot hold a complete monopoly on powerAlthough they have no institutional role in an aristocratic regime the common people retain thepower to undermine state authority by refusing to obey it or even by waging war against it Therulers recognize that power in the fear with which they regard the masses

In the Introduction to the Political Treatise Spinoza dissociates himself from the rosyview of human nature held by the authors of utopias In order to develop a political philosophythat is useful in the world of actual human affairs it is necessary to design institutions inaccordance with which those in government realize the rational end of politics ndash ie the common

good ndash whether or not that is their intention The desire of the members of the council to be seenas seeking the friendship of the masses ensures the rationality of the formerrsquos decisions becauseit causes them to seek the common good even if they do so from fear rather than dedication toreason One might object that appearing to seek the friendship of the masses entails only that thecouncil appear to seek the common good not that it actually does so But it is not possible for thecouncil to neglect the common interest over the long run without dire consequences unless weassume that the masses are so benighted that they are unable to discern the consistent violation oftheir interests The appearance and reality of seeking the friendship of the masses areindistinguishable as proved nearly two hundred years later by a theorem of Abraham LincolnsIt is possible to fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the timebut not all of the people all of the time If that theorem were not true then there would be nolimit to the power of tyrants while Spinoza is fond of quoting Tacitus that tyrannies never lastlong Once again the reason for their inevitable downfall is the indignation they provokethrough the harm they cause to the interests of the multitude

Although Spinoza does not make the point explicitly it is easy to see that a democraticcouncil does not require the same concern with the honorable as an aristocratic one because fearof the masses has no role to play in a democracy Since the common people who are the vastmajority of society are empowered to make decisions they have no need to evoke fear indecision-makers different than themselves in order to protect their own interests Thus in the caseof a democratic council the impossibility of a large number of people agreeing on ldquothe samepiece of follyrdquo is enough to secure political rationality ie the discovery and implementation ofthe common good

An implication of Spinozarsquos emphasis on the affinity between democracy and reason isthat democracy is a kind school for developing rationality The need to make and assess publicarguments about the common good requires clarity of thought and some understanding of theprinciples of logical implication In addition while citizens of a democracy agree to obey the lawor decree established by a vote of the majority they retain their freedom of judgment includingthe right to argue in favor of reversing decisions already made Thus there is no point in ademocracy at which citizens must give up their efforts to influence collective decisions andtherefore no point at which rationality becomes irrelevant However reason is not simply ameans of achieving the common good as an external end It is part of the common good forhuman beings and therefore itself one the ends it seeks to achieve The highest good is theintellectual love of God ndash so Spinoza argues in the Ethics ndash which we cannot attain withoutexercising reason Democracy then turns out to be not only the best way of securing thecommon good of the members of a polity but the best way of advancing the ultimate goodappropriate to human beings in general

Spinozarsquos advocacy of democracy was exceedingly radical at a time when monarchy wasthe political norm in Europe and even the oligarchic regent-dominated Dutch Republic waswidely regarded as an ultra-left anomaly But it sits uncomfortably with another aspect of theTPT namely its apparently low opinion of ldquothe multituderdquo (multitudo) In the Introduction to thebook which was written in Latin Spinoza tells his readers that he would prefer that ldquothecommon peoplerdquo (plebs) not read the work since they are incapable of understanding it andlikely to distort its meaning He pictures its members as entirely driven by their passions andincapable of using reason

I know how deeply rooted in the mind are the prejudices embraced under the guise ofpiety I know too that the masses [vulgo] can no more be freed from their superstitionthan from their fears Finally I know that they are unchanging in their obstinacy thatthey are not guided by reason and that their praise and blame is at the mercy of impulse

But this judgment throws into question the affinity between democracy and reason that

Spinoza affirms in the TPT For in order for such an affinity to exist the common people mustbe able to make decisions on the basis of reason Is the negative picture he paints of the masses

in the Introduction to the TPT simply a rhetorical device meant to appeal to the vanity of hiseducated readership It does not seem to be because a similarly low opinion appears again in theEthics and in some of his letters where there is no need to appeal to anyonersquos vanity Instead offunctioning simply as a rhetorical ploy Spinozarsquos generally negative view of the vast majority ofsociety and the positive view he develops in his advocacy of democracy indicate a tension in hispolitics

In the Ethics and TPT Spinoza uses the words vulgus plebs and multitudointerchangeably When any of the three word appears it is usually accompanied by suchqualifiers as ldquoirrationalrdquo ldquoignorantrdquo ldquouneducatedrdquo ldquosuperstitiousrdquo and ldquogoverned by passionsrdquoStill for Spinoza reason is not the possession of a natural elite Rather it is a universally humancapacity whose occurrence among people in developed form is rare Above all the cultivation ofreason requires free time There are two references to this requirement in the TPT that bear onthe ability of the multitude to develop their rational capacities One passage refers to ldquothecommon peoplerdquo as ldquofor the most part knowing nothing of logical reasoning or without leisurefor itrdquo Another refers to Spinozarsquos method of biblical exegesis noting that ldquoour own methoddemands a knowledge of Hebrew for which study the common people can likewise have noleisurerdquo A third passage which we have already referred to is relevant to the relationshipbetween leisure and the cultivation of reason while not mentioning it directly ldquothe multitude arealways at the same level of miseryrdquo Although Spinoza does not specify what he means by thelast statement it is likely that he is referring at least in part to the misery of onerous labor Thepoverty of the multitude demands that they spend most of their time engaged in hard physicalwork and the resulting absence of leisure prevents them from acquiring knowledge anddeveloping rational skills Lacking developed reason it is easy for them to fall under the sway ofthose who manipulate their fears and hopes for their own personal advantage the priestsministers rabbis and other religious officials In Spinozarsquos view fears and hopes make themultitude credulous and willing to accept superstitious beliefs (in divination the ability ofprayer to change the natural course of events the purchase of indulgences etc) that promisecontrol of an uncertain future For clerics the key to power and money is manipulation of thegreat majority of society through the instrument of superstition masked as religion

While the words plebs vulgus and multitudo do not designate a particular social classthey are not free of class reference either Spinoza uses the word plebs much as it was used in theearly Roman Republic to refer to the free subjects of a state who have no right to participate ingovernment Although plebs designates a political status rather than an economic class Spinozais clear that the group it refers to consists largely in those who work with their hands Forexample in the Political Treatise he identifies artisans as an example of the plebs the onlyexample in any of his writings Undoubtedly he would also have included peasants and wageworkers in that category and probably small retail merchants who were also politicallydisenfranchised Patricians by contrast certainly include nobles but may also include at least thewealthier burghers as was the case in the United Provinces Germany and much of the rest ofEurope The word vulgus as Spinoza uses it refers to the same members of society as the wordplebs but with the specific connotation of a lack of education and culture whose most extremeexpression is the unruly and irrational behavior of mobs In fact depending upon the contextvulgus is sometimes best translated as ldquocrowdrdquo or ldquomobrdquo Multitudo means ldquothe manyrdquo Spinozauses it to designate any group with numerous members including for example the simplebodies that make up a chemical substance In the context of political theory he uses the word torefer to the same people who comprise the plebs or vulgus but with the specific connotation ofbeing the vast majority of society Thus plebs vulgus and multitudo have the same referentalthough their principal connotations differ However in Spinozarsquos usage each word tends tobecome a synecdoche for the combined meaning of all three Thus in general the plebs vulgusor multitudo comprise the vast majority of society comprised largely of those who work withtheir hands are denied political rights except in democracies lack culture and education and aregiven to uncouth irrational or unruly behavior

The tension in Spinozarsquos politics between his critical view of the multitude and hisadvocacy of a democratic state in which it is sovereign can be explained by drawing a distinctionbetween the multitude as it is under the conditions of the actually existing Dutch Republic and

the multitude as it could be were Spinozarsquos reforms to be implemented With an uncontrolledReform Church and a Republic dominated by regents who represent the wealthy burghers themultitude has no chancing of shedding its superstitions or developing its rational capacities TheChurch manipulates their hopes and fears through the instrument of superstition and therepublican oligarchs block their participation in political decision-making which is the only waythey can develop rationality on a significant scale The story would be very different however ifthe state were both democratic and prohibited the Church from involvement in politics Twomajor conditions would then exist for the development of reason on a mass scale

The idea of a democracy raises the problem of how people without significant materialresources are to participate in making decisions when they must spend their lives in toil It mightbe thought that the problem can be solved by a universal franchise enabling all citizens to votefor representatives to a legislative assembly and other state offices But even if measures were inplace to prevent the wealthy minority from exercising unequal influence in elected bodiesrepresentative government is not Spinozarsquos idea of democracy Like Plato and Aristotle when heuses the term ldquodemocracyrdquo he has in mind a state such as the Athenian polis in which all adult(male) citizens were empowered to vote directly on legislation and other public matters Spinozamakes this clear in the unfinished chapter on democracy in the Political Treatise

hellipin this state all who are born of citizen parents or on native soil or have done serviceto the commonwealth or are qualified on any other grounds on which the right ofcitizenship is granted by law all I say can lawfully demand for themselves the right tovote in the supreme council and to undertake offices of state nor can they be refusedexcept for crime or dishonor

At a relatively advanced stage in its development the Athenian polis solved the problem

of the multitudersquos participation in government by paying citizens to attend sessions of theAssembly thereby compensating them for missed days of work If Spinoza was aware of theAthenian solution he gives no indication of it in his writings although it is likely that he wouldhave considered the problem of participation in politics by those without leisure in the part of thePolitical Treatise he left unfinished at his death Following the pattern of the completed chapterson monarchy and aristocracy the unfinished chapters on democracy would undoubtedly havespecified the institutional structures and practices necessary to sustain a democratic state In anyevent without something like the Athenian solution the idea of a democratic republic in theUnited Provinces would have been no more than the sort of utopian dream Spinoza rejects in theIntroduction to the Political Treatise

Returning to the earlier work the program for reforming the Dutch Republic that emergesin the TPT has three planks 1) establish state control over the churches as public institutions 2)guarantee freedom of thought expression and private worship and 3) democratize the oligarchicRepublic Although Spinozarsquos book is a work of philosophy it is equally a political interventionin a concrete historical situation a fact that he indicates in his letter to Jelles by referring to theldquocauserdquo he asks his friend to serve by blocking the Dutch translation of the book But in order toact as a political intervention the book must influence the beliefs and through them the actionsof people That raises the question To whom is the TPT addressed Since the decision to write inLatin effectively prevented the multitude from reading the work (which as we have seen wasSpinozarsquos intention) and on the assumption that not many aristocrats were likely to be swayedby its radical arguments the addressee of the book can only have been the educated section ofthe bourgeoisie Since Spinoza was unlikely to sway many conservative Calvinists with hisrationalist conception of religion there were only two groups within the bourgeoisie ndash at leastsome of whose members were capable of reading Latin ndash that the work could effectively addressThe first consists in republicans including the regents who hesitated to support the kind of stateauthority over religion that Spinoza advocated for ideological or pragmatic reasons The secondconsists in Orangists who were liberals in matters of religion and so in conflict with the ReformChurch As odd as it may seem there were a good number of people who fit into the secondcategory Even many of the Collegiantrsquos were loyal to the House of Orange in spite of theirpronounced religious liberalism

Had the TPTrsquos program been limited to its first two planks ndash state control of the churchesand freedom of thought and expression ndash it would have been politically coherent But where doesthe idea of democratizing the United Provinces fit into this picture Neither bourgeoisrepublicans nor religious liberals were apt to be sympathetic to the idea of a democratic republicthat would place power in the hands of the multitude If Spinoza wanted to make an appeal to therepublican and liberal Orangist sections of the bourgeoisie he ought to have been defending theexisting oligarchic Republic against its conservative Calvinist and monarchist enemies ratherthan elaborating an argument for its democratization There is only one audience who wouldhave been sympathetic to that argument namely the peasants artisans wage-workers and smallmerchants who comprised the multitude But that is precisely the readership Spinoza deniedhimself by writing in Latin

And yet Spinoza understood that the only way the Republic could survive in face of thealliance between the Reform Church and the House of Orange was to shift the allegiance of themultitude by winning its support Thus the contradiction in Spinozarsquos program is not a theoreticalflaw but a reflection of the real contradiction involved in the stadtholderless Republic or if youprefer the instability in the balance of social forces that enabled it to exist The Republic couldsurvive only by means of an impossible alliance between the multitude and the regents IfSpinoza erred it was in believing that it was possible to convince the regents to democratize bythe force of his arguments But this was the same as asking them to commit political suicidesince their power on the urban and national levels depended upon their ability to defend theirmonopoly on state offices The only alternative which Spinoza rejected was a popularrevolution that would create a new and radically democratic republic But that republic wouldshare with the existing one no more than the name like the animal dog and the dog star thatSpinoza refers to in a different context For that reason it would have fallen under his warningthat those who attempt to change the form of the state are likely to see it restored in a morerepressive version (see page 25 below) In short there was no solution to the problem the TPTattempted to solve or at least none within the limits of Spinozarsquos thinking As a political theoryand a theory of biblical hermeneutics the book is a brilliant work that went on to influencephilosophers and ironically theologians for the next three centuries As an intervention in theextraordinarily difficult and complex political situation of the seventeenth-century Netherlands itwas and had to be an utter failure

There are in fact two political programs in the TPT an overt program and a latent oneThe overt program is liberal republican and bourgeois in the sense that its addressee andintended agent of change is the educated bourgeoisie The latent program lies quite a bit furtherto the left It is radically democratic and its only possible agent of change is the multitude Letter44 makes a contribution to the latent program that moves in an even more radical direction

The Communist Idea

In his letter to Jelles Spinoza develops an idea of the highest good for human beings as

an alternative to what he argues is the false conception of Homo Politicus For the author of thatbook wealth and honors comprise the highest good But Spinoza claims in the letter thatcommonwealths devoted to the pursuit of wealth and honors ldquomust necessarily perish and haveperishedrdquo He then writes

How far superior indeed and excellent were the reflections of Thales of Miletus compared with this writer is shown by the following account All things he said are incommon among friends

The fact that this paragraph follows Spinozarsquos critique of Homo Politicus while proposing

an alternative to the apparent position of its author justifies an interpretation that takes it in apolitical sense Spinoza should be read as offering the saying of Thales as an addendum to the

latent program he articulates in the TPT Like democracy common ownership could have onlyone social basis in the Netherlands of the seventeenth century ndash namely the peasants artisanswage-workers and small retail merchants The problem this raises is how to make the transitionfrom a multitude given to irrationality and superstition ndash and therefore under the sway of theReformed Church ndash to one capable of the rationality necessary to create the democraticcommunism (the content of which we have yet to define) that Letter 44 implies when consideredalong with the TPT Spinoza saw no answer to this problem That is why he suppressed his latentproject in favor of the overt one for a liberal republic able to assert its sovereign authority overthe Church It seemed to him that the educated bourgeoisie had political capacities that themultitude lacked

Spinozarsquos judgment on this matter is similar mutatis mutandis to that of FrederickEngels in the Peasant War in Germany For Engels the Peasant War of the sixteenth century wasa heroic but premature revolution Under the leadership of Thomas Muumlntzer the peasantsadopted a program that included the expropriation of ecclesiastic and aristocratic property andthe common ownership of goods But the princes were the only group with the wealth andmilitary resources necessary to benefit from the ensuing turmoil while their rivals for power ndashthe Catholic prelates and lesser nobility ndash were ruined by the confiscation of property andplundering or destruction of fixed wealth by the peasant masses The rising bourgeoisie was ableto frame an independent liberal political program but did not yet have the social weightnecessary to play a leading role in the economy and the state According to Engels the peasantrywas incapable of mastering the new forces of production unleashed by the world market and theonly class that might have played a progressive role alongside the peasants ndash the proletarianwage-working element in the towns ndash was a very small part of laboring population It would takeanother three centuries for the proletariat to develop along with industry to the point where itwould be able to draft a meaningful equivalent of the communist program first framed by thesixteenth-century German peasantry Spinoza certainly had no idea that industrialization and asizeable proletariat were on their way But he shared with Engels a pessimistic assessment of thechances for a successful social transformation led by peasants and their allies Perhaps with thedisastrous defeat of the German peasants in mind (as well as the allegiance of the Dutchmultitude to the Reformed Church) Spinoza judged that relying upon the common people as anagent of social and political change in his own century would have been equally futile

Why then does Spinoza raise the issue of common ownership in Letter 44 The answer isthe same as for why he discusses democracy in the TPT when it makes no contribution to hispolitical intervention but on the contrary damages it We could say that Spinoza is either a badmilitant or a good philosopher The truth is he is both Like Platorsquos attempt to influence thecourse of events in Syracuse or Aristotlersquos decision to tutor Alexander the Great Spinozarsquos faithin the political efficacy of philosophical reasoning was misguided There is ample historicalevidence that the philosopher who attempts to be politically effective as a philosopher is doomedto defeat That is why Marx ceased considering himself a philosopher in 1845 as he indicates inthe eleventh of his Theses on Feuerbach ldquoUntil now philosophers have only attempted tounderstand the world the point however is to change itrdquo The project of changing the world isdifferent than that of understanding it from a purely theoretical perspective Of course it ispossible for philosophers to influence statesmen as Locke influenced the drafters of the USConstitution But Lockersquos influence was effective more than a century after he wrote the SecondTreatise on Civil Government and so can hardly be called a political intervention The attempt tointervene politically in a concrete situation in which multiple forces and complex structures arein play is something very different than the delayed influence on the drafters of a constitutionwho have had an opportunity to ponder at leisure the meaning of a philosopherrsquos work The mostimportant question of politics is not so much ldquoWhat is to be donerdquo as ldquoWho is to do itrdquoSpinoza may have been right that the multitude was not the collective subject to defendrepublican liberty That is why he appealed to the Dutch bourgeoisie through its philosophicallyliterate elements But he was too much the philosopher to suppress his argument that ademocratic republic is the kind of state that best preserves freedom and encourages rationalityand he was willing to make his point even at the cost of alienating the collective agent he wasattempting to influence

The reference to common ownership in Letter 44 would have had an even more negativeeffect on his readers should Spinoza have made it in the TPT In private communication withJelles however he was able to raise the topic without risking further political difficultiesSpinozarsquos reference presumes an intellectual history with roots in both ancient Greek philosophyand early Christianity a history that was renewed practically as well as theoretically in earlymodern Europe In the passage from Letter 44 where he introduces the theme of commonownership he goes on to elaborate the position he attributes to Thales Here is the passage in fullthat we have already quoted partially

How far superior indeed and excellent were the reflections of Thales of Miletuscompared with this writer is shown by the following account All things he said are incommon among friends The wise are the friends of the Gods and all things belong tothe Gods therefore all things belong to the wise In this way the wise man makeshimself the richest by nobly despising riches instead of greedily pursuing them

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo (Amicorum communia omnia) is

the first entry in his book Adages by the late Renaissance humanist and reform-minded Catholicscholar Desiderius Erasmus The Adages were widely available in Spinozarsquos day and it is likelythat both Spinoza and Jelles had read them although the former must have also consultedErasmusrsquo source for the saying ndash Lives of the Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius We will seewhy in a moment Erasmus cites the same deduction from the maxim as Spinoza does in Letter44 except that he attributes it to Socrates rather than Thales

From this proverb Socrates deduced that all things belong to all good men just as theydo to the gods For to the gods he said belong all things good men are friends of thegods and among friends all possessions are in common

The fact that Spinoza refers to wise men while Erasmus refers to good men does not

indicate any real difference between them because both accepted the ancient Greek and biblicalequivalence between human goodness and wisdom The difference in attributing the deductiveconsequences of the proverb to Thales on the one hand and Socrates on the other also does notindicate any substantive disagreement between Spinoza and Erasmus although it does signify adifference in intellectual vocation and emphasis Interestingly however the attribution in bothcases is incorrect Their common source the Lives of the Philosophers places the argument intothe mouth of Diogenes the Cynic rather than Socrates or Thales Thus both Spinoza and Erasmushave had a failure of memory and probably for the same reason The author of Lives makes itclear that although Diogenes the Cynic despised the pursuit of wealth he was not a veryappealing character he was arrogant and could be verbally and physically abusive to those hejudged to be unwise It is understandable then that the figure of Diogenes would drop out of thememory of both Erasmus and Spinoza and be replaced by a philosopher with whom each tosome extent identified Erasmus the Renaissance humanist undoubtedly found Socrates well-suited to stand in for the part of Diogenes the Cynic because Socrates was a moral philosopherand the teacher of Plato whose influence on the Renaissance was profound As an admirer of thenatural sciences and a maker of telescopes Spinoza would have felt the same way about Thaleswho was an astronomer as well as a philosopher

In Letter 44 a story from Lives follows the identification of Thales as the figureresponsible for the drawing the deductive consequences of the proverb In order to demonstratethat his rejection of the pursuit of wealth was not an alibi for poverty Thales made use of hisexpert knowledge of the heavens Foreseeing a bountiful olive crop after the previous harvestrsquosdearth he rented all of the olive presses in Greece cheaply and then hired them out at a highprice to farmers who needed them to press the oil from their olives In this way he amassed agreat deal of wealth within a single year which ldquohe then distributed with a liberality equal to the

shrewdness by which he had acquired itrdquo Spinozarsquos memory of the story must have acted as abridge for the mistaken identification

The similarity between the ancient Greek proverb and the passages from Acts about thecommunal practices of the early Church with respect to property must have been evident to thebiblical scholar Spinoza Rendered into Latin by Erasmus the proverb ldquoAll things are incommon among friendsrdquo is amicorum communia omnia In Acts 244 ndash ldquoAll that believed weretogether and had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquohad all things in commonrdquo appears in theLatin Vulgate as habebant omnia communia In Acts 432 ndash ldquoNo one claimed that any of theirpossessions was their own but they had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquothey had all thingsin commonrdquo appears in the Vulgate as erant illis omnia communia The equivalence between thecommunia omnia of the proverb and the omnia communia of the two verses from Acts wouldhave been perfectly clear to Spinoza on linguistic grounds alone

In Adages Erasmus is more explicit than Spinoza in connecting the proverb with theverses from Acts He discusses the proverb in its appearance in book 5 of the Laws where Platoappeals to it in order to demonstrate that the best condition of society consists in the communityof possessions Erasmus writes

But it is extraordinary how Christians dislike this common ownership of Platorsquos how infact they throw stones at it although nothing comes closer to the mind of Christ

Further on Erasmus identifies the inventor of the proverb as Pythagoras who he saysestablished a community in which life and property were shared

hellipwhich is the very thing Christ wants to happen among Christians For all those whowere admitted by Pythagoras into that well-known band who followed his instructionswould give to the common fund whatever money and family property they possessed

Even apart from Erasmus the similarity between the Greek philosophersrsquo proverb and the

New Testament passages would have been evident to the Mennonite Jelles from MennoSimonrsquos discussion of the communal practice described in Acts (more on this below) Jelleswould also have found the parallel especially appealing because it makes the principle ofcommon ownership part of that rational philosophical version of Christianity that he and theother Waterlander Mennonites and Collegiants were seeking to establish

Although Erasmus was an advocate of religious reform he never joined the ProtestantReformation remaining a loyal Catholic until his death It is ironic then that during hislifetime the only vigorous champions of the common ownership he espoused were members ofthe most radical wing of the Reformation ironic but completely intelligible since the radicalsrsquoproject was to restore the Church to its original apostolic condition before its accommodationwith worldly power and wealth under Constantine

The Latin phrase designating Anabaptist communism in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies is Omnia sunt communia (for example it appears in this form in the confession theauthorities extracted from Thomas Muumlntzer under torture) It translates into English as ldquoAllthings are commonrdquo which is the present tense version of the phrase in Acts 432 ldquoall thingswere commonrdquo (ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά) to the members of the Church in Jerusalem Theparallel formulation in Acts 244 is slightly different although the distinction is lost in the LatinVulgate It reads that the members of the apostolic Church ldquohad all things in commonrdquo (εἶχονἅπαντα κοινὰ) In the second formulation εἶχον (had) seems to suggest a specific mode ofpossession or even an established quasi-legal form of property But it would be a mistake tointerpret it this way In both verses the anonymous author of Acts is articulating a generalprinciple rather than specifying a form of its implementation As we shall see the concreteapplication of the principle in the first century Church involved not a mode of possession orform of property but rather a practice of redistribution

Within the Anabaptist movement there was a broad range of beliefs and practices thatinvolved specific applications of the principle Omnia sunt communia We need to recognizetheir breadth in order to grasp just how subtle and variegated Anabaptist communism could beFor this purpose it is important to distinguish between communism as 1) a principle ofredistribution 2) a form of joint or communal property 3) a mode of the organization of workand 4) a kind of mutual aid In general all Anabaptist applications of Omnia sunt communia areintended to realize in different ways a communal and spiritual life in which all things arecommon We could say if we like that each of the four categories serves as a means for realizingthe end designated by that principle as long as we keep in mind that in this case the meanscannot be discarded once the end has been achieved Communism as a principle of redistributiona form of communal property a mode of the organization of work a kind of mutual aid ndash orsome combination of these ndash are the concrete ways in which communism as a mode ofcommunal and spiritual life is realized In this case the means are internal to the end That isbecause there can be no fellowship no community of the spirit unless those participating sharesomething ie have it in common Greek recognizes this internal relationship between acommon life and something shared in the word translated into English as fellowship κοινωνίαthe root of which is κοινός which means ldquocommonrdquo Its antonym ἴδιος means ldquobelonging toonerdquo It is the word κοινός that appears in the passages from Acts that refer to the practice ofsharing material wealth

244 ldquoAll who believed were together and had all things in common (Πάντες δὲ οἱπιστεύοντες ἦσαν ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό καὶ εἶχον ἅπαντα κοινὰ)

432 ldquoThe multitude of believers were one in heart and soul (Τοῦ δὲ πλήθους τῶνπιστευσάντων ἦν καρδία καὶ ψυχὴ microία) and no one claimed anything as his ownpossession but to them all things were in common (καὶ οὐδὲ εἷς τι τῶν ὑπαρχόντωναὐτῷ ἔλεγεν ἴδιον εἶναι ἀλλrsquo ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά)

Both verses affirm an internal relationship between living a common life and things

being in common or people having things in common But this is true of any collectiveendeavor A chess club for example is only possible if the members have a common interest inplaying chess But the verses from Acts mean to assert more than this They affirm the intensityand universality of the common life experienced in the early Church (being ldquoone in heart andsoulrdquo) They indicate this by referring to the fact that in the Church in Jerusalem all things areheld in common (ἅπαντα κοινά) Although ldquoall thingsrdquo (ἅπαντα) is not limited to materialpossessions the succeeding verses in chapters 2 and 4 of Acts indicate the depth of thecommitment the early Christians had to sharing a common life by referring to the practice inwhich they enacted it

245 And they sold their possessions and goods and divided them among everyoneaccording to need (καὶ τὰ κτήmicroατα καὶ τὰς ὑπάρξεις ἐπίπρασκον καὶ διεmicroέριζον αὐτὰπᾶσιν καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

434 There was no one among them in need as many as owned land or houses soldthem and brought the values of what was sold (οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐνδεής τις ἦν ἐν αὐτοῖς ὅσοιγὰρ κτήτορες χωρίων ἢ οἰκιῶν ὑπῆρχον πωλοῦντες ἔφερον τὰς τιmicroὰς τῶνπιπρασκοmicroένων) 435 and laid them at the feet of the apostles and distribution wasmade to each in accordance with need (καὶ ἐτίθουν παρὰ τοὺς πόδας τῶν ἀποστόλωνδιεδίδετο δὲ ἑκάστῳ καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

The needs of others are what break the bonds of individual ownership allowing the

transition from the private (ἴδιος) to the common (κοινά) Acts refers to making material goods

common rather than for example communicating private knowledge publicly presumablybecause of the difficulty people experience parting with private property and the correlativesignificance of the act of doing so For material possessions are the means by which they satisfytheir basic needs ndash for food shelter clothing and so on ndash and when possible their desire forluxuries The act of handing over possessions has two consequences The first is that thedistinction between rich and poor wealthy and needy owner and propertyless is abolished andthe members of the community come to stand on level ground The second consequence involvesa more fundamental risk on the part of property-owners By handing over their property theymake a leap of faith that the community will henceforth satisfy their needs as well through thesame practice of redistribution When applied in this fashion the general principle of being incommon or having in common results in an example of the first category of communism asspecified above ie communism as a principle of redistribution

Redistribution of property by the apostles creates occasions for active sharing asexpressions of the new form of common life 246 says that the members of the Church inJerusalem ldquoalso broke bread in each otherrsquos homes and took their meals in exaltation andsimplicity of heartrdquo (κλῶντές τε κατrsquo ο ἴκον ἄρτον microετελάmicroβανον τροφῆς ἐν ἀγαλλιάσει καὶἀφελότητι καρδίας) The value of sharing meals lies not merely in the fact that everyone is fedbut also in the experience of exaltation or ecstatic delight (ἀγαλλιάσεις) and sincerity orsimplicity of heart (ἀφελότητι καρδίας) The experience in common of exaltation and sincerity isat least as important as the act of satisfying needs although the two can be distinguished onlynotionally

The experience has its meaning in relation to the power (δυνάmicroις) that brings together themembers of the new community and inspires them to share their property The gathering of JewsGreeks and those from other nations (the circumcised and the uncircumcised as Paul says)occurs in the period following Pentecost when the Holy Spirit is supposed to have descended incloven tongues of flame upon the twelve apostles endowing them with the ability to speak inevery language Pentecost in turn follows by several weeks the resurrection of Christ and hisbodily ascension into heaven The gift of being able to speak in every language permits theapostles to convey their message to all nations That message ndash confirmed by ldquosigns andwondersrdquo ndash is testimony of their own first-hand witness to the Resurrection It is accompanied bythe baptism of the new members of the Church which repeats the Pentecostal experience byfilling them with the grace and power of the Holy Spirit

433 ldquoAnd with great power the apostles were giving witness to the resurrection of theLord Jesus and abundant grace was upon them all (καὶ δυνάmicroει microεγάλῃ ἀπεδίδουν τὸmicroαρτύριον οἱ ἀπόστολοι τοῦ Κυρίου Ἰησοῦ τῆς ἀναστάσεως χάρις τε microεγάλη ἦν ἐπὶπάντας αὐτούς)

The ecstatic delight and simplicity of heart that the members of the Church in Jerusalem

experience by sharing a common life is their enjoyment of this ldquoabundant gracerdquo (χάρις τεmicroεγάλη) The new community is built upon faith in the apostlesrsquo testimony that Jesus triumphedover death and that his victory promises an eternal life to all who believe That is the gift of theHoly Spirit Yet the ldquospiritualrdquo (πνευmicroατικός) content of early Christian experience does not denyits simultaneously material character For the significance of the Resurrection and the Ascensioninto Heaven is precisely that they concern the physical body of Christ When he appears toThomas who doubts that he has returned Jesus invites his disciple to place his hands into thewounds received from the Crucifixion The point is to show not only that the man standing infront of Thomas is not an imposter but also that the risen Christ is no disembodied ghost Andwhen the apostles witness the Ascension what they see is the physical body of Jesus rising toheaven There is little suggestion of soul-body dualism in Acts The spirit (πνεῦmicroα) infuses andtransfigures the body it does not exist apart from it In this respect it is similar to the life-givingbreath to which the word πνεῦmicroα originally referred Dualism is the result of a Platonizinginterpretation of Christianity that comes later The bodily character of the Resurrection extends tothe promise of eternal life for believers as well The promise is not that their souls will exist apart

from their bodies but that their bodies will rise up from the grave like that of their Savior Giventhis early Christian materialism it is not surprising that commonality of material goods wouldserve as a fundamental expression of the new life of the believers

As we already know the project of the sixteenth-century Anabaptists was to restore theChurch to its original apostolic condition by undoing the corruption they believed had set inwhen it made its peace with worldly wealth and power under Constantine Given the nature ofthe Anabaptist project it would seem that making material things common as described in Actswould follow as a matter of course However there is a long tradition ndash one that began aroundthe middle of the sixteenth century ndash of denying that Anabaptism has anything to do withcommunism regarding it as an accusation brought against the Anabaptists by their enemies It isunderstandable that this should be so The Anabaptists were the victims of a ldquored scarerdquo thatgripped the ruling classes of Europe in the aftermath of the Peasant War and the Muumlnstercommune It is impossible to explain the horrendous tortures forced relocations andinnumerable executions Anabaptists faced on the basis of heretical belief alone Nothing of aremotely similar scale was visited upon other schismatics The fact that the Anabaptistschallenged prevailing property relations is what made them victims of near-genocide It was amatter of survival then to create some distance between themselves and the charge ofadvocating common ownership of goods that came from Luther Zwingli and those whoextracted the confession from Thomas Muumlntzer that he held to the principle of Omnia communiasunt Recent scholarship however has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that having thingsin common was indeed a basic and widespread principle of Anabaptism at its origin just as it hasdemonstrated the influence veterans of the Peasant War had among the early Anabaptists

The dominant form of communist practice in early Anabaptism was appropriatelymodeled on the description of redistribution in Acts In Switzerland where the movementoriginated converts were often asked or required to make contributions to a ldquocommon purserdquoafter receiving adult baptism Some especially pious initiates went so far as to sell their land andhouses for that purpose in accordance with the biblical precedent When necessary officialsdistributed the contents of the purse to members of the community who were in need

Both proponents and enemies of Anabaptist communism often confused the redistributionof wealth with joint or communal property However except for the taking of meals in commonthere is no indication in Acts that redistribution collectivized ownership of wealth in this fashionbut only that it transferred wealth from the better-off members of the community to the worse-off Nevertheless some Anabaptists took joint or communal property as a paradigm for newproperty relations For example the visionary writing of the Nuremberg printer Hans Hergotwho was executed for rebellion in 1527 includes the following passage

And everything that grows on the land belongs to the church and the people who livethere Everything is bestowed for common use so that the people will eat from one potdrink from one vesselhellip And all things will be used in common so that no one is betteroff than another

The ldquowar communismrdquo of the city of Muumlnster involved an ad hoc form of communal propertythrough the edict that the doors to all homes be left open and the owners take in anyone whowished to reside with them But the most significant successful and long-lasting attempt toimplement communal property was that of the Hutterites

The Hutterites took their name from the charismatic hat-maker and Anabaptist leaderJacob Hutter However at their origins they were influenced by the revolutionary bookbinderHans Hut Hut shared Thomas Muumlntzerrsquos sanguinary apocalyptic view of social change andadvocated community ownership of goods in accordance with his own understanding of ActsHe survived the battle of Frankenhausen in which the peasant rebels were finally defeated butwas tortured and executed a few years later In the aftermath and under the influence of JacobHutter the Hutterites adopted pacifism and a strategy of creating autonomous communities Inorder escape persecution thousands of the brethren emigrated from Switzerland and Germany to

the more tolerant Moravia where they created hundreds of Bruderhofs farms and vineyards inwhich land houses farm implements produce and even objects of personal use were ownedcollectively The center of Bruderhof life was a large communal house in which craft productionoccurred on the ground floor and couples lived in small apartments on the upper levels The menengaged in farm labor and craftwork while the women were limited to traditional domesticduties in spite of the fact that children were raised communally apart from their parents TheBruderhofs enjoyed great economic success for a number of reasons People worked hard andconsumed little resulting in a surplus that could be used to purchase additional land seed andtools The size of the communities and of their agricultural production also enabled them to sellcheaply and to pay for supplies at generous prices both of which made the communitieseconomic assets to the areas in which they were located The Hutterites also organized both farmlabor and craft production cooperatively including the education boys were given in thenecessary skills They were therefore practitioners of the second and third forms of communismwe have identified namely communal ownership and cooperative organization of work Whenthey were ultimately forced out of Moravia by the triumph of Catholic forces in the Thirty YearsWar the Hutterites migrated eastward many finally relocating to Canada and the United Stateswhere the Bruderhofs continue to exist to this day

Communism as a kind of mutual aid was the contribution of the other major form ofAnabaptism that of the Mennonites With great political intelligence and skill Menno Simonswas able to reformulate the meaning of Omnia communia sunt in such a way as to avoidthreatening the property interests of nobles and clerics He did this in his book A Humble andChristian Justification and Replication First he denied that Mennonites were advocates ofcommunal property

This accusation is false and without all truth We do not teach and practice communityof goods but we teach and testify the Word of the Lord that all true believers in Christare of one body (1 Corinthians 1213) partakers of one bread (1 Corinthians 1017)have one God and one Lord (Ephesians 4)

In his assertion that the believers are of one body and partakers of one bread Simons is affirmingwhat we have called the general principle of communism while denying that Mennonitesembrace it in the specific form of communal property But he goes further by denying thatMennonites advocate a contemporary version of the apostolic redistribution of wealth

For although we know that the apostolic church had this practice in the beginning ascan be seen in the Acts of the Apostles nevertheless we note from their epistles that itdisappeared in their time and was no longer practiced

Instead of communal property or centralized redistribution of wealth the Mennonites derivefrom the general principle of Christian communism an alternative practice

Seeing then that they are one as said it is Christian and reasonable that they also havedivine love among them and that one member cares for another for both the Scripturesand nature teach this They show mercy and love as much as is in them They do notsuffer a beggar among them They have pity on the wants of the saints They receive thewretched They take strangers into their houses They comfort the sad They lend to theneedy They clothe the naked They share their bread with the hungry They do not turntheir face from the poorhellip

In the subsequent history of Mennonism the practice Simons describes came to be calledldquomutual aidrdquo Note that it is different from charitable giving and this in two ways First thereferences to receiving the wretched taking in strangers sharing bread and so on indicate a farmore personal even intimate form of involvement than simple charitable donation Second

there is the suggestion of reciprocity or mutuality (ldquoone member cares for anotherrdquo) that tends todeny the difference in status between the charitable giver and the recipient of charity Thepractice Simons describes is similar to what some anthropologists have called ldquogeneralizedreciprocityrdquo in which my obligation to give to you when you are in need corresponds to yourobligation to give to me when I am in need In a sense this is a form of redistribution inaccordance with need but it is enacted directly between individual members of the communityrather than administered centrally through a common purse

In line with his political purpose Simons is careful to distinguish between mutual aid andthe expropriation of private property

This is the kind of brotherhood we teach and not that some should take over andpossess the land soil and properties of others as we are falsely maligned accused andlied about by many

In this way he detaches the Mennonite version of communism from any revolutionary intentionThat was the prerequisite for communal survival during the long counter-revolution thatfollowed the Peasant War Still Simons never abandons the general principle Omnia communiasunt nor does he even really reject the practice of the early Church

Since we do not find it a permanent practice with the apostles we have not taught orpracticed community of goods but we urge earnestly and zealously to practice liberalgiving love and mercy as the apostolic writings teach and testify abundantly Andeven if we had taught and practiced community of goods as we are falsely accused ofdoing we would still not be doing otherwise than the holy apostles full of the HolySpirit themselves did in the former church at Jerusalem in the beginning of the holyChristian Church although they stopped the practice as has been said

Like the Hutterites Mennonite communities prospered once they managed to survive the

bloody period of reaction In Holland the Mennonite population consisted largely in successfulmerchants along with a number of lawyers doctors and other professionals Most of thepeasant artisan and laborer families who had started as Mennonites in the sixteenth century hadlong since converted to the Reform Church which is one reason Spinoza faced the problem ofpolitical agency in the TPT Although the idea of mutual aid persisted among the DutchMennonites it took the form predominantly of organized international philanthropy in which thecommunity made contributions not only to Mennonites abroad but to other populations in needThere was no escaping the fact however that in this philanthropic form mutual aid becamehardly distinguishable from conventional charity

Jarig Jelles was born into the Dutch Mennonite community around a century afterSimmons wrote his book when this process of slippage was well underway But there is littledoubt that Jelles knew the Mennonite teaching on mutual aid and its origin in the generalprinciple of Christian communism Even if Jelles never read Erasmusrsquo Adages Spinozarsquosreference to the supposed communism of Thales was likely to resonate with him on the basis ofhis own religious tradition

We cannot be certain how much Spinoza knew in detail about the communist practices ofthe Anabaptists but it is probably not a coincidence that he recommends three of the four atvarious places in his writings In Part 4 of the Ethics ldquoOf Human Bondage or the Strength of theEmotionsrdquo he identifies the chief virtue of the intellect as ldquostrength of the mindrdquo (fortitudo)According to him it takes two forms one directed to the self and one directed to others He callsthe inwardly directed form ldquocouragerdquo defining it as ldquothe desire whereby every individualendeavors to preserve his own being according to the dictates of reason alonerdquo The outwardlydirected form is generositas which Shirley translates as ldquonobilityrdquo though ldquosolidarityrdquo is closerto what Spinoza is getting at He defines it as ldquothe desire whereby every individual according to

the dictates of reason alone endeavors to assist others and make friends of themrdquo When twopeople in contact with one another possess the virtue of generositas they will clearly exhibit itreciprocally in the form of mutual aid the fourth communist practice

In Part 4 of the Ethics Spinoza also formulates a version of the first communist practicethat of the redistribution of wealth in accordance with need

Again men are won over by generosity especially those who do not have thewherewithal to produce what is necessary to support life Yet it is far beyond the powerand resources of a private person to come to the assistance of everyone in need For thewealth of a private person is quite unequal to such a demand It is also a practicalimpossibility for one man to establish friendship with all Therefore the care of the poordevolves upon society as a whole and looks only to the common good

The fact that society as a whole has responsibility for meeting the needs of the poor makes thepractice Spinoza recommends in this passage a version of the centralized redistribution of wealthdescribed in the Acts of the Apostles and institutionalized in Anabaptist form as the ldquocommonpurserdquo More than that the fact that society as a whole must take on this responsibility ratherthan a church or other sub-community makes Spinoza an early advocate of what will becomethree centuries later the European welfare state In our own period as the welfare state is beingdismantled it is easy to see that what neoliberals object to concerning it is precisely its implicitcommunism ie its practice of distribution in accordance with need

Spinoza advocates a third communist practice in his unfinished final work the PoliticalTreatise The context is his discussion of a maximally democratic version of monarchy in whichthe entire citizen body is armed and the king forbidden from making any decision contrary to thewill of a massive council of ordinary citizens In such a state

The fields and the soil and if possible the houses as well should be public property thatis should belong to the sovereign by whom they should be let at an annual rent tocitizens whether townsmen or country-dwellers Apart from this all citizens should befree or exempt from any form of taxation in time of peace Of this rent part should beallocated to the defense works of the commonwealth part to the kings domestic needsFor in time of peace it is still necessary to fortify cities as for war and to have in a stateof readiness ships and other armaments

Ownership of land and buildings by the sovereign is a form of communal property first becausethe citizens of the commonwealth delegate to him or them the property they hold in commonand second because that delegation occurs with the understanding that the sovereign will use theproperty in service of the common good

Spinoza supplies an argument based on more than simple utility for the practice ofholding land and buildings in common

hellip in a state of Nature the one thing a man cannot appropriate to himself and make hisown is land and whatever is so fixed to the land that he cannot conceal it anywhere orcarry it away where he pleases Thus the land and whatever is fixed to it in the way wehave described is especially the public property of the commonwealth that is of allthose who by their united strength can claim it or of him to whom all have delegated thepower to claim it

To state the argument differently since rights are the same as powers no individual has a naturalright to appropriate privately the land or any of its fixed structures because none has the powernecessary to do so The only response an individual can make to incursions by a more powerfulperson or group of people is flight in which he must leave the land and its buildings behind It is

only by entering into a community in which the strength of each is combined for the purpose ofdefense that people can effectively possess fixed property but they do so as a members of thecommunity rather than as an separate individuals According to Spinozarsquos theory of rights onlythe community has the right to own the land and its structures because only the community hasthe required power

The communal ownership of land houses and other buildings is a version of the secondcommunist practice on our list of which Hutterite joint ownership is the most developedhistorical example When adopted by a polity rather than a small community though thepractice has an added advantage Under those circumstances communal possession of fixedproperty eliminates the need for taxes except in time of war What takes their place is ageneration of revenue pegged to wealth since the members of society who are able to rent themost expensive and largest amounts of communal property will obviously pay the most in rentIn this way the form of communal ownership of land and buildings that Spinoza recommendsalso acts as a mechanism for the redistribution of wealth

The only communist practice of the Anabaptists that does not find an equivalent inSpinozarsquos writings is that of the cooperative organization of work The absence is related toSpinozarsquos inability to resolve the problem of political agency in the TPT An attempt to mobilizethe multitude on behalf of democratic social change would need to address the organization ofwork in such a way as to alleviate the burden of toil Reducing the number of hours spent inonerous labor is the only way to provide the multitude with the free time necessary to participatein institutionalized democratic politics Along with the redistribution of wealth and thedevelopment of communal property the cooperative reorganization of work would need to beincorporated as a plank in the latent political program that makes its first democratic appearancein the TPT and is extended in a communist direction in the passages from the Ethics and thePolitical Treatise that we have just examined But that would constitute an explicit anddangerous appeal to the multitude as the agent of political and social transformation an appealthat Spinoza consistently rejects It would involve nothing less than the revival of therevolutionary energies of the Peasant War on a new seventeenth-century foundation

In spite of his radicalism Spinoza doubted that revolution was capable of reconstructingsociety and the state in the way revolutionaries wanted In Chapter 18 of the TPT he takes aposition that is at least on the surface opposed to revolution or any attempt to change the formof the state fundamentally The context is a discussion of the transition from the early Hebrewcommonwealth in which the people held sovereignty to the rule of kings Spinoza tells us thatthe first period saw only a single civil war and concluded with a compassion for the vanquishedthat resulted in lasting peace By contrast the period of kings was marred by multiple warswaged only for the glory of the rulers and involved the massacre of hundreds of thousandsDuring the first period few prophets arose to rebuke the Jews while a great many emergedduring the time of the monarchies From this example Spinoza reasons that it is fatal for peopleaccustomed to popular sovereignty and governed by settled laws to adopt a new monarchicalform of government On the one hand they will be unable to tolerate the arbitrary exercise ofpower by a single individual while on the other the new monarch will be compelled to abolishthe existing laws because they did not originate by his own authority But it is just as dangerousaccording to Spinoza for the subjects of a monarch to attempt his replacement with popular ruleThis is because a popular revolution must advance to the point where it annihilates the king thekingrsquos family and the friends of the king in order to prevent the restoration of royal power But inthe process the revolutionary authority must assume a power even more draconian then thatpreviously exercised by the king In addition having committed regicide the new popularauthority faces the danger that it will fall victim to its own precedent For this reason as well andin the interest of survival it must wield power more repressively than the deposed sovereignSpinoza illustrates his point with reference to the English revolution which eliminated themonarch Charles I only to replace him with the Lord Protector Cromwell who was monarch inall but name and more repressive than Charles

Spinozarsquos point seems unassailable especially since the pattern he describes in the caseof the English Revolution repeated itself over the course of the next three centuries in the French

and Russian Revolutions It is at least arguable that Napoleon if not Robespierre was a newLouis XVI and Stalin a new Tsar even if this understates the more fundamental social changesthat resulted form the two revolutions Still Spinoza does not absolutely proscribe therevolutionary overthrow of a tyrannical government but says instead that there is a great dangerin making the attempt Besides his analysis of the conditions necessary for retaining sovereigntydoes not leave the decision about whether to engage in revolution up to militants He argues thatno state can survive that creates mass indignation in its people and this is precisely theunavoidable result of tyrannical government Spinozarsquos real purpose in Chapter 18 is to opposethe Orangist-Calvinist project of replacing the Dutch Republic with a monarchy ldquoAs for theEstates of Hollandrdquo he writes ldquoas far as we know they never had kings but counts to whom theright of sovereignty was never transferredrdquo His point is that the Dutch War of Independenceagainst Spain was justified because it restored the sovereignty of the people against the attemptby the Spanish ldquocountrdquo (King Philip II) to abolish it However any attempt to replace theRepublic with a monarchy would change the form of the state disastrously by divesting thepeople of their former rights

When Spinoza wrote his treatise the only revolutionary forces that existed were on theRight The danger he warns about in Chapter 18 of the TPT did indeed come to pass only oneyear after his letter to Jelles In 1672 a Calvinist-Orangist mob hacked Johan De Witt and hisbrother Cornelius to death at a time when Holland was invaded by the French army Streetorators stirred up the mob by claiming that the invasion was the result of the brothersrsquo treason Inthe aftermath of the murders William III prince of Orange was elevated to the position ofstadtholder of Holland Although William went on to become King of England he stopped shortof claiming a Dutch throne However in actuality he substituted his own power for much of thatwhich had belonged to the Estates General while the Reformed Church gained considerableinfluence in Dutch government According to a story made famous by Spinozarsquos earliestbiographer Johannes Colerus when the De Witt brothers were murdered Spinozarsquos landlordthwarted his attempt to go the site of the assassinations where the bodies of the brothers werestill on gruesome display in order to plant a sign reading Ultimi Barbarorum (the ultimatebarbarians) In this way the landlord undoubtedly saved the philosopherrsquos life It was the onlytime we know of when the mature Spinoza gave in to his passive affects in a significant way

There is a passage in Chapter 18 of the TPT that uncannily anticipates the murders

Tyranny is most violent where individual beliefs which are unalienable rights areregarded as criminal Indeed in such circumstances the anger of the common people[plebis] is usually the greatest tyrant of allhellip the vilest hypocrites urged on by that samefury which they call zeal for Gods law have everywhere persecuted men whoseblameless character and distinguished qualities have excited the hostility of the commonpeople [plebi] publicly denouncing their beliefs and inflaming the savage multitudersquos[multitudinem] anger against them

Spinoza was the first political philosopher who grappled with the problem of a mass-

based politics of the Right The problem would occur again with the fascist movements of the1920s and 1930s and with the return of the rightwing religious fundamentalisms of our own dayndash Jewish Christian Muslim and Hindu It is not surprising that he failed to solve the problemdefinitively since it continues to remain unsolved The remarkable thing about Spinoza thoughis not that he was skeptical about the liberatory possibilities of revolution by the masses but thathe defended the idea of a popular democracy nonetheless And this he continued to do even inthe aftermath of the De Witt murders In his work on the Political Treatise in the final year of hislife Spinoza developed a powerful critique of the elitist claim that the multitude are incapable ofgoverning

Yet perhaps our [democratic] suggestions will be received with ridicule by those whorestrict to the common people the faults that are inherent in all mankind saying There

is no moderation in the mob they terrorize unless they are frightened and Thecommon people is either a humble servant or an arrogant master there is no truth orjudgment in itrdquo and the like But all men share in one and the same nature it is powerand culture that mislead us with the result that when two men do the same thing weoften say that it is permissible for the one to do it and not the other not because of anydifference in the thing done but in the doer hellipThen again There is no moderation inthe mob they terrorize unless they are frightened For freedom and slavery do not gowell together Finally that there is no truth or judgment in the common people is notsurprising since the important affairs of state are conducted without their knowledgeand from the little that cannot be concealed they can only make conjecturehellip Howeveras we have said all men have the same nature ndash all grow haughty with rule terrorizeunless they are frightened ndash and everywhere truth becomes a casualty through hostilityor servility especially when despotic power is in the hands of one or a few who in trialspay attention not to justice or truth but to the extent of a persons wealth

Surprisingly Spinoza develops this democratic argument while discussing the institutions

appropriate to a monarchy But the key point he makes in the discussion is that a condition ofeffective monarchical rule is expansion of the democratic element within the state in the form ofa sizeable legislative council whose members are drawn from the general population of citizensover the age of fifty On Spinozarsquos view the mistake those who oppose democracy make isassuming that the faults exhibited by the common people ndash such as poor judgment arroganceand hostility ndash belong only to them while they are in fact typical of human beings Actually it iselitist politics that magnifies these all-too-human faults by restricting political power to a limitednumber of people while democratic politics minimizes them through the principle of majorityrule among numerous decision-makers The reason as we already know is that passions pullpeople in different directions making it nearly impossible for the members of a large council toagree on a common position unless they make decisions based not on passion but an idea of thecommon good On Spinozarsquos view it is when government is in the hands of a single person oronly a few people that the dangers the critics of democracy attribute to the common people are infact the greatest

Spinoza also argues against the claim that the common people are not qualified to makepolitical decisions because they lack the necessary education or degree of intellect There is noone he says who has been engaged in an occupation until the age of fifty who lacksunderstanding of his sphere of work ldquoevery man is reasonably competent and sagacious inmatters in which he has been long and attentively engagedrdquo So each is qualified at least to giveadvice in the kingrsquos council concerning his own business especially if given the time necessaryto reflect on the matter under discussion

Most of all the plebs are the group best suited to serving on the council because theirinterest is that of society as a whole ldquoHence it follows that counselors must necessarily beappointed whose private fortune and advantage depend on the general welfare and the peace ofallrdquo For example Spinoza emphasizes the idea that the common people have the highest stake inavoiding war or concluding an existing war with a settlement that brings lasting peace Thereason is they are ones who bear the heaviest burdens of war Unlike the wealthy well-bornmembers of society it is the common person whose occupation is most likely to be interrupted itis his taxes that are raised to onerous levels and it is his son who dies Thus the common interestof society in peace is best served not by a wealthy or educated elite but rather by those whohave the most to lose from war

At the end of the long paragraph defending popular power quoted above Spinozaconnects the question of who holds power within the state to that of who owns property Truthand justice he says are casualties in states where power is held by one person or a handful ofpeople who conduct courtroom trials that favor the rich The implication is that elitist politicalpower and ownership of wealth are intrinsically connected One of the reasons Spinozarecommends public ownership of land and buildings in a monarchy is to prevent the rise of aclass of wealthy landowners with interests different than those of the rest of society Under the

conditions of common ownership ldquothe greatest part of the council will generally have one andthe same attitude of mind towards their common interests and peaceful activitieshelliprdquo And yethaving gone this far he has trouble imagining a state where fixed property is owned collectivelyin which the actually existing multitude holds power The peasants artisans and urban poor whoconstitute the common people of the United Provinces drop out of the picture in the democratic-communist monarchy he describes and nearly everyone makes his living by selling merchandiseor lending money to countrymen ldquoall will have to make a living by engaging in trade or bylending money to their fellow citizensrdquo He seems to assume that the collectivization of land andfixed property would eliminate the occupations of peasant and artisan leaving trade and loaningat interest the only remaining possibilities of work But that of course is not true The fact thatpeople would have to rent farm land would not prevent them from farming any more than theneed to rent workshops in the cities and towns would prevent artisans from plying their tradesBut Spinoza finds the idea of a commonwealth based on commercial enterprise politicallyappealing This is because he regards commercial occupations as contributing to harmony andpeace since he claims they establish connections between people that further the interests of allwhile those who engage in them prosper only in peacetime Both of these assumptions are asquestionable as the expectation that non-commercial occupations will die out After all even inSpinozarsquos day colonialism and the struggle for colonies between imperialist states led to warsbetween the great powers including the United Provinces not to mention the military and otherforms of violence involved in subjugating the colonies The East India Company was not exactlya force for peace What seems to be at work here instead is a failure of social imaginationthough one we may find understandable given the fact that the capitalist economy was still at anearly stage in its development However this may be there is no denying the fact that despite hispowerful arguments in favor of democratic rule and communal property it is still a bourgeoissociety and state that Spinoza envisions

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of what we should not hesitate to call Spinozarsquoscommunism is the critique of private ownership he develops in the Ethics based on his theory ofaffects For him there is a paradox involved in social and political life It stems from the fact thaton the one hand people can survive and develop their capacities only by joining with oneanother in societies and states But on the other hand the necessity of combining with oneanother does not prevent them from seeking their own advantage above that of their fellowsbeing quarrelsome or hateful and erecting obstacles to each otherrsquos happiness Spinoza identifiesthe reason for these deep-rooted problems of social coexistence in Part IV Proposition 35 of theEthics ldquoInsofar as men are assailed by emotions that are passive they can be contrary to oneanotherrdquo Emotions are states of the body characterized by a transition from a lower degree of thepower to exist and act (conatus) to a higher one or conversely from a higher degree to a lowerone The first transition is the affect of joy while the second is that of sadness Passive emotionsare caused by an object external to the body or more precisely external to its essential natureSpinoza conceives of that nature as a specific proportion of motion-and-rest that the parts of thebody exhibit in relation to one another While joy is an increase in our capacity to preserve theproportion of motion-and-rest essential to our body (ie to exist and act as we do) sadness is adecrease in that capacity The political problem created by the passive emotions is that evenwhen they are joyful they are not under the control of the person who experiences themMoreover different people are affected by the same external object in different ways because theparts of their bodies and their proportionate relations of motion-and rest-differ The same objectmay elicit anger in one person and pity in another or love in one and hatred in another and soon And because people differ in their emotional reactions to the same things they also differ inthe judgments they frame on the basis of these reactions What one person praises anotherperson blames what one regards as fearless another believes to be timid etc Finally sincepeople act upon their judgments seeking to foster what they judge to be good and destroy whatthey judge to be bad their differing judgments can result in actions that are in conflict with oneanother In short ldquoinsofar as they are assailed by passive emotions [people] can be contrary toone anotherrdquo

In Proposition 34 Spinoza gives an example of the contrariety caused by the passiveaffects Suppose Peter has sole possession of something Paul loves Deprivation of the loved

object causes sadness in Paul with the idea of Peter as its cause In accordance with Spinozarsquosdefinition of hatred Paul will hate Peter and therefore seek to injure or destroy him in order toremove the cause of his Paulrsquos sadness Spinoza says that this example may seem wrong becausePaul and Peter appear to be contrary to one another because of something they share ndash ie theirlove for the thing Peter possesses But that is not the case Paul has an image of himself aslacking the loved object while Peter has an image of himself as possessing the loved object Sothey in fact differ from one another by virtue of the different images they have rather than bypossessing something in common It is clear from the example that the root of this contrariety ndashie this enmity ndash between Paul and Peter is the fact that the object can be possessed by only oneof them so that what one has the other must lack The difficulty with private property is that it isexclusive to the one who possesses it which means that what I experience as possession othersexperience as deprivation It may seem that there is no problem if other people are indifferent tothe thing I possess However in accordance with Spinozarsquos theory of the imitation of affects themere fact that I love the thing I own other things being equal will cause you to love it as wellMy exclusive possession of the thing will therefore cause sadness in you that takes the form ofhatred or more precisely the kind of hatred called envy which involves pain at the good fortuneof another ldquohuman nature is in general so constituted that men pity the unfortunate and envy thefortunate in the latter case with a hatred proportionate to their love of what they think anotherpossessesrdquo

Common Possession Friendship and Philosophy

In the Ethics Spinoza does not follow his analysis of the antagonisms of private property

by considering the collective possession of material goods (although he does advocateredistribution of wealth to the poor in Part 4 as we have seen) But the theme of commonpossession figures large in the book anyway in his treatment of the intellectual love of God Inorder to understand the connection between common possession and amor Dei intellectualis itwill be necessary to engage in a detailed analysis of Spinozarsquos metaphysics We will begin thattask in earnest in the next chapter At this point we will simply introduce the theme byexamining the relationship between friendship and common possession in the letter to Jelles andsome related writings

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo unlike the similar passages fromActs has its provenance among philosophers Spinoza mistakenly attributes it to Thales but itoccurs in Platorsquos Phaedrus and Laws and is present though not in so many words in thediscussion in the Republic of common ownership of property by the guardian class Thetradition cited by Erasmus that traces the proverb back to Pythagoras is plausible when weconsider the influence the Pythagorean community in Sicily had on Plato in the aftermath ofSocratesrsquo death Erasmus sees the supposed use of a common fund by the Pythagoreans as ananticipation of the similar practice in Acts But Spinozarsquos approach is different What interestshim in the letter is common ownership not as a religious practice but as a matter of thephilosopherrsquos relation to the world Remember the deductive consequences of the proverb sinceall things are in common among friends everything belongs to the wise because the wise arefriends of the gods and all things belong to the gods But what does it mean to say that the wiseare friends of the gods

Although Spinoza uses the word ldquofriendshiprdquo often in his writings he never supplies aformal definition However we can reconstruct the wordrsquos meaning from the contexts in whichhe uses it So for example Proposition 35 of Part III of the Ethics reads

If anyone thinks that there is between the object of his love and another person the sameor a more intimate bond of friendship than there was between them when he alone usedto possess the object loved he will be affected with hatred toward the object loved andwill envy his rival

According to the proposition friendship is an intimate bond between a person and the

object he loves I hate an object of love that I alone once possessed when it wounds my vanity byloving someone else more than me So the object of love must be capable of loving whichmeans that the bond of friendship is a relation of reciprocal love between persons Nowaccording to Spinoza I love something when I have the idea of that thing as the cause of myexperience of joy Joy is an increase in conatus which Spinoza defines as the tendency to persistin being or equivalently the ability to exist and act So friendship is a relation in which Iidentify the other person as the cause of an increase in my conatus and the other personidentifies me as the cause of a similar increase in his or hers Two things each of which causesan increase in the ability to exist and act of the other are said by Spinoza to be in harmony Sincetwo entities in harmony have more combined power than either does singly it is to the advantageof each to be in harmony with the other There is even greater advantage in entering intoharmonious connection with a third individual and the greatest advantage in combining with asmany individuals as possible This is a universal metaphysical principle For example it pertainsjust as much to chemical combination or herding among animals as it does to social relationsbetween people In the case of human relationships it is the fundamental basis of politics orrather one of its two bases the other one being the tendency human beings have to conflict withone another When the state is functioning well it involves not a random collection ofindividuals and certainly not the war of each against all but a group whose members are boundto one another by friendship the human form of harmony Thus for Spinoza friendship is apolitical virtue as it was for Plato and Aristotle

The opposite of friendship is enmity That person is my enemy whom I regard as thecause of my sadness or pain which is the same as saying the cause of a decrease in my abilityto exist and act Like friendship enmity is a reciprocal relationship If I identify you as the causeof my sadness I will seek to injure or eliminate you But that means I will be identified in yourmind as the cause of your sadness Enmity is a relation of reciprocal hatred just as friendship is arelation of reciprocal love Just as there is harmony between friends there is discord betweenenemies The fundamental task of a rational politics is easy to state it is to extend and intensifyfriendship and to reduce and mollify enmity

We have already seen that Spinoza identifies solidarity (generositas) as one of the twoforms of strength of mind (fortitudo) which is the virtue that belongs to the exercise of theintellect Solidarity is the desire to assist others and foster friendship on the basis of reason aloneThe friendship fostered by solidarity is a bond of active love The love of friends for one anotheris active when each person who loves is the adequate cause of his or her love To say that theperson is the adequate cause means that the cause of love is internal to the person who feels it inother words that the love is self-generated Active love differs from passive love in that thecause of passive love is at least partially something that exists outside the person who has theemotion The problem with passive love is that it need not be constant If the bodily dispositionof the person changes in a particular way then the object of erstwhile love will have a differentemotional effect Passive love can change into boredom or indifference or even hatred This isnot possible in the case of active love because it is self-generated Since love involves theexperience of joy no one actively abandons it

There seems to be something odd about the idea of a love between persons that isinternally generated by each of the partners in the relationship Is it not the case that part of theessence of love is the fact that the object of my love is the cause of my love Without denyingthis Spinoza identifies two forms of love that are self-generated in the Ethics One is myintellectual love of God It is indeed true that God is the cause of my love but only insofar as myintellect is part of the infinite intellect of God Thus the object that causes my love - ie God - isinternal to my mind and conversely my mind is internal to it Such reciprocal internality ndash hardas it is to visualize ndash is what Spinoza means by immanence God he tells us is the immanentcause of everything that exists Nothing can exist apart from God while God expresses himselfin all of the things that exist My love of God and Gods love of himself are one and the samebecause Godrsquos intellect is immanent in mine The second form of self-generated love is the

friendship that exists between me and others who love God through the exercise of the intellectThe reason is that the joy I feel in loving God is by the imitation of affects augmented by thejoy you feel in loving God But your love as well as mine is joy caused by the same immanentbeing Another way of saying this is that your intellect and mine are parts (ie finiteexpressions) of the infinite intellect of God Thus the relationship between friends who are boundtogether by the common exercise of the intellect and the love of God that flows from it is basedon an internal bond an internal object and cause of love In this kind of love you and I as itwere discover one another internally You are inside of me and I am inside of you Thus whenyou augment my love and I augment yours it is Gods power as the intellect immanent in us boththat causes the augmentation even though we remain finite individual beings In this state ofaffairs which is admittedly difficult to grasp we can see the rational meaning of the command tolove God by loving the neighbor In intellectual love God not insofar as he is infinite butinsofar as he expresses himself in my finite intellect loves God as he expresses himself in yourfinite intellect

For Spinoza the exercise of the intellect is very different than our ordinary experience ofthe world In the course of ordinary experience we encounter objects in a way that appearshaphazard disordered and incomplete This is so first of all because our encounters are part ofan infinitely complex chain of natural causes and effects of which we know only very limitedparts In addition our experience of objects has as much to do with the condition our bodies arein when we encounter them as it does with the nature of the objects themselves By contrast inexercising the intellect we arrange our ideas in an intelligible pattern that is internal to the mindand entirely different than the images we accumulate through sensory experience The ideas arean expression of our power while the images result from our hapless deliverance to chanceEmotions caused by objects we encounter in the course of ordinary experience are externallydetermined and therefore passive while emotions caused by acts of intellectual comprehensionare internally generated and therefore active That is why love as an active emotion has its originin the exercise of the intellect and the most satisfying form of friendship is based on thereciprocal experience of such love In a letter to Willem van Blyenberg Spinoza provides themost complete description of this kind of friendship to be found in his writings

For my part of all things that are not under my control what I most value is to enterinto a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth For I believe that such a lovingrelationship affords us a serenity surpassing any other boon in the whole wide worldThe love that such men bear to one another grounded as it is in the love that each hasfor knowledge of truth is as unshakable as is the acceptance of truth once it has beenperceived It is moreover the highest source of happiness to be found in things notunder our command for truth more than anything else has the power to effect a closeunion between different sentiments and dispositions

Spinoza says that a friendship based on the love of truth is not under our control But how

can that be if intellectual friendship involves a form of love internally generated by each friendIt would seem that the love we generate through the exercise of the intellect is fully under ourcontrol Spinoza however is referring to the fact that we are able to become friends only withpeople we actually meet which is something that occurs in the course of ordinary haphazarddisordered experience To a large extent our friendships are a matter of chance By way ofillustrating this point it turned out that Spinoza decided his initial judgment of Blyenberg wasmistaken He broke off their correspondence when he realized that the infinite chain of causesand effects had brought his way not a lover of truth but a dogmatic worshipper of the ldquopaperand inkrdquo of the Bible

People create commonwealths because the power of each to exist and act is increased byall others who transfer their rights to the sovereign For reasons we have already considered thepolitical bond is one of friendship ldquoIt is of the first importance to men to establish closerelationships and to bind themselves together with such ties as may most effectively unite theminto one body and as an absolute rule to act in such a way as serves to strengthen friendshiprdquo If

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

likens it to hallucination and frenzy It is a mental state that involves a false even absurdconception of the world as a response to fears and hopes Spinoza is a strict determinist Thecourse of events is a chain of causes and effects in which each effect is the necessaryconsequence of the cause or confluence of causes that immediately precedes it But the chain ofcauses and effects is much too complex for the human mind to comprehend at least in any detailFear and hope stem from our ignorance concerning the future and from our desire to controlevents that are beyond our capacity to influence through realistic action ie through effectiveintervention in real causal sequences Superstition involves a false anthropomorphic conceptionof the divine The superstitious person regards God or the gods as possessing the same emotionsas human beings In order to influence the outcome of events it is necessary to placate divineanger or flatter the deity or make sacrifices to it Out of this spurious need the professions ofsoothsayer priest and minister arise people who make their living by interpreting the divineemotions responsible for difficult circumstances prescribing remedial essentially magicalactions and interceding with God or the gods on behalf of those who pay for their services Whatmakes superstition so difficult to expunge is the fact that it originates not only from ignorancebut from human misery In particular that is the reason the common people are so wedded tosuperstition or so says Spinoza They are ldquoeverywhere at the same level of miseryrdquo

Spinoza develops a conception of true religion in contrast with superstition asessentially moral in character That is the purpose of the detailed Biblical exegesis that comprisesthree-quarters of the TPT In the hands of the professional caste of church officials the Bible isthe most potent instrument of superstition They say it contains the answer to every questionworth asking even the questions philosophers and scientists raise It is supposed to harborsecrets and mysteries that only specialists can decipher It becomes an object of idolatry in thatpeople come to ldquoworship paper and ink rather than the word of Godrdquo But that word is writtenfirst of all in the human heart a Socinian doctrine Spinoza fully endorses Unlike the ldquolettersrdquo ofthe Bible the inwardly revealed word is not subject to the distortions or corruptions of textualtransmission over the course of centuries

There is a core of religious truth in the Bible that accords with the inner light but it hasnothing to do with superstition More broadly it must be distinguished from the beliefs that wereprevalent at the times its various books were written These include the beliefs of the prophets aswell as those of the common people who received their message The prophets were notaccomplished in philosophy or science and it would be a mistake to look for these disciplinesbetween the covers of the Bible Spinoza lists three characteristics that distinguished the prophetsfrom other people and none of them involve intellectual excellence a vivid and activeimagination the experience of a sign and a heart set on what is just and good Of these the lastis the most important The story of the creation of Adam and Eve and the events that transpire inthe Garden of Eden is a parable rather than a record of historical fact Joshua could not havestopped the sun in its motion through the sky because the sun does not revolve around the earthThe prophets disagreed with one another so that there is no possibility of a logically consistentreading of the Bible But none of this really matters In an audacious move Spinoza argues thatwe must neither add nor subtract anything from the Bible remaining content what it clearlyconveys We must read it ldquoliterallyrdquo except when there is linguistic evidence of the intentionaluse of metaphor In one sense then Spinoza is a ldquofundamentalistrdquo But he also argues that we arefree to believe or refuse to believe much of what the Bible says because it is ancillary to itsreligious message

The only claim of religion that can be justified on the basis of a proper reading ofScripture is that human beings ought to obey God by treating one another with justice and love(caritas) Although often rendered into English as ldquocharityrdquo caritas includes much more thangiving to those in need The Latin is a translation of the Koine Greek word agape which refersexpansively to the love of God for the human person the love of the person for God and thelove of people for one another as an extension of their love for God that is to say their desire tolove what God loves For Spinoza the Bible is an appeal to the beliefs and imagination of thecommon people by the prophets and apostles the purpose of which is to convey a moral messageso simple that ldquoeven the most sluggish mindrdquo can understand it In dramatic narrative languageand vivid imagery the authors of the Bible try to convince people to obey God by treating other

people with justice and love The purpose of their writing is to elicit obedience not articulatemetaphysical truth From the Bible we learn nothing about what God is or what his relation is tohuman beings or the universe as a whole The Bible conveys a moral truth in the sense that itcommands people to live in the way that is best for human beings In terms of the theory ofspeech acts John Austin developed in the twentieth-century the Biblersquos use of language isperformative rather than constative It is meant to do something rather than to state somethingalthough it implies the assertion that the best life is one in which we treat other people with loveand justice But it presents no arguments in support of that assertion other than that we must livein the way that God commands By contrast the discovery of metaphysical truth and itsexpression in deductive propositional form is the goal of philosophers According to Spinozathen there can be no conflict between philosophy and religion properly understood becausethey are dedicated to entirely different ends ldquobetween faith and theology on the one side andphilosophy on the other there is no relation and no affinityhelliprdquo

The same cannot be said of religion and the state There is indeed a relation between thetwo though it is in danger of degenerating into conflict because they occupy the same terrainboth demand obedience Of course Spinoza has in mind the fraught relationship between theReform Church and the Dutch Republic In an alliance with the House of Orange the Calvinistconsistories sought to alter the character of the state by abolishing the Republic and replacing itwith a monarchy that would make room for the authority of the Reform Church As long as aninfluential church independent of the state is involved in politics (considering its ability toinfluence the actions of thousands of believers) sovereignty is divided But as Hobbes pointsout in Leviathan it is impossible to divide sovereignty without undermining it The first plank inthe political program Spinoza develops in the TPT is that of subordinating the church to the stateThe sovereignty of the state must be absolute and that means that it must extend even toreligious doctrine and the details of public worship

Thus we cannot doubt that in modern times religionbelongs solely to the right of thesovereign No one has the right and power to exercise control over it to choose itsministers to determine and establish the foundations of the church and its doctrine topass judgment on morality and acts of piety to excommunicate or to accept into thechurch and to provide for the poor except by the authority and permission of thesovereign

Since this conclusion provocatively challenges the power of the Calvinist consistories their

violent reaction to the publication of the TPT is perfectly understandable And yet Spinozaargues that regulation of worship by the state ought to be minimized His purpose is not statedomination of religion but preventing religion from dominating the state He agrees withHobbes that sovereignty is absolute or it does not exist at all since a divided sovereignty isinherently unstable But he also agrees with Machiavelli that the state is sovereign only as longas it is able to retain its power There is a logic a psychology and a physics of political powerwhose most fundamental law is that power can sustain itself only when it does not provoke theindignation of the multitude

In the definition Spinoza gives in the Ethics indignation (indignatio) is hatred towardone who has injured another either someone we love or someone for whom we feel no emotionbut believe to be similar to ourselves It operates through the mechanism of the imitation ofaffects I imitate ndash ie empathetically feel ndash the emotions of those with whom I identify so that Iexperience harm to the other person as harm to myself Since hatred is pain along with the ideaof an external cause my imitation of the suffering of someone whom the sovereign has harmed isequivalent to my hatred of the sovereign The consequence of my hatred is a desire to injure thesovereign in order to diminish or destroy the perceived cause of pain If fear of the consequencesof defying the sovereignrsquos command is transformed into mass indignation then the authority torule disintegrates ldquohellip to slaughter subjects to despoil them to ravish maidens and the like turnsfear into indignation and consequently the civil order into a condition of warrdquo

One certain way to provoke indignation is for the sovereign to tell people what they must

believe and what they are allowed to say Indignation is inevitable if the state attempts to controlthought and expression not only because such attempts harm the multitude but also becausethey are futile Spinoza recognizes that it is possible for the state to deceive its citizens and toeffect their beliefs in other ways But he also assets that no state has the power to suspend thelaws of human nature by for example ordering its people to free themselves from anger to hatethose who have benefited them or to regard as false what they believe to be true Any attempt toexercise power in this fashion provokes indignation in part because of the emptiness of thepower it vainly seeks to assert All that it demonstrates is the sovereignrsquos weakness therebyencouraging the further spread of indignation It also makes enemies of those who refuse to hidetheir deepest beliefs and honors those who lie about what they believe which is both unjust tothose falsely reviled and dangerous to the state because it encourages duplicity and corruption inthose who hold political office Far from protecting the state the attempt to control thought andexpression undermines it

The remarkable thing about the theory of politics Spinoza develops in the TPT is that itderives liberal conclusions from absolutist premises The power of the state is absolute but it isnonetheless fragile No state Spinoza says has more to fear from external enemies than it doesfrom its own people Polices that avoid or minimize indignation are vital to its health Howeverwhile he advocates full freedom of thought and expression as necessary to preserving thepolitical community Spinoza draws the line at action which comes under the province of lawand command After all what else could sovereignty mean but the power to command orprohibit action Action includes such functions of a church as public worship and the provisionof charity both of which for this reason are appropriate objects of state control Most of allcivil peace requires the prohibition of church interference with government which would reversethe proper order of obedience and command Thus Spinoza identifies two conditions of stablepolitical power freedom of thought and expression and the iron will of the state to brook nochallenge to its sovereign authority over action especially from organized religion

If Spinozarsquos program for political reform is liberal it is liberalism of a unique kindUnlike the main currents in the liberal tradition it is based on neither a theory of rights nor oneof individual utility The concept of rights has no normative role to play in the TPT becauseSpinoza insists that rights are the same as powers For example there is no right of free speechunless there is the effective power to speak freely Thus the right cannot function as a normbecause it has no reality until it actually exists and whether or not it exists depends upon thebalance of political forces Moreover although the state is necessary to security and civil peaceno one chooses to create it in order to maximize his or her utility People are driven by self-interest but this is true no matter what their conditions of life happen to be Spinoza makes muchof the irrefutable but neglected point that people do not have the ability to survive withoutcombining their power with that of others There is no possible scenario in which isolatedindividuals choose for or against political organization in the interest of maximizing their utilityfor the simple reason that there are no isolated individuals

It is true that Spinoza argues that democracy is the only ldquonaturalrdquo form of governmentbecause it preserves collectively the right to make decisions that each person enjoys individuallyin the ldquostate of naturerdquo For this reason it is the form of government most compatible withfreedom But the idea of a state of nature that precedes political organization and the associatedidea of natural rights are no more than hypothetical because it is precisely in a state of naturethat people would be unable to protect their rights against the aggression of others But forSpinoza this is the same as saying that these rights do not exist The idea of natural rights in apre-political condition is purely notional The only way to enjoy rights effectively ndash which is tosay the only way to exercise the powers they involve ndash is to entrust them to a sovereign authoritycapable of replacing unbridled aggression with the rule of law If ever there were a socialcontract theorist who employed the concept of the state of nature as an hypothesis in a thoughtexperiment without taking the myth of an original condition seriously it is Spinoza The idea thatdemocracy is the most natural form of government simply means that it comes closest to thehypothetical freedom of the state of nature In a democracy people retain their power to decidewhat actions to take but as members of the sovereign authority ndash ie as citizens ndash while theyare bound as subjects to obey the laws that result from their collective deliberations ldquoIn a

democratic state nobody transfers his natural right to another so completely that thereafter he isnot to be consulted he transfers it to the majority of the entire community of which he is partrdquo

In addition to the claim of naturalism in his advocacy of democracy in the TPT Spinozaargues that democratic governments are less prone to irrationality than monarchical oraristocratic ones A large number of people is less likely to endorse the same irrational decisionthan a small council (aristocracy) or a single person (monarchy) ldquohellip In a democracy there is lessdanger of an assembly behaving unreasonably for it is practically impossible for the majority ofa single assembly if it is of some size to agree on the same piece of follyrdquo The sentence thatfollows the one just quoted throws some light on what ldquothe same piece of follyrdquo means byreferring to ldquothe follies of appetiterdquo Spinozarsquos claim is that a democratic state is more rationalthan the alternatives in that it does the best job avoiding the foolish decisions people make whenled by their appetites

Spinoza does not provide an argument in support of this claim in the TPT but in thePolitical Treatise which he began to write two years later there is a passage that that helpscorrect the omission It concerns the wisdom of establishing a governing council with a largenumber of members in an aristocratic state Although an aristocracy excludes the commonpeople from political power reserving it for an elite Spinoza argues that it is capable ofguaranteeing liberties similar to those of democratic government provided that the members ofits governing council are sufficiently numerous

The fact that sovereignty is conferred absolutely on the council need not give thecommon people [plebi] any reason to fear oppressive slavery at its hands For when acouncil is so large its will is determined by reason rather than mere caprice becauselusts [libidine] draw men asunder and it is only when they have as their objective whatis honorable or at least appears so that they can be guided as if by one mind

Spinozarsquos argument is more complicated than a quick reading might indicate It is

impossible he claims for the members of a large council to come to agreement on the basis oftheir libidine because these affects draw them in different and incompatible directions Whilelibidine generally refers to sexual appetites Spinoza uses the word in this context to refer to thefull range of disreputable passions The corresponding point in the TPT is that it is ldquopracticallyimpossiblerdquo for the members of the democratic council to endorse the same ldquopiece of follyrdquo Inorder to reach agreement the members of the governing council in an aristocratic state must takeas their goal ldquowhat is honorable or at least appears sordquo In the Ethics Spinoza defines thehonorable (honestum) as ldquowhat is praised by men who live by the guidance of reasonrdquo and hemakes it clear that what such men praise is ldquothe desire to establish friendshiprdquo In accordancewith this definition the objective of the council members in an aristocracy is not so much to actwith reason as to be regarded by the reasonable as acting with reason ie as promotingfriendship That is why they are able to reach agreement even when their objective appears to behonorable although it is not But with whom do they wish to be or appear to be friends SinceSpinoza intends his argument to allay the fear of the plebs it seems obvious that it is theirfriendship that the council members seek But why would aristocrats be interested in makingfriends with commoners Although Spinoza does not tell us why in this passage the answer canbe found elsewhere in the Political Treatise The reason that the council members must seek thefriendship of the common people is that aristocratic government is not nor can it be absolute inthe full sense of the word in other words it cannot hold a complete monopoly on powerAlthough they have no institutional role in an aristocratic regime the common people retain thepower to undermine state authority by refusing to obey it or even by waging war against it Therulers recognize that power in the fear with which they regard the masses

In the Introduction to the Political Treatise Spinoza dissociates himself from the rosyview of human nature held by the authors of utopias In order to develop a political philosophythat is useful in the world of actual human affairs it is necessary to design institutions inaccordance with which those in government realize the rational end of politics ndash ie the common

good ndash whether or not that is their intention The desire of the members of the council to be seenas seeking the friendship of the masses ensures the rationality of the formerrsquos decisions becauseit causes them to seek the common good even if they do so from fear rather than dedication toreason One might object that appearing to seek the friendship of the masses entails only that thecouncil appear to seek the common good not that it actually does so But it is not possible for thecouncil to neglect the common interest over the long run without dire consequences unless weassume that the masses are so benighted that they are unable to discern the consistent violation oftheir interests The appearance and reality of seeking the friendship of the masses areindistinguishable as proved nearly two hundred years later by a theorem of Abraham LincolnsIt is possible to fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the timebut not all of the people all of the time If that theorem were not true then there would be nolimit to the power of tyrants while Spinoza is fond of quoting Tacitus that tyrannies never lastlong Once again the reason for their inevitable downfall is the indignation they provokethrough the harm they cause to the interests of the multitude

Although Spinoza does not make the point explicitly it is easy to see that a democraticcouncil does not require the same concern with the honorable as an aristocratic one because fearof the masses has no role to play in a democracy Since the common people who are the vastmajority of society are empowered to make decisions they have no need to evoke fear indecision-makers different than themselves in order to protect their own interests Thus in the caseof a democratic council the impossibility of a large number of people agreeing on ldquothe samepiece of follyrdquo is enough to secure political rationality ie the discovery and implementation ofthe common good

An implication of Spinozarsquos emphasis on the affinity between democracy and reason isthat democracy is a kind school for developing rationality The need to make and assess publicarguments about the common good requires clarity of thought and some understanding of theprinciples of logical implication In addition while citizens of a democracy agree to obey the lawor decree established by a vote of the majority they retain their freedom of judgment includingthe right to argue in favor of reversing decisions already made Thus there is no point in ademocracy at which citizens must give up their efforts to influence collective decisions andtherefore no point at which rationality becomes irrelevant However reason is not simply ameans of achieving the common good as an external end It is part of the common good forhuman beings and therefore itself one the ends it seeks to achieve The highest good is theintellectual love of God ndash so Spinoza argues in the Ethics ndash which we cannot attain withoutexercising reason Democracy then turns out to be not only the best way of securing thecommon good of the members of a polity but the best way of advancing the ultimate goodappropriate to human beings in general

Spinozarsquos advocacy of democracy was exceedingly radical at a time when monarchy wasthe political norm in Europe and even the oligarchic regent-dominated Dutch Republic waswidely regarded as an ultra-left anomaly But it sits uncomfortably with another aspect of theTPT namely its apparently low opinion of ldquothe multituderdquo (multitudo) In the Introduction to thebook which was written in Latin Spinoza tells his readers that he would prefer that ldquothecommon peoplerdquo (plebs) not read the work since they are incapable of understanding it andlikely to distort its meaning He pictures its members as entirely driven by their passions andincapable of using reason

I know how deeply rooted in the mind are the prejudices embraced under the guise ofpiety I know too that the masses [vulgo] can no more be freed from their superstitionthan from their fears Finally I know that they are unchanging in their obstinacy thatthey are not guided by reason and that their praise and blame is at the mercy of impulse

But this judgment throws into question the affinity between democracy and reason that

Spinoza affirms in the TPT For in order for such an affinity to exist the common people mustbe able to make decisions on the basis of reason Is the negative picture he paints of the masses

in the Introduction to the TPT simply a rhetorical device meant to appeal to the vanity of hiseducated readership It does not seem to be because a similarly low opinion appears again in theEthics and in some of his letters where there is no need to appeal to anyonersquos vanity Instead offunctioning simply as a rhetorical ploy Spinozarsquos generally negative view of the vast majority ofsociety and the positive view he develops in his advocacy of democracy indicate a tension in hispolitics

In the Ethics and TPT Spinoza uses the words vulgus plebs and multitudointerchangeably When any of the three word appears it is usually accompanied by suchqualifiers as ldquoirrationalrdquo ldquoignorantrdquo ldquouneducatedrdquo ldquosuperstitiousrdquo and ldquogoverned by passionsrdquoStill for Spinoza reason is not the possession of a natural elite Rather it is a universally humancapacity whose occurrence among people in developed form is rare Above all the cultivation ofreason requires free time There are two references to this requirement in the TPT that bear onthe ability of the multitude to develop their rational capacities One passage refers to ldquothecommon peoplerdquo as ldquofor the most part knowing nothing of logical reasoning or without leisurefor itrdquo Another refers to Spinozarsquos method of biblical exegesis noting that ldquoour own methoddemands a knowledge of Hebrew for which study the common people can likewise have noleisurerdquo A third passage which we have already referred to is relevant to the relationshipbetween leisure and the cultivation of reason while not mentioning it directly ldquothe multitude arealways at the same level of miseryrdquo Although Spinoza does not specify what he means by thelast statement it is likely that he is referring at least in part to the misery of onerous labor Thepoverty of the multitude demands that they spend most of their time engaged in hard physicalwork and the resulting absence of leisure prevents them from acquiring knowledge anddeveloping rational skills Lacking developed reason it is easy for them to fall under the sway ofthose who manipulate their fears and hopes for their own personal advantage the priestsministers rabbis and other religious officials In Spinozarsquos view fears and hopes make themultitude credulous and willing to accept superstitious beliefs (in divination the ability ofprayer to change the natural course of events the purchase of indulgences etc) that promisecontrol of an uncertain future For clerics the key to power and money is manipulation of thegreat majority of society through the instrument of superstition masked as religion

While the words plebs vulgus and multitudo do not designate a particular social classthey are not free of class reference either Spinoza uses the word plebs much as it was used in theearly Roman Republic to refer to the free subjects of a state who have no right to participate ingovernment Although plebs designates a political status rather than an economic class Spinozais clear that the group it refers to consists largely in those who work with their hands Forexample in the Political Treatise he identifies artisans as an example of the plebs the onlyexample in any of his writings Undoubtedly he would also have included peasants and wageworkers in that category and probably small retail merchants who were also politicallydisenfranchised Patricians by contrast certainly include nobles but may also include at least thewealthier burghers as was the case in the United Provinces Germany and much of the rest ofEurope The word vulgus as Spinoza uses it refers to the same members of society as the wordplebs but with the specific connotation of a lack of education and culture whose most extremeexpression is the unruly and irrational behavior of mobs In fact depending upon the contextvulgus is sometimes best translated as ldquocrowdrdquo or ldquomobrdquo Multitudo means ldquothe manyrdquo Spinozauses it to designate any group with numerous members including for example the simplebodies that make up a chemical substance In the context of political theory he uses the word torefer to the same people who comprise the plebs or vulgus but with the specific connotation ofbeing the vast majority of society Thus plebs vulgus and multitudo have the same referentalthough their principal connotations differ However in Spinozarsquos usage each word tends tobecome a synecdoche for the combined meaning of all three Thus in general the plebs vulgusor multitudo comprise the vast majority of society comprised largely of those who work withtheir hands are denied political rights except in democracies lack culture and education and aregiven to uncouth irrational or unruly behavior

The tension in Spinozarsquos politics between his critical view of the multitude and hisadvocacy of a democratic state in which it is sovereign can be explained by drawing a distinctionbetween the multitude as it is under the conditions of the actually existing Dutch Republic and

the multitude as it could be were Spinozarsquos reforms to be implemented With an uncontrolledReform Church and a Republic dominated by regents who represent the wealthy burghers themultitude has no chancing of shedding its superstitions or developing its rational capacities TheChurch manipulates their hopes and fears through the instrument of superstition and therepublican oligarchs block their participation in political decision-making which is the only waythey can develop rationality on a significant scale The story would be very different however ifthe state were both democratic and prohibited the Church from involvement in politics Twomajor conditions would then exist for the development of reason on a mass scale

The idea of a democracy raises the problem of how people without significant materialresources are to participate in making decisions when they must spend their lives in toil It mightbe thought that the problem can be solved by a universal franchise enabling all citizens to votefor representatives to a legislative assembly and other state offices But even if measures were inplace to prevent the wealthy minority from exercising unequal influence in elected bodiesrepresentative government is not Spinozarsquos idea of democracy Like Plato and Aristotle when heuses the term ldquodemocracyrdquo he has in mind a state such as the Athenian polis in which all adult(male) citizens were empowered to vote directly on legislation and other public matters Spinozamakes this clear in the unfinished chapter on democracy in the Political Treatise

hellipin this state all who are born of citizen parents or on native soil or have done serviceto the commonwealth or are qualified on any other grounds on which the right ofcitizenship is granted by law all I say can lawfully demand for themselves the right tovote in the supreme council and to undertake offices of state nor can they be refusedexcept for crime or dishonor

At a relatively advanced stage in its development the Athenian polis solved the problem

of the multitudersquos participation in government by paying citizens to attend sessions of theAssembly thereby compensating them for missed days of work If Spinoza was aware of theAthenian solution he gives no indication of it in his writings although it is likely that he wouldhave considered the problem of participation in politics by those without leisure in the part of thePolitical Treatise he left unfinished at his death Following the pattern of the completed chapterson monarchy and aristocracy the unfinished chapters on democracy would undoubtedly havespecified the institutional structures and practices necessary to sustain a democratic state In anyevent without something like the Athenian solution the idea of a democratic republic in theUnited Provinces would have been no more than the sort of utopian dream Spinoza rejects in theIntroduction to the Political Treatise

Returning to the earlier work the program for reforming the Dutch Republic that emergesin the TPT has three planks 1) establish state control over the churches as public institutions 2)guarantee freedom of thought expression and private worship and 3) democratize the oligarchicRepublic Although Spinozarsquos book is a work of philosophy it is equally a political interventionin a concrete historical situation a fact that he indicates in his letter to Jelles by referring to theldquocauserdquo he asks his friend to serve by blocking the Dutch translation of the book But in order toact as a political intervention the book must influence the beliefs and through them the actionsof people That raises the question To whom is the TPT addressed Since the decision to write inLatin effectively prevented the multitude from reading the work (which as we have seen wasSpinozarsquos intention) and on the assumption that not many aristocrats were likely to be swayedby its radical arguments the addressee of the book can only have been the educated section ofthe bourgeoisie Since Spinoza was unlikely to sway many conservative Calvinists with hisrationalist conception of religion there were only two groups within the bourgeoisie ndash at leastsome of whose members were capable of reading Latin ndash that the work could effectively addressThe first consists in republicans including the regents who hesitated to support the kind of stateauthority over religion that Spinoza advocated for ideological or pragmatic reasons The secondconsists in Orangists who were liberals in matters of religion and so in conflict with the ReformChurch As odd as it may seem there were a good number of people who fit into the secondcategory Even many of the Collegiantrsquos were loyal to the House of Orange in spite of theirpronounced religious liberalism

Had the TPTrsquos program been limited to its first two planks ndash state control of the churchesand freedom of thought and expression ndash it would have been politically coherent But where doesthe idea of democratizing the United Provinces fit into this picture Neither bourgeoisrepublicans nor religious liberals were apt to be sympathetic to the idea of a democratic republicthat would place power in the hands of the multitude If Spinoza wanted to make an appeal to therepublican and liberal Orangist sections of the bourgeoisie he ought to have been defending theexisting oligarchic Republic against its conservative Calvinist and monarchist enemies ratherthan elaborating an argument for its democratization There is only one audience who wouldhave been sympathetic to that argument namely the peasants artisans wage-workers and smallmerchants who comprised the multitude But that is precisely the readership Spinoza deniedhimself by writing in Latin

And yet Spinoza understood that the only way the Republic could survive in face of thealliance between the Reform Church and the House of Orange was to shift the allegiance of themultitude by winning its support Thus the contradiction in Spinozarsquos program is not a theoreticalflaw but a reflection of the real contradiction involved in the stadtholderless Republic or if youprefer the instability in the balance of social forces that enabled it to exist The Republic couldsurvive only by means of an impossible alliance between the multitude and the regents IfSpinoza erred it was in believing that it was possible to convince the regents to democratize bythe force of his arguments But this was the same as asking them to commit political suicidesince their power on the urban and national levels depended upon their ability to defend theirmonopoly on state offices The only alternative which Spinoza rejected was a popularrevolution that would create a new and radically democratic republic But that republic wouldshare with the existing one no more than the name like the animal dog and the dog star thatSpinoza refers to in a different context For that reason it would have fallen under his warningthat those who attempt to change the form of the state are likely to see it restored in a morerepressive version (see page 25 below) In short there was no solution to the problem the TPTattempted to solve or at least none within the limits of Spinozarsquos thinking As a political theoryand a theory of biblical hermeneutics the book is a brilliant work that went on to influencephilosophers and ironically theologians for the next three centuries As an intervention in theextraordinarily difficult and complex political situation of the seventeenth-century Netherlands itwas and had to be an utter failure

There are in fact two political programs in the TPT an overt program and a latent oneThe overt program is liberal republican and bourgeois in the sense that its addressee andintended agent of change is the educated bourgeoisie The latent program lies quite a bit furtherto the left It is radically democratic and its only possible agent of change is the multitude Letter44 makes a contribution to the latent program that moves in an even more radical direction

The Communist Idea

In his letter to Jelles Spinoza develops an idea of the highest good for human beings as

an alternative to what he argues is the false conception of Homo Politicus For the author of thatbook wealth and honors comprise the highest good But Spinoza claims in the letter thatcommonwealths devoted to the pursuit of wealth and honors ldquomust necessarily perish and haveperishedrdquo He then writes

How far superior indeed and excellent were the reflections of Thales of Miletus compared with this writer is shown by the following account All things he said are incommon among friends

The fact that this paragraph follows Spinozarsquos critique of Homo Politicus while proposing

an alternative to the apparent position of its author justifies an interpretation that takes it in apolitical sense Spinoza should be read as offering the saying of Thales as an addendum to the

latent program he articulates in the TPT Like democracy common ownership could have onlyone social basis in the Netherlands of the seventeenth century ndash namely the peasants artisanswage-workers and small retail merchants The problem this raises is how to make the transitionfrom a multitude given to irrationality and superstition ndash and therefore under the sway of theReformed Church ndash to one capable of the rationality necessary to create the democraticcommunism (the content of which we have yet to define) that Letter 44 implies when consideredalong with the TPT Spinoza saw no answer to this problem That is why he suppressed his latentproject in favor of the overt one for a liberal republic able to assert its sovereign authority overthe Church It seemed to him that the educated bourgeoisie had political capacities that themultitude lacked

Spinozarsquos judgment on this matter is similar mutatis mutandis to that of FrederickEngels in the Peasant War in Germany For Engels the Peasant War of the sixteenth century wasa heroic but premature revolution Under the leadership of Thomas Muumlntzer the peasantsadopted a program that included the expropriation of ecclesiastic and aristocratic property andthe common ownership of goods But the princes were the only group with the wealth andmilitary resources necessary to benefit from the ensuing turmoil while their rivals for power ndashthe Catholic prelates and lesser nobility ndash were ruined by the confiscation of property andplundering or destruction of fixed wealth by the peasant masses The rising bourgeoisie was ableto frame an independent liberal political program but did not yet have the social weightnecessary to play a leading role in the economy and the state According to Engels the peasantrywas incapable of mastering the new forces of production unleashed by the world market and theonly class that might have played a progressive role alongside the peasants ndash the proletarianwage-working element in the towns ndash was a very small part of laboring population It would takeanother three centuries for the proletariat to develop along with industry to the point where itwould be able to draft a meaningful equivalent of the communist program first framed by thesixteenth-century German peasantry Spinoza certainly had no idea that industrialization and asizeable proletariat were on their way But he shared with Engels a pessimistic assessment of thechances for a successful social transformation led by peasants and their allies Perhaps with thedisastrous defeat of the German peasants in mind (as well as the allegiance of the Dutchmultitude to the Reformed Church) Spinoza judged that relying upon the common people as anagent of social and political change in his own century would have been equally futile

Why then does Spinoza raise the issue of common ownership in Letter 44 The answer isthe same as for why he discusses democracy in the TPT when it makes no contribution to hispolitical intervention but on the contrary damages it We could say that Spinoza is either a badmilitant or a good philosopher The truth is he is both Like Platorsquos attempt to influence thecourse of events in Syracuse or Aristotlersquos decision to tutor Alexander the Great Spinozarsquos faithin the political efficacy of philosophical reasoning was misguided There is ample historicalevidence that the philosopher who attempts to be politically effective as a philosopher is doomedto defeat That is why Marx ceased considering himself a philosopher in 1845 as he indicates inthe eleventh of his Theses on Feuerbach ldquoUntil now philosophers have only attempted tounderstand the world the point however is to change itrdquo The project of changing the world isdifferent than that of understanding it from a purely theoretical perspective Of course it ispossible for philosophers to influence statesmen as Locke influenced the drafters of the USConstitution But Lockersquos influence was effective more than a century after he wrote the SecondTreatise on Civil Government and so can hardly be called a political intervention The attempt tointervene politically in a concrete situation in which multiple forces and complex structures arein play is something very different than the delayed influence on the drafters of a constitutionwho have had an opportunity to ponder at leisure the meaning of a philosopherrsquos work The mostimportant question of politics is not so much ldquoWhat is to be donerdquo as ldquoWho is to do itrdquoSpinoza may have been right that the multitude was not the collective subject to defendrepublican liberty That is why he appealed to the Dutch bourgeoisie through its philosophicallyliterate elements But he was too much the philosopher to suppress his argument that ademocratic republic is the kind of state that best preserves freedom and encourages rationalityand he was willing to make his point even at the cost of alienating the collective agent he wasattempting to influence

The reference to common ownership in Letter 44 would have had an even more negativeeffect on his readers should Spinoza have made it in the TPT In private communication withJelles however he was able to raise the topic without risking further political difficultiesSpinozarsquos reference presumes an intellectual history with roots in both ancient Greek philosophyand early Christianity a history that was renewed practically as well as theoretically in earlymodern Europe In the passage from Letter 44 where he introduces the theme of commonownership he goes on to elaborate the position he attributes to Thales Here is the passage in fullthat we have already quoted partially

How far superior indeed and excellent were the reflections of Thales of Miletuscompared with this writer is shown by the following account All things he said are incommon among friends The wise are the friends of the Gods and all things belong tothe Gods therefore all things belong to the wise In this way the wise man makeshimself the richest by nobly despising riches instead of greedily pursuing them

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo (Amicorum communia omnia) is

the first entry in his book Adages by the late Renaissance humanist and reform-minded Catholicscholar Desiderius Erasmus The Adages were widely available in Spinozarsquos day and it is likelythat both Spinoza and Jelles had read them although the former must have also consultedErasmusrsquo source for the saying ndash Lives of the Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius We will seewhy in a moment Erasmus cites the same deduction from the maxim as Spinoza does in Letter44 except that he attributes it to Socrates rather than Thales

From this proverb Socrates deduced that all things belong to all good men just as theydo to the gods For to the gods he said belong all things good men are friends of thegods and among friends all possessions are in common

The fact that Spinoza refers to wise men while Erasmus refers to good men does not

indicate any real difference between them because both accepted the ancient Greek and biblicalequivalence between human goodness and wisdom The difference in attributing the deductiveconsequences of the proverb to Thales on the one hand and Socrates on the other also does notindicate any substantive disagreement between Spinoza and Erasmus although it does signify adifference in intellectual vocation and emphasis Interestingly however the attribution in bothcases is incorrect Their common source the Lives of the Philosophers places the argument intothe mouth of Diogenes the Cynic rather than Socrates or Thales Thus both Spinoza and Erasmushave had a failure of memory and probably for the same reason The author of Lives makes itclear that although Diogenes the Cynic despised the pursuit of wealth he was not a veryappealing character he was arrogant and could be verbally and physically abusive to those hejudged to be unwise It is understandable then that the figure of Diogenes would drop out of thememory of both Erasmus and Spinoza and be replaced by a philosopher with whom each tosome extent identified Erasmus the Renaissance humanist undoubtedly found Socrates well-suited to stand in for the part of Diogenes the Cynic because Socrates was a moral philosopherand the teacher of Plato whose influence on the Renaissance was profound As an admirer of thenatural sciences and a maker of telescopes Spinoza would have felt the same way about Thaleswho was an astronomer as well as a philosopher

In Letter 44 a story from Lives follows the identification of Thales as the figureresponsible for the drawing the deductive consequences of the proverb In order to demonstratethat his rejection of the pursuit of wealth was not an alibi for poverty Thales made use of hisexpert knowledge of the heavens Foreseeing a bountiful olive crop after the previous harvestrsquosdearth he rented all of the olive presses in Greece cheaply and then hired them out at a highprice to farmers who needed them to press the oil from their olives In this way he amassed agreat deal of wealth within a single year which ldquohe then distributed with a liberality equal to the

shrewdness by which he had acquired itrdquo Spinozarsquos memory of the story must have acted as abridge for the mistaken identification

The similarity between the ancient Greek proverb and the passages from Acts about thecommunal practices of the early Church with respect to property must have been evident to thebiblical scholar Spinoza Rendered into Latin by Erasmus the proverb ldquoAll things are incommon among friendsrdquo is amicorum communia omnia In Acts 244 ndash ldquoAll that believed weretogether and had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquohad all things in commonrdquo appears in theLatin Vulgate as habebant omnia communia In Acts 432 ndash ldquoNo one claimed that any of theirpossessions was their own but they had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquothey had all thingsin commonrdquo appears in the Vulgate as erant illis omnia communia The equivalence between thecommunia omnia of the proverb and the omnia communia of the two verses from Acts wouldhave been perfectly clear to Spinoza on linguistic grounds alone

In Adages Erasmus is more explicit than Spinoza in connecting the proverb with theverses from Acts He discusses the proverb in its appearance in book 5 of the Laws where Platoappeals to it in order to demonstrate that the best condition of society consists in the communityof possessions Erasmus writes

But it is extraordinary how Christians dislike this common ownership of Platorsquos how infact they throw stones at it although nothing comes closer to the mind of Christ

Further on Erasmus identifies the inventor of the proverb as Pythagoras who he saysestablished a community in which life and property were shared

hellipwhich is the very thing Christ wants to happen among Christians For all those whowere admitted by Pythagoras into that well-known band who followed his instructionswould give to the common fund whatever money and family property they possessed

Even apart from Erasmus the similarity between the Greek philosophersrsquo proverb and the

New Testament passages would have been evident to the Mennonite Jelles from MennoSimonrsquos discussion of the communal practice described in Acts (more on this below) Jelleswould also have found the parallel especially appealing because it makes the principle ofcommon ownership part of that rational philosophical version of Christianity that he and theother Waterlander Mennonites and Collegiants were seeking to establish

Although Erasmus was an advocate of religious reform he never joined the ProtestantReformation remaining a loyal Catholic until his death It is ironic then that during hislifetime the only vigorous champions of the common ownership he espoused were members ofthe most radical wing of the Reformation ironic but completely intelligible since the radicalsrsquoproject was to restore the Church to its original apostolic condition before its accommodationwith worldly power and wealth under Constantine

The Latin phrase designating Anabaptist communism in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies is Omnia sunt communia (for example it appears in this form in the confession theauthorities extracted from Thomas Muumlntzer under torture) It translates into English as ldquoAllthings are commonrdquo which is the present tense version of the phrase in Acts 432 ldquoall thingswere commonrdquo (ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά) to the members of the Church in Jerusalem Theparallel formulation in Acts 244 is slightly different although the distinction is lost in the LatinVulgate It reads that the members of the apostolic Church ldquohad all things in commonrdquo (εἶχονἅπαντα κοινὰ) In the second formulation εἶχον (had) seems to suggest a specific mode ofpossession or even an established quasi-legal form of property But it would be a mistake tointerpret it this way In both verses the anonymous author of Acts is articulating a generalprinciple rather than specifying a form of its implementation As we shall see the concreteapplication of the principle in the first century Church involved not a mode of possession orform of property but rather a practice of redistribution

Within the Anabaptist movement there was a broad range of beliefs and practices thatinvolved specific applications of the principle Omnia sunt communia We need to recognizetheir breadth in order to grasp just how subtle and variegated Anabaptist communism could beFor this purpose it is important to distinguish between communism as 1) a principle ofredistribution 2) a form of joint or communal property 3) a mode of the organization of workand 4) a kind of mutual aid In general all Anabaptist applications of Omnia sunt communia areintended to realize in different ways a communal and spiritual life in which all things arecommon We could say if we like that each of the four categories serves as a means for realizingthe end designated by that principle as long as we keep in mind that in this case the meanscannot be discarded once the end has been achieved Communism as a principle of redistributiona form of communal property a mode of the organization of work a kind of mutual aid ndash orsome combination of these ndash are the concrete ways in which communism as a mode ofcommunal and spiritual life is realized In this case the means are internal to the end That isbecause there can be no fellowship no community of the spirit unless those participating sharesomething ie have it in common Greek recognizes this internal relationship between acommon life and something shared in the word translated into English as fellowship κοινωνίαthe root of which is κοινός which means ldquocommonrdquo Its antonym ἴδιος means ldquobelonging toonerdquo It is the word κοινός that appears in the passages from Acts that refer to the practice ofsharing material wealth

244 ldquoAll who believed were together and had all things in common (Πάντες δὲ οἱπιστεύοντες ἦσαν ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό καὶ εἶχον ἅπαντα κοινὰ)

432 ldquoThe multitude of believers were one in heart and soul (Τοῦ δὲ πλήθους τῶνπιστευσάντων ἦν καρδία καὶ ψυχὴ microία) and no one claimed anything as his ownpossession but to them all things were in common (καὶ οὐδὲ εἷς τι τῶν ὑπαρχόντωναὐτῷ ἔλεγεν ἴδιον εἶναι ἀλλrsquo ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά)

Both verses affirm an internal relationship between living a common life and things

being in common or people having things in common But this is true of any collectiveendeavor A chess club for example is only possible if the members have a common interest inplaying chess But the verses from Acts mean to assert more than this They affirm the intensityand universality of the common life experienced in the early Church (being ldquoone in heart andsoulrdquo) They indicate this by referring to the fact that in the Church in Jerusalem all things areheld in common (ἅπαντα κοινά) Although ldquoall thingsrdquo (ἅπαντα) is not limited to materialpossessions the succeeding verses in chapters 2 and 4 of Acts indicate the depth of thecommitment the early Christians had to sharing a common life by referring to the practice inwhich they enacted it

245 And they sold their possessions and goods and divided them among everyoneaccording to need (καὶ τὰ κτήmicroατα καὶ τὰς ὑπάρξεις ἐπίπρασκον καὶ διεmicroέριζον αὐτὰπᾶσιν καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

434 There was no one among them in need as many as owned land or houses soldthem and brought the values of what was sold (οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐνδεής τις ἦν ἐν αὐτοῖς ὅσοιγὰρ κτήτορες χωρίων ἢ οἰκιῶν ὑπῆρχον πωλοῦντες ἔφερον τὰς τιmicroὰς τῶνπιπρασκοmicroένων) 435 and laid them at the feet of the apostles and distribution wasmade to each in accordance with need (καὶ ἐτίθουν παρὰ τοὺς πόδας τῶν ἀποστόλωνδιεδίδετο δὲ ἑκάστῳ καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

The needs of others are what break the bonds of individual ownership allowing the

transition from the private (ἴδιος) to the common (κοινά) Acts refers to making material goods

common rather than for example communicating private knowledge publicly presumablybecause of the difficulty people experience parting with private property and the correlativesignificance of the act of doing so For material possessions are the means by which they satisfytheir basic needs ndash for food shelter clothing and so on ndash and when possible their desire forluxuries The act of handing over possessions has two consequences The first is that thedistinction between rich and poor wealthy and needy owner and propertyless is abolished andthe members of the community come to stand on level ground The second consequence involvesa more fundamental risk on the part of property-owners By handing over their property theymake a leap of faith that the community will henceforth satisfy their needs as well through thesame practice of redistribution When applied in this fashion the general principle of being incommon or having in common results in an example of the first category of communism asspecified above ie communism as a principle of redistribution

Redistribution of property by the apostles creates occasions for active sharing asexpressions of the new form of common life 246 says that the members of the Church inJerusalem ldquoalso broke bread in each otherrsquos homes and took their meals in exaltation andsimplicity of heartrdquo (κλῶντές τε κατrsquo ο ἴκον ἄρτον microετελάmicroβανον τροφῆς ἐν ἀγαλλιάσει καὶἀφελότητι καρδίας) The value of sharing meals lies not merely in the fact that everyone is fedbut also in the experience of exaltation or ecstatic delight (ἀγαλλιάσεις) and sincerity orsimplicity of heart (ἀφελότητι καρδίας) The experience in common of exaltation and sincerity isat least as important as the act of satisfying needs although the two can be distinguished onlynotionally

The experience has its meaning in relation to the power (δυνάmicroις) that brings together themembers of the new community and inspires them to share their property The gathering of JewsGreeks and those from other nations (the circumcised and the uncircumcised as Paul says)occurs in the period following Pentecost when the Holy Spirit is supposed to have descended incloven tongues of flame upon the twelve apostles endowing them with the ability to speak inevery language Pentecost in turn follows by several weeks the resurrection of Christ and hisbodily ascension into heaven The gift of being able to speak in every language permits theapostles to convey their message to all nations That message ndash confirmed by ldquosigns andwondersrdquo ndash is testimony of their own first-hand witness to the Resurrection It is accompanied bythe baptism of the new members of the Church which repeats the Pentecostal experience byfilling them with the grace and power of the Holy Spirit

433 ldquoAnd with great power the apostles were giving witness to the resurrection of theLord Jesus and abundant grace was upon them all (καὶ δυνάmicroει microεγάλῃ ἀπεδίδουν τὸmicroαρτύριον οἱ ἀπόστολοι τοῦ Κυρίου Ἰησοῦ τῆς ἀναστάσεως χάρις τε microεγάλη ἦν ἐπὶπάντας αὐτούς)

The ecstatic delight and simplicity of heart that the members of the Church in Jerusalem

experience by sharing a common life is their enjoyment of this ldquoabundant gracerdquo (χάρις τεmicroεγάλη) The new community is built upon faith in the apostlesrsquo testimony that Jesus triumphedover death and that his victory promises an eternal life to all who believe That is the gift of theHoly Spirit Yet the ldquospiritualrdquo (πνευmicroατικός) content of early Christian experience does not denyits simultaneously material character For the significance of the Resurrection and the Ascensioninto Heaven is precisely that they concern the physical body of Christ When he appears toThomas who doubts that he has returned Jesus invites his disciple to place his hands into thewounds received from the Crucifixion The point is to show not only that the man standing infront of Thomas is not an imposter but also that the risen Christ is no disembodied ghost Andwhen the apostles witness the Ascension what they see is the physical body of Jesus rising toheaven There is little suggestion of soul-body dualism in Acts The spirit (πνεῦmicroα) infuses andtransfigures the body it does not exist apart from it In this respect it is similar to the life-givingbreath to which the word πνεῦmicroα originally referred Dualism is the result of a Platonizinginterpretation of Christianity that comes later The bodily character of the Resurrection extends tothe promise of eternal life for believers as well The promise is not that their souls will exist apart

from their bodies but that their bodies will rise up from the grave like that of their Savior Giventhis early Christian materialism it is not surprising that commonality of material goods wouldserve as a fundamental expression of the new life of the believers

As we already know the project of the sixteenth-century Anabaptists was to restore theChurch to its original apostolic condition by undoing the corruption they believed had set inwhen it made its peace with worldly wealth and power under Constantine Given the nature ofthe Anabaptist project it would seem that making material things common as described in Actswould follow as a matter of course However there is a long tradition ndash one that began aroundthe middle of the sixteenth century ndash of denying that Anabaptism has anything to do withcommunism regarding it as an accusation brought against the Anabaptists by their enemies It isunderstandable that this should be so The Anabaptists were the victims of a ldquored scarerdquo thatgripped the ruling classes of Europe in the aftermath of the Peasant War and the Muumlnstercommune It is impossible to explain the horrendous tortures forced relocations andinnumerable executions Anabaptists faced on the basis of heretical belief alone Nothing of aremotely similar scale was visited upon other schismatics The fact that the Anabaptistschallenged prevailing property relations is what made them victims of near-genocide It was amatter of survival then to create some distance between themselves and the charge ofadvocating common ownership of goods that came from Luther Zwingli and those whoextracted the confession from Thomas Muumlntzer that he held to the principle of Omnia communiasunt Recent scholarship however has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that having thingsin common was indeed a basic and widespread principle of Anabaptism at its origin just as it hasdemonstrated the influence veterans of the Peasant War had among the early Anabaptists

The dominant form of communist practice in early Anabaptism was appropriatelymodeled on the description of redistribution in Acts In Switzerland where the movementoriginated converts were often asked or required to make contributions to a ldquocommon purserdquoafter receiving adult baptism Some especially pious initiates went so far as to sell their land andhouses for that purpose in accordance with the biblical precedent When necessary officialsdistributed the contents of the purse to members of the community who were in need

Both proponents and enemies of Anabaptist communism often confused the redistributionof wealth with joint or communal property However except for the taking of meals in commonthere is no indication in Acts that redistribution collectivized ownership of wealth in this fashionbut only that it transferred wealth from the better-off members of the community to the worse-off Nevertheless some Anabaptists took joint or communal property as a paradigm for newproperty relations For example the visionary writing of the Nuremberg printer Hans Hergotwho was executed for rebellion in 1527 includes the following passage

And everything that grows on the land belongs to the church and the people who livethere Everything is bestowed for common use so that the people will eat from one potdrink from one vesselhellip And all things will be used in common so that no one is betteroff than another

The ldquowar communismrdquo of the city of Muumlnster involved an ad hoc form of communal propertythrough the edict that the doors to all homes be left open and the owners take in anyone whowished to reside with them But the most significant successful and long-lasting attempt toimplement communal property was that of the Hutterites

The Hutterites took their name from the charismatic hat-maker and Anabaptist leaderJacob Hutter However at their origins they were influenced by the revolutionary bookbinderHans Hut Hut shared Thomas Muumlntzerrsquos sanguinary apocalyptic view of social change andadvocated community ownership of goods in accordance with his own understanding of ActsHe survived the battle of Frankenhausen in which the peasant rebels were finally defeated butwas tortured and executed a few years later In the aftermath and under the influence of JacobHutter the Hutterites adopted pacifism and a strategy of creating autonomous communities Inorder escape persecution thousands of the brethren emigrated from Switzerland and Germany to

the more tolerant Moravia where they created hundreds of Bruderhofs farms and vineyards inwhich land houses farm implements produce and even objects of personal use were ownedcollectively The center of Bruderhof life was a large communal house in which craft productionoccurred on the ground floor and couples lived in small apartments on the upper levels The menengaged in farm labor and craftwork while the women were limited to traditional domesticduties in spite of the fact that children were raised communally apart from their parents TheBruderhofs enjoyed great economic success for a number of reasons People worked hard andconsumed little resulting in a surplus that could be used to purchase additional land seed andtools The size of the communities and of their agricultural production also enabled them to sellcheaply and to pay for supplies at generous prices both of which made the communitieseconomic assets to the areas in which they were located The Hutterites also organized both farmlabor and craft production cooperatively including the education boys were given in thenecessary skills They were therefore practitioners of the second and third forms of communismwe have identified namely communal ownership and cooperative organization of work Whenthey were ultimately forced out of Moravia by the triumph of Catholic forces in the Thirty YearsWar the Hutterites migrated eastward many finally relocating to Canada and the United Stateswhere the Bruderhofs continue to exist to this day

Communism as a kind of mutual aid was the contribution of the other major form ofAnabaptism that of the Mennonites With great political intelligence and skill Menno Simonswas able to reformulate the meaning of Omnia communia sunt in such a way as to avoidthreatening the property interests of nobles and clerics He did this in his book A Humble andChristian Justification and Replication First he denied that Mennonites were advocates ofcommunal property

This accusation is false and without all truth We do not teach and practice communityof goods but we teach and testify the Word of the Lord that all true believers in Christare of one body (1 Corinthians 1213) partakers of one bread (1 Corinthians 1017)have one God and one Lord (Ephesians 4)

In his assertion that the believers are of one body and partakers of one bread Simons is affirmingwhat we have called the general principle of communism while denying that Mennonitesembrace it in the specific form of communal property But he goes further by denying thatMennonites advocate a contemporary version of the apostolic redistribution of wealth

For although we know that the apostolic church had this practice in the beginning ascan be seen in the Acts of the Apostles nevertheless we note from their epistles that itdisappeared in their time and was no longer practiced

Instead of communal property or centralized redistribution of wealth the Mennonites derivefrom the general principle of Christian communism an alternative practice

Seeing then that they are one as said it is Christian and reasonable that they also havedivine love among them and that one member cares for another for both the Scripturesand nature teach this They show mercy and love as much as is in them They do notsuffer a beggar among them They have pity on the wants of the saints They receive thewretched They take strangers into their houses They comfort the sad They lend to theneedy They clothe the naked They share their bread with the hungry They do not turntheir face from the poorhellip

In the subsequent history of Mennonism the practice Simons describes came to be calledldquomutual aidrdquo Note that it is different from charitable giving and this in two ways First thereferences to receiving the wretched taking in strangers sharing bread and so on indicate a farmore personal even intimate form of involvement than simple charitable donation Second

there is the suggestion of reciprocity or mutuality (ldquoone member cares for anotherrdquo) that tends todeny the difference in status between the charitable giver and the recipient of charity Thepractice Simons describes is similar to what some anthropologists have called ldquogeneralizedreciprocityrdquo in which my obligation to give to you when you are in need corresponds to yourobligation to give to me when I am in need In a sense this is a form of redistribution inaccordance with need but it is enacted directly between individual members of the communityrather than administered centrally through a common purse

In line with his political purpose Simons is careful to distinguish between mutual aid andthe expropriation of private property

This is the kind of brotherhood we teach and not that some should take over andpossess the land soil and properties of others as we are falsely maligned accused andlied about by many

In this way he detaches the Mennonite version of communism from any revolutionary intentionThat was the prerequisite for communal survival during the long counter-revolution thatfollowed the Peasant War Still Simons never abandons the general principle Omnia communiasunt nor does he even really reject the practice of the early Church

Since we do not find it a permanent practice with the apostles we have not taught orpracticed community of goods but we urge earnestly and zealously to practice liberalgiving love and mercy as the apostolic writings teach and testify abundantly Andeven if we had taught and practiced community of goods as we are falsely accused ofdoing we would still not be doing otherwise than the holy apostles full of the HolySpirit themselves did in the former church at Jerusalem in the beginning of the holyChristian Church although they stopped the practice as has been said

Like the Hutterites Mennonite communities prospered once they managed to survive the

bloody period of reaction In Holland the Mennonite population consisted largely in successfulmerchants along with a number of lawyers doctors and other professionals Most of thepeasant artisan and laborer families who had started as Mennonites in the sixteenth century hadlong since converted to the Reform Church which is one reason Spinoza faced the problem ofpolitical agency in the TPT Although the idea of mutual aid persisted among the DutchMennonites it took the form predominantly of organized international philanthropy in which thecommunity made contributions not only to Mennonites abroad but to other populations in needThere was no escaping the fact however that in this philanthropic form mutual aid becamehardly distinguishable from conventional charity

Jarig Jelles was born into the Dutch Mennonite community around a century afterSimmons wrote his book when this process of slippage was well underway But there is littledoubt that Jelles knew the Mennonite teaching on mutual aid and its origin in the generalprinciple of Christian communism Even if Jelles never read Erasmusrsquo Adages Spinozarsquosreference to the supposed communism of Thales was likely to resonate with him on the basis ofhis own religious tradition

We cannot be certain how much Spinoza knew in detail about the communist practices ofthe Anabaptists but it is probably not a coincidence that he recommends three of the four atvarious places in his writings In Part 4 of the Ethics ldquoOf Human Bondage or the Strength of theEmotionsrdquo he identifies the chief virtue of the intellect as ldquostrength of the mindrdquo (fortitudo)According to him it takes two forms one directed to the self and one directed to others He callsthe inwardly directed form ldquocouragerdquo defining it as ldquothe desire whereby every individualendeavors to preserve his own being according to the dictates of reason alonerdquo The outwardlydirected form is generositas which Shirley translates as ldquonobilityrdquo though ldquosolidarityrdquo is closerto what Spinoza is getting at He defines it as ldquothe desire whereby every individual according to

the dictates of reason alone endeavors to assist others and make friends of themrdquo When twopeople in contact with one another possess the virtue of generositas they will clearly exhibit itreciprocally in the form of mutual aid the fourth communist practice

In Part 4 of the Ethics Spinoza also formulates a version of the first communist practicethat of the redistribution of wealth in accordance with need

Again men are won over by generosity especially those who do not have thewherewithal to produce what is necessary to support life Yet it is far beyond the powerand resources of a private person to come to the assistance of everyone in need For thewealth of a private person is quite unequal to such a demand It is also a practicalimpossibility for one man to establish friendship with all Therefore the care of the poordevolves upon society as a whole and looks only to the common good

The fact that society as a whole has responsibility for meeting the needs of the poor makes thepractice Spinoza recommends in this passage a version of the centralized redistribution of wealthdescribed in the Acts of the Apostles and institutionalized in Anabaptist form as the ldquocommonpurserdquo More than that the fact that society as a whole must take on this responsibility ratherthan a church or other sub-community makes Spinoza an early advocate of what will becomethree centuries later the European welfare state In our own period as the welfare state is beingdismantled it is easy to see that what neoliberals object to concerning it is precisely its implicitcommunism ie its practice of distribution in accordance with need

Spinoza advocates a third communist practice in his unfinished final work the PoliticalTreatise The context is his discussion of a maximally democratic version of monarchy in whichthe entire citizen body is armed and the king forbidden from making any decision contrary to thewill of a massive council of ordinary citizens In such a state

The fields and the soil and if possible the houses as well should be public property thatis should belong to the sovereign by whom they should be let at an annual rent tocitizens whether townsmen or country-dwellers Apart from this all citizens should befree or exempt from any form of taxation in time of peace Of this rent part should beallocated to the defense works of the commonwealth part to the kings domestic needsFor in time of peace it is still necessary to fortify cities as for war and to have in a stateof readiness ships and other armaments

Ownership of land and buildings by the sovereign is a form of communal property first becausethe citizens of the commonwealth delegate to him or them the property they hold in commonand second because that delegation occurs with the understanding that the sovereign will use theproperty in service of the common good

Spinoza supplies an argument based on more than simple utility for the practice ofholding land and buildings in common

hellip in a state of Nature the one thing a man cannot appropriate to himself and make hisown is land and whatever is so fixed to the land that he cannot conceal it anywhere orcarry it away where he pleases Thus the land and whatever is fixed to it in the way wehave described is especially the public property of the commonwealth that is of allthose who by their united strength can claim it or of him to whom all have delegated thepower to claim it

To state the argument differently since rights are the same as powers no individual has a naturalright to appropriate privately the land or any of its fixed structures because none has the powernecessary to do so The only response an individual can make to incursions by a more powerfulperson or group of people is flight in which he must leave the land and its buildings behind It is

only by entering into a community in which the strength of each is combined for the purpose ofdefense that people can effectively possess fixed property but they do so as a members of thecommunity rather than as an separate individuals According to Spinozarsquos theory of rights onlythe community has the right to own the land and its structures because only the community hasthe required power

The communal ownership of land houses and other buildings is a version of the secondcommunist practice on our list of which Hutterite joint ownership is the most developedhistorical example When adopted by a polity rather than a small community though thepractice has an added advantage Under those circumstances communal possession of fixedproperty eliminates the need for taxes except in time of war What takes their place is ageneration of revenue pegged to wealth since the members of society who are able to rent themost expensive and largest amounts of communal property will obviously pay the most in rentIn this way the form of communal ownership of land and buildings that Spinoza recommendsalso acts as a mechanism for the redistribution of wealth

The only communist practice of the Anabaptists that does not find an equivalent inSpinozarsquos writings is that of the cooperative organization of work The absence is related toSpinozarsquos inability to resolve the problem of political agency in the TPT An attempt to mobilizethe multitude on behalf of democratic social change would need to address the organization ofwork in such a way as to alleviate the burden of toil Reducing the number of hours spent inonerous labor is the only way to provide the multitude with the free time necessary to participatein institutionalized democratic politics Along with the redistribution of wealth and thedevelopment of communal property the cooperative reorganization of work would need to beincorporated as a plank in the latent political program that makes its first democratic appearancein the TPT and is extended in a communist direction in the passages from the Ethics and thePolitical Treatise that we have just examined But that would constitute an explicit anddangerous appeal to the multitude as the agent of political and social transformation an appealthat Spinoza consistently rejects It would involve nothing less than the revival of therevolutionary energies of the Peasant War on a new seventeenth-century foundation

In spite of his radicalism Spinoza doubted that revolution was capable of reconstructingsociety and the state in the way revolutionaries wanted In Chapter 18 of the TPT he takes aposition that is at least on the surface opposed to revolution or any attempt to change the formof the state fundamentally The context is a discussion of the transition from the early Hebrewcommonwealth in which the people held sovereignty to the rule of kings Spinoza tells us thatthe first period saw only a single civil war and concluded with a compassion for the vanquishedthat resulted in lasting peace By contrast the period of kings was marred by multiple warswaged only for the glory of the rulers and involved the massacre of hundreds of thousandsDuring the first period few prophets arose to rebuke the Jews while a great many emergedduring the time of the monarchies From this example Spinoza reasons that it is fatal for peopleaccustomed to popular sovereignty and governed by settled laws to adopt a new monarchicalform of government On the one hand they will be unable to tolerate the arbitrary exercise ofpower by a single individual while on the other the new monarch will be compelled to abolishthe existing laws because they did not originate by his own authority But it is just as dangerousaccording to Spinoza for the subjects of a monarch to attempt his replacement with popular ruleThis is because a popular revolution must advance to the point where it annihilates the king thekingrsquos family and the friends of the king in order to prevent the restoration of royal power But inthe process the revolutionary authority must assume a power even more draconian then thatpreviously exercised by the king In addition having committed regicide the new popularauthority faces the danger that it will fall victim to its own precedent For this reason as well andin the interest of survival it must wield power more repressively than the deposed sovereignSpinoza illustrates his point with reference to the English revolution which eliminated themonarch Charles I only to replace him with the Lord Protector Cromwell who was monarch inall but name and more repressive than Charles

Spinozarsquos point seems unassailable especially since the pattern he describes in the caseof the English Revolution repeated itself over the course of the next three centuries in the French

and Russian Revolutions It is at least arguable that Napoleon if not Robespierre was a newLouis XVI and Stalin a new Tsar even if this understates the more fundamental social changesthat resulted form the two revolutions Still Spinoza does not absolutely proscribe therevolutionary overthrow of a tyrannical government but says instead that there is a great dangerin making the attempt Besides his analysis of the conditions necessary for retaining sovereigntydoes not leave the decision about whether to engage in revolution up to militants He argues thatno state can survive that creates mass indignation in its people and this is precisely theunavoidable result of tyrannical government Spinozarsquos real purpose in Chapter 18 is to opposethe Orangist-Calvinist project of replacing the Dutch Republic with a monarchy ldquoAs for theEstates of Hollandrdquo he writes ldquoas far as we know they never had kings but counts to whom theright of sovereignty was never transferredrdquo His point is that the Dutch War of Independenceagainst Spain was justified because it restored the sovereignty of the people against the attemptby the Spanish ldquocountrdquo (King Philip II) to abolish it However any attempt to replace theRepublic with a monarchy would change the form of the state disastrously by divesting thepeople of their former rights

When Spinoza wrote his treatise the only revolutionary forces that existed were on theRight The danger he warns about in Chapter 18 of the TPT did indeed come to pass only oneyear after his letter to Jelles In 1672 a Calvinist-Orangist mob hacked Johan De Witt and hisbrother Cornelius to death at a time when Holland was invaded by the French army Streetorators stirred up the mob by claiming that the invasion was the result of the brothersrsquo treason Inthe aftermath of the murders William III prince of Orange was elevated to the position ofstadtholder of Holland Although William went on to become King of England he stopped shortof claiming a Dutch throne However in actuality he substituted his own power for much of thatwhich had belonged to the Estates General while the Reformed Church gained considerableinfluence in Dutch government According to a story made famous by Spinozarsquos earliestbiographer Johannes Colerus when the De Witt brothers were murdered Spinozarsquos landlordthwarted his attempt to go the site of the assassinations where the bodies of the brothers werestill on gruesome display in order to plant a sign reading Ultimi Barbarorum (the ultimatebarbarians) In this way the landlord undoubtedly saved the philosopherrsquos life It was the onlytime we know of when the mature Spinoza gave in to his passive affects in a significant way

There is a passage in Chapter 18 of the TPT that uncannily anticipates the murders

Tyranny is most violent where individual beliefs which are unalienable rights areregarded as criminal Indeed in such circumstances the anger of the common people[plebis] is usually the greatest tyrant of allhellip the vilest hypocrites urged on by that samefury which they call zeal for Gods law have everywhere persecuted men whoseblameless character and distinguished qualities have excited the hostility of the commonpeople [plebi] publicly denouncing their beliefs and inflaming the savage multitudersquos[multitudinem] anger against them

Spinoza was the first political philosopher who grappled with the problem of a mass-

based politics of the Right The problem would occur again with the fascist movements of the1920s and 1930s and with the return of the rightwing religious fundamentalisms of our own dayndash Jewish Christian Muslim and Hindu It is not surprising that he failed to solve the problemdefinitively since it continues to remain unsolved The remarkable thing about Spinoza thoughis not that he was skeptical about the liberatory possibilities of revolution by the masses but thathe defended the idea of a popular democracy nonetheless And this he continued to do even inthe aftermath of the De Witt murders In his work on the Political Treatise in the final year of hislife Spinoza developed a powerful critique of the elitist claim that the multitude are incapable ofgoverning

Yet perhaps our [democratic] suggestions will be received with ridicule by those whorestrict to the common people the faults that are inherent in all mankind saying There

is no moderation in the mob they terrorize unless they are frightened and Thecommon people is either a humble servant or an arrogant master there is no truth orjudgment in itrdquo and the like But all men share in one and the same nature it is powerand culture that mislead us with the result that when two men do the same thing weoften say that it is permissible for the one to do it and not the other not because of anydifference in the thing done but in the doer hellipThen again There is no moderation inthe mob they terrorize unless they are frightened For freedom and slavery do not gowell together Finally that there is no truth or judgment in the common people is notsurprising since the important affairs of state are conducted without their knowledgeand from the little that cannot be concealed they can only make conjecturehellip Howeveras we have said all men have the same nature ndash all grow haughty with rule terrorizeunless they are frightened ndash and everywhere truth becomes a casualty through hostilityor servility especially when despotic power is in the hands of one or a few who in trialspay attention not to justice or truth but to the extent of a persons wealth

Surprisingly Spinoza develops this democratic argument while discussing the institutions

appropriate to a monarchy But the key point he makes in the discussion is that a condition ofeffective monarchical rule is expansion of the democratic element within the state in the form ofa sizeable legislative council whose members are drawn from the general population of citizensover the age of fifty On Spinozarsquos view the mistake those who oppose democracy make isassuming that the faults exhibited by the common people ndash such as poor judgment arroganceand hostility ndash belong only to them while they are in fact typical of human beings Actually it iselitist politics that magnifies these all-too-human faults by restricting political power to a limitednumber of people while democratic politics minimizes them through the principle of majorityrule among numerous decision-makers The reason as we already know is that passions pullpeople in different directions making it nearly impossible for the members of a large council toagree on a common position unless they make decisions based not on passion but an idea of thecommon good On Spinozarsquos view it is when government is in the hands of a single person oronly a few people that the dangers the critics of democracy attribute to the common people are infact the greatest

Spinoza also argues against the claim that the common people are not qualified to makepolitical decisions because they lack the necessary education or degree of intellect There is noone he says who has been engaged in an occupation until the age of fifty who lacksunderstanding of his sphere of work ldquoevery man is reasonably competent and sagacious inmatters in which he has been long and attentively engagedrdquo So each is qualified at least to giveadvice in the kingrsquos council concerning his own business especially if given the time necessaryto reflect on the matter under discussion

Most of all the plebs are the group best suited to serving on the council because theirinterest is that of society as a whole ldquoHence it follows that counselors must necessarily beappointed whose private fortune and advantage depend on the general welfare and the peace ofallrdquo For example Spinoza emphasizes the idea that the common people have the highest stake inavoiding war or concluding an existing war with a settlement that brings lasting peace Thereason is they are ones who bear the heaviest burdens of war Unlike the wealthy well-bornmembers of society it is the common person whose occupation is most likely to be interrupted itis his taxes that are raised to onerous levels and it is his son who dies Thus the common interestof society in peace is best served not by a wealthy or educated elite but rather by those whohave the most to lose from war

At the end of the long paragraph defending popular power quoted above Spinozaconnects the question of who holds power within the state to that of who owns property Truthand justice he says are casualties in states where power is held by one person or a handful ofpeople who conduct courtroom trials that favor the rich The implication is that elitist politicalpower and ownership of wealth are intrinsically connected One of the reasons Spinozarecommends public ownership of land and buildings in a monarchy is to prevent the rise of aclass of wealthy landowners with interests different than those of the rest of society Under the

conditions of common ownership ldquothe greatest part of the council will generally have one andthe same attitude of mind towards their common interests and peaceful activitieshelliprdquo And yethaving gone this far he has trouble imagining a state where fixed property is owned collectivelyin which the actually existing multitude holds power The peasants artisans and urban poor whoconstitute the common people of the United Provinces drop out of the picture in the democratic-communist monarchy he describes and nearly everyone makes his living by selling merchandiseor lending money to countrymen ldquoall will have to make a living by engaging in trade or bylending money to their fellow citizensrdquo He seems to assume that the collectivization of land andfixed property would eliminate the occupations of peasant and artisan leaving trade and loaningat interest the only remaining possibilities of work But that of course is not true The fact thatpeople would have to rent farm land would not prevent them from farming any more than theneed to rent workshops in the cities and towns would prevent artisans from plying their tradesBut Spinoza finds the idea of a commonwealth based on commercial enterprise politicallyappealing This is because he regards commercial occupations as contributing to harmony andpeace since he claims they establish connections between people that further the interests of allwhile those who engage in them prosper only in peacetime Both of these assumptions are asquestionable as the expectation that non-commercial occupations will die out After all even inSpinozarsquos day colonialism and the struggle for colonies between imperialist states led to warsbetween the great powers including the United Provinces not to mention the military and otherforms of violence involved in subjugating the colonies The East India Company was not exactlya force for peace What seems to be at work here instead is a failure of social imaginationthough one we may find understandable given the fact that the capitalist economy was still at anearly stage in its development However this may be there is no denying the fact that despite hispowerful arguments in favor of democratic rule and communal property it is still a bourgeoissociety and state that Spinoza envisions

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of what we should not hesitate to call Spinozarsquoscommunism is the critique of private ownership he develops in the Ethics based on his theory ofaffects For him there is a paradox involved in social and political life It stems from the fact thaton the one hand people can survive and develop their capacities only by joining with oneanother in societies and states But on the other hand the necessity of combining with oneanother does not prevent them from seeking their own advantage above that of their fellowsbeing quarrelsome or hateful and erecting obstacles to each otherrsquos happiness Spinoza identifiesthe reason for these deep-rooted problems of social coexistence in Part IV Proposition 35 of theEthics ldquoInsofar as men are assailed by emotions that are passive they can be contrary to oneanotherrdquo Emotions are states of the body characterized by a transition from a lower degree of thepower to exist and act (conatus) to a higher one or conversely from a higher degree to a lowerone The first transition is the affect of joy while the second is that of sadness Passive emotionsare caused by an object external to the body or more precisely external to its essential natureSpinoza conceives of that nature as a specific proportion of motion-and-rest that the parts of thebody exhibit in relation to one another While joy is an increase in our capacity to preserve theproportion of motion-and-rest essential to our body (ie to exist and act as we do) sadness is adecrease in that capacity The political problem created by the passive emotions is that evenwhen they are joyful they are not under the control of the person who experiences themMoreover different people are affected by the same external object in different ways because theparts of their bodies and their proportionate relations of motion-and rest-differ The same objectmay elicit anger in one person and pity in another or love in one and hatred in another and soon And because people differ in their emotional reactions to the same things they also differ inthe judgments they frame on the basis of these reactions What one person praises anotherperson blames what one regards as fearless another believes to be timid etc Finally sincepeople act upon their judgments seeking to foster what they judge to be good and destroy whatthey judge to be bad their differing judgments can result in actions that are in conflict with oneanother In short ldquoinsofar as they are assailed by passive emotions [people] can be contrary toone anotherrdquo

In Proposition 34 Spinoza gives an example of the contrariety caused by the passiveaffects Suppose Peter has sole possession of something Paul loves Deprivation of the loved

object causes sadness in Paul with the idea of Peter as its cause In accordance with Spinozarsquosdefinition of hatred Paul will hate Peter and therefore seek to injure or destroy him in order toremove the cause of his Paulrsquos sadness Spinoza says that this example may seem wrong becausePaul and Peter appear to be contrary to one another because of something they share ndash ie theirlove for the thing Peter possesses But that is not the case Paul has an image of himself aslacking the loved object while Peter has an image of himself as possessing the loved object Sothey in fact differ from one another by virtue of the different images they have rather than bypossessing something in common It is clear from the example that the root of this contrariety ndashie this enmity ndash between Paul and Peter is the fact that the object can be possessed by only oneof them so that what one has the other must lack The difficulty with private property is that it isexclusive to the one who possesses it which means that what I experience as possession othersexperience as deprivation It may seem that there is no problem if other people are indifferent tothe thing I possess However in accordance with Spinozarsquos theory of the imitation of affects themere fact that I love the thing I own other things being equal will cause you to love it as wellMy exclusive possession of the thing will therefore cause sadness in you that takes the form ofhatred or more precisely the kind of hatred called envy which involves pain at the good fortuneof another ldquohuman nature is in general so constituted that men pity the unfortunate and envy thefortunate in the latter case with a hatred proportionate to their love of what they think anotherpossessesrdquo

Common Possession Friendship and Philosophy

In the Ethics Spinoza does not follow his analysis of the antagonisms of private property

by considering the collective possession of material goods (although he does advocateredistribution of wealth to the poor in Part 4 as we have seen) But the theme of commonpossession figures large in the book anyway in his treatment of the intellectual love of God Inorder to understand the connection between common possession and amor Dei intellectualis itwill be necessary to engage in a detailed analysis of Spinozarsquos metaphysics We will begin thattask in earnest in the next chapter At this point we will simply introduce the theme byexamining the relationship between friendship and common possession in the letter to Jelles andsome related writings

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo unlike the similar passages fromActs has its provenance among philosophers Spinoza mistakenly attributes it to Thales but itoccurs in Platorsquos Phaedrus and Laws and is present though not in so many words in thediscussion in the Republic of common ownership of property by the guardian class Thetradition cited by Erasmus that traces the proverb back to Pythagoras is plausible when weconsider the influence the Pythagorean community in Sicily had on Plato in the aftermath ofSocratesrsquo death Erasmus sees the supposed use of a common fund by the Pythagoreans as ananticipation of the similar practice in Acts But Spinozarsquos approach is different What interestshim in the letter is common ownership not as a religious practice but as a matter of thephilosopherrsquos relation to the world Remember the deductive consequences of the proverb sinceall things are in common among friends everything belongs to the wise because the wise arefriends of the gods and all things belong to the gods But what does it mean to say that the wiseare friends of the gods

Although Spinoza uses the word ldquofriendshiprdquo often in his writings he never supplies aformal definition However we can reconstruct the wordrsquos meaning from the contexts in whichhe uses it So for example Proposition 35 of Part III of the Ethics reads

If anyone thinks that there is between the object of his love and another person the sameor a more intimate bond of friendship than there was between them when he alone usedto possess the object loved he will be affected with hatred toward the object loved andwill envy his rival

According to the proposition friendship is an intimate bond between a person and the

object he loves I hate an object of love that I alone once possessed when it wounds my vanity byloving someone else more than me So the object of love must be capable of loving whichmeans that the bond of friendship is a relation of reciprocal love between persons Nowaccording to Spinoza I love something when I have the idea of that thing as the cause of myexperience of joy Joy is an increase in conatus which Spinoza defines as the tendency to persistin being or equivalently the ability to exist and act So friendship is a relation in which Iidentify the other person as the cause of an increase in my conatus and the other personidentifies me as the cause of a similar increase in his or hers Two things each of which causesan increase in the ability to exist and act of the other are said by Spinoza to be in harmony Sincetwo entities in harmony have more combined power than either does singly it is to the advantageof each to be in harmony with the other There is even greater advantage in entering intoharmonious connection with a third individual and the greatest advantage in combining with asmany individuals as possible This is a universal metaphysical principle For example it pertainsjust as much to chemical combination or herding among animals as it does to social relationsbetween people In the case of human relationships it is the fundamental basis of politics orrather one of its two bases the other one being the tendency human beings have to conflict withone another When the state is functioning well it involves not a random collection ofindividuals and certainly not the war of each against all but a group whose members are boundto one another by friendship the human form of harmony Thus for Spinoza friendship is apolitical virtue as it was for Plato and Aristotle

The opposite of friendship is enmity That person is my enemy whom I regard as thecause of my sadness or pain which is the same as saying the cause of a decrease in my abilityto exist and act Like friendship enmity is a reciprocal relationship If I identify you as the causeof my sadness I will seek to injure or eliminate you But that means I will be identified in yourmind as the cause of your sadness Enmity is a relation of reciprocal hatred just as friendship is arelation of reciprocal love Just as there is harmony between friends there is discord betweenenemies The fundamental task of a rational politics is easy to state it is to extend and intensifyfriendship and to reduce and mollify enmity

We have already seen that Spinoza identifies solidarity (generositas) as one of the twoforms of strength of mind (fortitudo) which is the virtue that belongs to the exercise of theintellect Solidarity is the desire to assist others and foster friendship on the basis of reason aloneThe friendship fostered by solidarity is a bond of active love The love of friends for one anotheris active when each person who loves is the adequate cause of his or her love To say that theperson is the adequate cause means that the cause of love is internal to the person who feels it inother words that the love is self-generated Active love differs from passive love in that thecause of passive love is at least partially something that exists outside the person who has theemotion The problem with passive love is that it need not be constant If the bodily dispositionof the person changes in a particular way then the object of erstwhile love will have a differentemotional effect Passive love can change into boredom or indifference or even hatred This isnot possible in the case of active love because it is self-generated Since love involves theexperience of joy no one actively abandons it

There seems to be something odd about the idea of a love between persons that isinternally generated by each of the partners in the relationship Is it not the case that part of theessence of love is the fact that the object of my love is the cause of my love Without denyingthis Spinoza identifies two forms of love that are self-generated in the Ethics One is myintellectual love of God It is indeed true that God is the cause of my love but only insofar as myintellect is part of the infinite intellect of God Thus the object that causes my love - ie God - isinternal to my mind and conversely my mind is internal to it Such reciprocal internality ndash hardas it is to visualize ndash is what Spinoza means by immanence God he tells us is the immanentcause of everything that exists Nothing can exist apart from God while God expresses himselfin all of the things that exist My love of God and Gods love of himself are one and the samebecause Godrsquos intellect is immanent in mine The second form of self-generated love is the

friendship that exists between me and others who love God through the exercise of the intellectThe reason is that the joy I feel in loving God is by the imitation of affects augmented by thejoy you feel in loving God But your love as well as mine is joy caused by the same immanentbeing Another way of saying this is that your intellect and mine are parts (ie finiteexpressions) of the infinite intellect of God Thus the relationship between friends who are boundtogether by the common exercise of the intellect and the love of God that flows from it is basedon an internal bond an internal object and cause of love In this kind of love you and I as itwere discover one another internally You are inside of me and I am inside of you Thus whenyou augment my love and I augment yours it is Gods power as the intellect immanent in us boththat causes the augmentation even though we remain finite individual beings In this state ofaffairs which is admittedly difficult to grasp we can see the rational meaning of the command tolove God by loving the neighbor In intellectual love God not insofar as he is infinite butinsofar as he expresses himself in my finite intellect loves God as he expresses himself in yourfinite intellect

For Spinoza the exercise of the intellect is very different than our ordinary experience ofthe world In the course of ordinary experience we encounter objects in a way that appearshaphazard disordered and incomplete This is so first of all because our encounters are part ofan infinitely complex chain of natural causes and effects of which we know only very limitedparts In addition our experience of objects has as much to do with the condition our bodies arein when we encounter them as it does with the nature of the objects themselves By contrast inexercising the intellect we arrange our ideas in an intelligible pattern that is internal to the mindand entirely different than the images we accumulate through sensory experience The ideas arean expression of our power while the images result from our hapless deliverance to chanceEmotions caused by objects we encounter in the course of ordinary experience are externallydetermined and therefore passive while emotions caused by acts of intellectual comprehensionare internally generated and therefore active That is why love as an active emotion has its originin the exercise of the intellect and the most satisfying form of friendship is based on thereciprocal experience of such love In a letter to Willem van Blyenberg Spinoza provides themost complete description of this kind of friendship to be found in his writings

For my part of all things that are not under my control what I most value is to enterinto a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth For I believe that such a lovingrelationship affords us a serenity surpassing any other boon in the whole wide worldThe love that such men bear to one another grounded as it is in the love that each hasfor knowledge of truth is as unshakable as is the acceptance of truth once it has beenperceived It is moreover the highest source of happiness to be found in things notunder our command for truth more than anything else has the power to effect a closeunion between different sentiments and dispositions

Spinoza says that a friendship based on the love of truth is not under our control But how

can that be if intellectual friendship involves a form of love internally generated by each friendIt would seem that the love we generate through the exercise of the intellect is fully under ourcontrol Spinoza however is referring to the fact that we are able to become friends only withpeople we actually meet which is something that occurs in the course of ordinary haphazarddisordered experience To a large extent our friendships are a matter of chance By way ofillustrating this point it turned out that Spinoza decided his initial judgment of Blyenberg wasmistaken He broke off their correspondence when he realized that the infinite chain of causesand effects had brought his way not a lover of truth but a dogmatic worshipper of the ldquopaperand inkrdquo of the Bible

People create commonwealths because the power of each to exist and act is increased byall others who transfer their rights to the sovereign For reasons we have already considered thepolitical bond is one of friendship ldquoIt is of the first importance to men to establish closerelationships and to bind themselves together with such ties as may most effectively unite theminto one body and as an absolute rule to act in such a way as serves to strengthen friendshiprdquo If

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

people with justice and love The purpose of their writing is to elicit obedience not articulatemetaphysical truth From the Bible we learn nothing about what God is or what his relation is tohuman beings or the universe as a whole The Bible conveys a moral truth in the sense that itcommands people to live in the way that is best for human beings In terms of the theory ofspeech acts John Austin developed in the twentieth-century the Biblersquos use of language isperformative rather than constative It is meant to do something rather than to state somethingalthough it implies the assertion that the best life is one in which we treat other people with loveand justice But it presents no arguments in support of that assertion other than that we must livein the way that God commands By contrast the discovery of metaphysical truth and itsexpression in deductive propositional form is the goal of philosophers According to Spinozathen there can be no conflict between philosophy and religion properly understood becausethey are dedicated to entirely different ends ldquobetween faith and theology on the one side andphilosophy on the other there is no relation and no affinityhelliprdquo

The same cannot be said of religion and the state There is indeed a relation between thetwo though it is in danger of degenerating into conflict because they occupy the same terrainboth demand obedience Of course Spinoza has in mind the fraught relationship between theReform Church and the Dutch Republic In an alliance with the House of Orange the Calvinistconsistories sought to alter the character of the state by abolishing the Republic and replacing itwith a monarchy that would make room for the authority of the Reform Church As long as aninfluential church independent of the state is involved in politics (considering its ability toinfluence the actions of thousands of believers) sovereignty is divided But as Hobbes pointsout in Leviathan it is impossible to divide sovereignty without undermining it The first plank inthe political program Spinoza develops in the TPT is that of subordinating the church to the stateThe sovereignty of the state must be absolute and that means that it must extend even toreligious doctrine and the details of public worship

Thus we cannot doubt that in modern times religionbelongs solely to the right of thesovereign No one has the right and power to exercise control over it to choose itsministers to determine and establish the foundations of the church and its doctrine topass judgment on morality and acts of piety to excommunicate or to accept into thechurch and to provide for the poor except by the authority and permission of thesovereign

Since this conclusion provocatively challenges the power of the Calvinist consistories their

violent reaction to the publication of the TPT is perfectly understandable And yet Spinozaargues that regulation of worship by the state ought to be minimized His purpose is not statedomination of religion but preventing religion from dominating the state He agrees withHobbes that sovereignty is absolute or it does not exist at all since a divided sovereignty isinherently unstable But he also agrees with Machiavelli that the state is sovereign only as longas it is able to retain its power There is a logic a psychology and a physics of political powerwhose most fundamental law is that power can sustain itself only when it does not provoke theindignation of the multitude

In the definition Spinoza gives in the Ethics indignation (indignatio) is hatred towardone who has injured another either someone we love or someone for whom we feel no emotionbut believe to be similar to ourselves It operates through the mechanism of the imitation ofaffects I imitate ndash ie empathetically feel ndash the emotions of those with whom I identify so that Iexperience harm to the other person as harm to myself Since hatred is pain along with the ideaof an external cause my imitation of the suffering of someone whom the sovereign has harmed isequivalent to my hatred of the sovereign The consequence of my hatred is a desire to injure thesovereign in order to diminish or destroy the perceived cause of pain If fear of the consequencesof defying the sovereignrsquos command is transformed into mass indignation then the authority torule disintegrates ldquohellip to slaughter subjects to despoil them to ravish maidens and the like turnsfear into indignation and consequently the civil order into a condition of warrdquo

One certain way to provoke indignation is for the sovereign to tell people what they must

believe and what they are allowed to say Indignation is inevitable if the state attempts to controlthought and expression not only because such attempts harm the multitude but also becausethey are futile Spinoza recognizes that it is possible for the state to deceive its citizens and toeffect their beliefs in other ways But he also assets that no state has the power to suspend thelaws of human nature by for example ordering its people to free themselves from anger to hatethose who have benefited them or to regard as false what they believe to be true Any attempt toexercise power in this fashion provokes indignation in part because of the emptiness of thepower it vainly seeks to assert All that it demonstrates is the sovereignrsquos weakness therebyencouraging the further spread of indignation It also makes enemies of those who refuse to hidetheir deepest beliefs and honors those who lie about what they believe which is both unjust tothose falsely reviled and dangerous to the state because it encourages duplicity and corruption inthose who hold political office Far from protecting the state the attempt to control thought andexpression undermines it

The remarkable thing about the theory of politics Spinoza develops in the TPT is that itderives liberal conclusions from absolutist premises The power of the state is absolute but it isnonetheless fragile No state Spinoza says has more to fear from external enemies than it doesfrom its own people Polices that avoid or minimize indignation are vital to its health Howeverwhile he advocates full freedom of thought and expression as necessary to preserving thepolitical community Spinoza draws the line at action which comes under the province of lawand command After all what else could sovereignty mean but the power to command orprohibit action Action includes such functions of a church as public worship and the provisionof charity both of which for this reason are appropriate objects of state control Most of allcivil peace requires the prohibition of church interference with government which would reversethe proper order of obedience and command Thus Spinoza identifies two conditions of stablepolitical power freedom of thought and expression and the iron will of the state to brook nochallenge to its sovereign authority over action especially from organized religion

If Spinozarsquos program for political reform is liberal it is liberalism of a unique kindUnlike the main currents in the liberal tradition it is based on neither a theory of rights nor oneof individual utility The concept of rights has no normative role to play in the TPT becauseSpinoza insists that rights are the same as powers For example there is no right of free speechunless there is the effective power to speak freely Thus the right cannot function as a normbecause it has no reality until it actually exists and whether or not it exists depends upon thebalance of political forces Moreover although the state is necessary to security and civil peaceno one chooses to create it in order to maximize his or her utility People are driven by self-interest but this is true no matter what their conditions of life happen to be Spinoza makes muchof the irrefutable but neglected point that people do not have the ability to survive withoutcombining their power with that of others There is no possible scenario in which isolatedindividuals choose for or against political organization in the interest of maximizing their utilityfor the simple reason that there are no isolated individuals

It is true that Spinoza argues that democracy is the only ldquonaturalrdquo form of governmentbecause it preserves collectively the right to make decisions that each person enjoys individuallyin the ldquostate of naturerdquo For this reason it is the form of government most compatible withfreedom But the idea of a state of nature that precedes political organization and the associatedidea of natural rights are no more than hypothetical because it is precisely in a state of naturethat people would be unable to protect their rights against the aggression of others But forSpinoza this is the same as saying that these rights do not exist The idea of natural rights in apre-political condition is purely notional The only way to enjoy rights effectively ndash which is tosay the only way to exercise the powers they involve ndash is to entrust them to a sovereign authoritycapable of replacing unbridled aggression with the rule of law If ever there were a socialcontract theorist who employed the concept of the state of nature as an hypothesis in a thoughtexperiment without taking the myth of an original condition seriously it is Spinoza The idea thatdemocracy is the most natural form of government simply means that it comes closest to thehypothetical freedom of the state of nature In a democracy people retain their power to decidewhat actions to take but as members of the sovereign authority ndash ie as citizens ndash while theyare bound as subjects to obey the laws that result from their collective deliberations ldquoIn a

democratic state nobody transfers his natural right to another so completely that thereafter he isnot to be consulted he transfers it to the majority of the entire community of which he is partrdquo

In addition to the claim of naturalism in his advocacy of democracy in the TPT Spinozaargues that democratic governments are less prone to irrationality than monarchical oraristocratic ones A large number of people is less likely to endorse the same irrational decisionthan a small council (aristocracy) or a single person (monarchy) ldquohellip In a democracy there is lessdanger of an assembly behaving unreasonably for it is practically impossible for the majority ofa single assembly if it is of some size to agree on the same piece of follyrdquo The sentence thatfollows the one just quoted throws some light on what ldquothe same piece of follyrdquo means byreferring to ldquothe follies of appetiterdquo Spinozarsquos claim is that a democratic state is more rationalthan the alternatives in that it does the best job avoiding the foolish decisions people make whenled by their appetites

Spinoza does not provide an argument in support of this claim in the TPT but in thePolitical Treatise which he began to write two years later there is a passage that that helpscorrect the omission It concerns the wisdom of establishing a governing council with a largenumber of members in an aristocratic state Although an aristocracy excludes the commonpeople from political power reserving it for an elite Spinoza argues that it is capable ofguaranteeing liberties similar to those of democratic government provided that the members ofits governing council are sufficiently numerous

The fact that sovereignty is conferred absolutely on the council need not give thecommon people [plebi] any reason to fear oppressive slavery at its hands For when acouncil is so large its will is determined by reason rather than mere caprice becauselusts [libidine] draw men asunder and it is only when they have as their objective whatis honorable or at least appears so that they can be guided as if by one mind

Spinozarsquos argument is more complicated than a quick reading might indicate It is

impossible he claims for the members of a large council to come to agreement on the basis oftheir libidine because these affects draw them in different and incompatible directions Whilelibidine generally refers to sexual appetites Spinoza uses the word in this context to refer to thefull range of disreputable passions The corresponding point in the TPT is that it is ldquopracticallyimpossiblerdquo for the members of the democratic council to endorse the same ldquopiece of follyrdquo Inorder to reach agreement the members of the governing council in an aristocratic state must takeas their goal ldquowhat is honorable or at least appears sordquo In the Ethics Spinoza defines thehonorable (honestum) as ldquowhat is praised by men who live by the guidance of reasonrdquo and hemakes it clear that what such men praise is ldquothe desire to establish friendshiprdquo In accordancewith this definition the objective of the council members in an aristocracy is not so much to actwith reason as to be regarded by the reasonable as acting with reason ie as promotingfriendship That is why they are able to reach agreement even when their objective appears to behonorable although it is not But with whom do they wish to be or appear to be friends SinceSpinoza intends his argument to allay the fear of the plebs it seems obvious that it is theirfriendship that the council members seek But why would aristocrats be interested in makingfriends with commoners Although Spinoza does not tell us why in this passage the answer canbe found elsewhere in the Political Treatise The reason that the council members must seek thefriendship of the common people is that aristocratic government is not nor can it be absolute inthe full sense of the word in other words it cannot hold a complete monopoly on powerAlthough they have no institutional role in an aristocratic regime the common people retain thepower to undermine state authority by refusing to obey it or even by waging war against it Therulers recognize that power in the fear with which they regard the masses

In the Introduction to the Political Treatise Spinoza dissociates himself from the rosyview of human nature held by the authors of utopias In order to develop a political philosophythat is useful in the world of actual human affairs it is necessary to design institutions inaccordance with which those in government realize the rational end of politics ndash ie the common

good ndash whether or not that is their intention The desire of the members of the council to be seenas seeking the friendship of the masses ensures the rationality of the formerrsquos decisions becauseit causes them to seek the common good even if they do so from fear rather than dedication toreason One might object that appearing to seek the friendship of the masses entails only that thecouncil appear to seek the common good not that it actually does so But it is not possible for thecouncil to neglect the common interest over the long run without dire consequences unless weassume that the masses are so benighted that they are unable to discern the consistent violation oftheir interests The appearance and reality of seeking the friendship of the masses areindistinguishable as proved nearly two hundred years later by a theorem of Abraham LincolnsIt is possible to fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the timebut not all of the people all of the time If that theorem were not true then there would be nolimit to the power of tyrants while Spinoza is fond of quoting Tacitus that tyrannies never lastlong Once again the reason for their inevitable downfall is the indignation they provokethrough the harm they cause to the interests of the multitude

Although Spinoza does not make the point explicitly it is easy to see that a democraticcouncil does not require the same concern with the honorable as an aristocratic one because fearof the masses has no role to play in a democracy Since the common people who are the vastmajority of society are empowered to make decisions they have no need to evoke fear indecision-makers different than themselves in order to protect their own interests Thus in the caseof a democratic council the impossibility of a large number of people agreeing on ldquothe samepiece of follyrdquo is enough to secure political rationality ie the discovery and implementation ofthe common good

An implication of Spinozarsquos emphasis on the affinity between democracy and reason isthat democracy is a kind school for developing rationality The need to make and assess publicarguments about the common good requires clarity of thought and some understanding of theprinciples of logical implication In addition while citizens of a democracy agree to obey the lawor decree established by a vote of the majority they retain their freedom of judgment includingthe right to argue in favor of reversing decisions already made Thus there is no point in ademocracy at which citizens must give up their efforts to influence collective decisions andtherefore no point at which rationality becomes irrelevant However reason is not simply ameans of achieving the common good as an external end It is part of the common good forhuman beings and therefore itself one the ends it seeks to achieve The highest good is theintellectual love of God ndash so Spinoza argues in the Ethics ndash which we cannot attain withoutexercising reason Democracy then turns out to be not only the best way of securing thecommon good of the members of a polity but the best way of advancing the ultimate goodappropriate to human beings in general

Spinozarsquos advocacy of democracy was exceedingly radical at a time when monarchy wasthe political norm in Europe and even the oligarchic regent-dominated Dutch Republic waswidely regarded as an ultra-left anomaly But it sits uncomfortably with another aspect of theTPT namely its apparently low opinion of ldquothe multituderdquo (multitudo) In the Introduction to thebook which was written in Latin Spinoza tells his readers that he would prefer that ldquothecommon peoplerdquo (plebs) not read the work since they are incapable of understanding it andlikely to distort its meaning He pictures its members as entirely driven by their passions andincapable of using reason

I know how deeply rooted in the mind are the prejudices embraced under the guise ofpiety I know too that the masses [vulgo] can no more be freed from their superstitionthan from their fears Finally I know that they are unchanging in their obstinacy thatthey are not guided by reason and that their praise and blame is at the mercy of impulse

But this judgment throws into question the affinity between democracy and reason that

Spinoza affirms in the TPT For in order for such an affinity to exist the common people mustbe able to make decisions on the basis of reason Is the negative picture he paints of the masses

in the Introduction to the TPT simply a rhetorical device meant to appeal to the vanity of hiseducated readership It does not seem to be because a similarly low opinion appears again in theEthics and in some of his letters where there is no need to appeal to anyonersquos vanity Instead offunctioning simply as a rhetorical ploy Spinozarsquos generally negative view of the vast majority ofsociety and the positive view he develops in his advocacy of democracy indicate a tension in hispolitics

In the Ethics and TPT Spinoza uses the words vulgus plebs and multitudointerchangeably When any of the three word appears it is usually accompanied by suchqualifiers as ldquoirrationalrdquo ldquoignorantrdquo ldquouneducatedrdquo ldquosuperstitiousrdquo and ldquogoverned by passionsrdquoStill for Spinoza reason is not the possession of a natural elite Rather it is a universally humancapacity whose occurrence among people in developed form is rare Above all the cultivation ofreason requires free time There are two references to this requirement in the TPT that bear onthe ability of the multitude to develop their rational capacities One passage refers to ldquothecommon peoplerdquo as ldquofor the most part knowing nothing of logical reasoning or without leisurefor itrdquo Another refers to Spinozarsquos method of biblical exegesis noting that ldquoour own methoddemands a knowledge of Hebrew for which study the common people can likewise have noleisurerdquo A third passage which we have already referred to is relevant to the relationshipbetween leisure and the cultivation of reason while not mentioning it directly ldquothe multitude arealways at the same level of miseryrdquo Although Spinoza does not specify what he means by thelast statement it is likely that he is referring at least in part to the misery of onerous labor Thepoverty of the multitude demands that they spend most of their time engaged in hard physicalwork and the resulting absence of leisure prevents them from acquiring knowledge anddeveloping rational skills Lacking developed reason it is easy for them to fall under the sway ofthose who manipulate their fears and hopes for their own personal advantage the priestsministers rabbis and other religious officials In Spinozarsquos view fears and hopes make themultitude credulous and willing to accept superstitious beliefs (in divination the ability ofprayer to change the natural course of events the purchase of indulgences etc) that promisecontrol of an uncertain future For clerics the key to power and money is manipulation of thegreat majority of society through the instrument of superstition masked as religion

While the words plebs vulgus and multitudo do not designate a particular social classthey are not free of class reference either Spinoza uses the word plebs much as it was used in theearly Roman Republic to refer to the free subjects of a state who have no right to participate ingovernment Although plebs designates a political status rather than an economic class Spinozais clear that the group it refers to consists largely in those who work with their hands Forexample in the Political Treatise he identifies artisans as an example of the plebs the onlyexample in any of his writings Undoubtedly he would also have included peasants and wageworkers in that category and probably small retail merchants who were also politicallydisenfranchised Patricians by contrast certainly include nobles but may also include at least thewealthier burghers as was the case in the United Provinces Germany and much of the rest ofEurope The word vulgus as Spinoza uses it refers to the same members of society as the wordplebs but with the specific connotation of a lack of education and culture whose most extremeexpression is the unruly and irrational behavior of mobs In fact depending upon the contextvulgus is sometimes best translated as ldquocrowdrdquo or ldquomobrdquo Multitudo means ldquothe manyrdquo Spinozauses it to designate any group with numerous members including for example the simplebodies that make up a chemical substance In the context of political theory he uses the word torefer to the same people who comprise the plebs or vulgus but with the specific connotation ofbeing the vast majority of society Thus plebs vulgus and multitudo have the same referentalthough their principal connotations differ However in Spinozarsquos usage each word tends tobecome a synecdoche for the combined meaning of all three Thus in general the plebs vulgusor multitudo comprise the vast majority of society comprised largely of those who work withtheir hands are denied political rights except in democracies lack culture and education and aregiven to uncouth irrational or unruly behavior

The tension in Spinozarsquos politics between his critical view of the multitude and hisadvocacy of a democratic state in which it is sovereign can be explained by drawing a distinctionbetween the multitude as it is under the conditions of the actually existing Dutch Republic and

the multitude as it could be were Spinozarsquos reforms to be implemented With an uncontrolledReform Church and a Republic dominated by regents who represent the wealthy burghers themultitude has no chancing of shedding its superstitions or developing its rational capacities TheChurch manipulates their hopes and fears through the instrument of superstition and therepublican oligarchs block their participation in political decision-making which is the only waythey can develop rationality on a significant scale The story would be very different however ifthe state were both democratic and prohibited the Church from involvement in politics Twomajor conditions would then exist for the development of reason on a mass scale

The idea of a democracy raises the problem of how people without significant materialresources are to participate in making decisions when they must spend their lives in toil It mightbe thought that the problem can be solved by a universal franchise enabling all citizens to votefor representatives to a legislative assembly and other state offices But even if measures were inplace to prevent the wealthy minority from exercising unequal influence in elected bodiesrepresentative government is not Spinozarsquos idea of democracy Like Plato and Aristotle when heuses the term ldquodemocracyrdquo he has in mind a state such as the Athenian polis in which all adult(male) citizens were empowered to vote directly on legislation and other public matters Spinozamakes this clear in the unfinished chapter on democracy in the Political Treatise

hellipin this state all who are born of citizen parents or on native soil or have done serviceto the commonwealth or are qualified on any other grounds on which the right ofcitizenship is granted by law all I say can lawfully demand for themselves the right tovote in the supreme council and to undertake offices of state nor can they be refusedexcept for crime or dishonor

At a relatively advanced stage in its development the Athenian polis solved the problem

of the multitudersquos participation in government by paying citizens to attend sessions of theAssembly thereby compensating them for missed days of work If Spinoza was aware of theAthenian solution he gives no indication of it in his writings although it is likely that he wouldhave considered the problem of participation in politics by those without leisure in the part of thePolitical Treatise he left unfinished at his death Following the pattern of the completed chapterson monarchy and aristocracy the unfinished chapters on democracy would undoubtedly havespecified the institutional structures and practices necessary to sustain a democratic state In anyevent without something like the Athenian solution the idea of a democratic republic in theUnited Provinces would have been no more than the sort of utopian dream Spinoza rejects in theIntroduction to the Political Treatise

Returning to the earlier work the program for reforming the Dutch Republic that emergesin the TPT has three planks 1) establish state control over the churches as public institutions 2)guarantee freedom of thought expression and private worship and 3) democratize the oligarchicRepublic Although Spinozarsquos book is a work of philosophy it is equally a political interventionin a concrete historical situation a fact that he indicates in his letter to Jelles by referring to theldquocauserdquo he asks his friend to serve by blocking the Dutch translation of the book But in order toact as a political intervention the book must influence the beliefs and through them the actionsof people That raises the question To whom is the TPT addressed Since the decision to write inLatin effectively prevented the multitude from reading the work (which as we have seen wasSpinozarsquos intention) and on the assumption that not many aristocrats were likely to be swayedby its radical arguments the addressee of the book can only have been the educated section ofthe bourgeoisie Since Spinoza was unlikely to sway many conservative Calvinists with hisrationalist conception of religion there were only two groups within the bourgeoisie ndash at leastsome of whose members were capable of reading Latin ndash that the work could effectively addressThe first consists in republicans including the regents who hesitated to support the kind of stateauthority over religion that Spinoza advocated for ideological or pragmatic reasons The secondconsists in Orangists who were liberals in matters of religion and so in conflict with the ReformChurch As odd as it may seem there were a good number of people who fit into the secondcategory Even many of the Collegiantrsquos were loyal to the House of Orange in spite of theirpronounced religious liberalism

Had the TPTrsquos program been limited to its first two planks ndash state control of the churchesand freedom of thought and expression ndash it would have been politically coherent But where doesthe idea of democratizing the United Provinces fit into this picture Neither bourgeoisrepublicans nor religious liberals were apt to be sympathetic to the idea of a democratic republicthat would place power in the hands of the multitude If Spinoza wanted to make an appeal to therepublican and liberal Orangist sections of the bourgeoisie he ought to have been defending theexisting oligarchic Republic against its conservative Calvinist and monarchist enemies ratherthan elaborating an argument for its democratization There is only one audience who wouldhave been sympathetic to that argument namely the peasants artisans wage-workers and smallmerchants who comprised the multitude But that is precisely the readership Spinoza deniedhimself by writing in Latin

And yet Spinoza understood that the only way the Republic could survive in face of thealliance between the Reform Church and the House of Orange was to shift the allegiance of themultitude by winning its support Thus the contradiction in Spinozarsquos program is not a theoreticalflaw but a reflection of the real contradiction involved in the stadtholderless Republic or if youprefer the instability in the balance of social forces that enabled it to exist The Republic couldsurvive only by means of an impossible alliance between the multitude and the regents IfSpinoza erred it was in believing that it was possible to convince the regents to democratize bythe force of his arguments But this was the same as asking them to commit political suicidesince their power on the urban and national levels depended upon their ability to defend theirmonopoly on state offices The only alternative which Spinoza rejected was a popularrevolution that would create a new and radically democratic republic But that republic wouldshare with the existing one no more than the name like the animal dog and the dog star thatSpinoza refers to in a different context For that reason it would have fallen under his warningthat those who attempt to change the form of the state are likely to see it restored in a morerepressive version (see page 25 below) In short there was no solution to the problem the TPTattempted to solve or at least none within the limits of Spinozarsquos thinking As a political theoryand a theory of biblical hermeneutics the book is a brilliant work that went on to influencephilosophers and ironically theologians for the next three centuries As an intervention in theextraordinarily difficult and complex political situation of the seventeenth-century Netherlands itwas and had to be an utter failure

There are in fact two political programs in the TPT an overt program and a latent oneThe overt program is liberal republican and bourgeois in the sense that its addressee andintended agent of change is the educated bourgeoisie The latent program lies quite a bit furtherto the left It is radically democratic and its only possible agent of change is the multitude Letter44 makes a contribution to the latent program that moves in an even more radical direction

The Communist Idea

In his letter to Jelles Spinoza develops an idea of the highest good for human beings as

an alternative to what he argues is the false conception of Homo Politicus For the author of thatbook wealth and honors comprise the highest good But Spinoza claims in the letter thatcommonwealths devoted to the pursuit of wealth and honors ldquomust necessarily perish and haveperishedrdquo He then writes

How far superior indeed and excellent were the reflections of Thales of Miletus compared with this writer is shown by the following account All things he said are incommon among friends

The fact that this paragraph follows Spinozarsquos critique of Homo Politicus while proposing

an alternative to the apparent position of its author justifies an interpretation that takes it in apolitical sense Spinoza should be read as offering the saying of Thales as an addendum to the

latent program he articulates in the TPT Like democracy common ownership could have onlyone social basis in the Netherlands of the seventeenth century ndash namely the peasants artisanswage-workers and small retail merchants The problem this raises is how to make the transitionfrom a multitude given to irrationality and superstition ndash and therefore under the sway of theReformed Church ndash to one capable of the rationality necessary to create the democraticcommunism (the content of which we have yet to define) that Letter 44 implies when consideredalong with the TPT Spinoza saw no answer to this problem That is why he suppressed his latentproject in favor of the overt one for a liberal republic able to assert its sovereign authority overthe Church It seemed to him that the educated bourgeoisie had political capacities that themultitude lacked

Spinozarsquos judgment on this matter is similar mutatis mutandis to that of FrederickEngels in the Peasant War in Germany For Engels the Peasant War of the sixteenth century wasa heroic but premature revolution Under the leadership of Thomas Muumlntzer the peasantsadopted a program that included the expropriation of ecclesiastic and aristocratic property andthe common ownership of goods But the princes were the only group with the wealth andmilitary resources necessary to benefit from the ensuing turmoil while their rivals for power ndashthe Catholic prelates and lesser nobility ndash were ruined by the confiscation of property andplundering or destruction of fixed wealth by the peasant masses The rising bourgeoisie was ableto frame an independent liberal political program but did not yet have the social weightnecessary to play a leading role in the economy and the state According to Engels the peasantrywas incapable of mastering the new forces of production unleashed by the world market and theonly class that might have played a progressive role alongside the peasants ndash the proletarianwage-working element in the towns ndash was a very small part of laboring population It would takeanother three centuries for the proletariat to develop along with industry to the point where itwould be able to draft a meaningful equivalent of the communist program first framed by thesixteenth-century German peasantry Spinoza certainly had no idea that industrialization and asizeable proletariat were on their way But he shared with Engels a pessimistic assessment of thechances for a successful social transformation led by peasants and their allies Perhaps with thedisastrous defeat of the German peasants in mind (as well as the allegiance of the Dutchmultitude to the Reformed Church) Spinoza judged that relying upon the common people as anagent of social and political change in his own century would have been equally futile

Why then does Spinoza raise the issue of common ownership in Letter 44 The answer isthe same as for why he discusses democracy in the TPT when it makes no contribution to hispolitical intervention but on the contrary damages it We could say that Spinoza is either a badmilitant or a good philosopher The truth is he is both Like Platorsquos attempt to influence thecourse of events in Syracuse or Aristotlersquos decision to tutor Alexander the Great Spinozarsquos faithin the political efficacy of philosophical reasoning was misguided There is ample historicalevidence that the philosopher who attempts to be politically effective as a philosopher is doomedto defeat That is why Marx ceased considering himself a philosopher in 1845 as he indicates inthe eleventh of his Theses on Feuerbach ldquoUntil now philosophers have only attempted tounderstand the world the point however is to change itrdquo The project of changing the world isdifferent than that of understanding it from a purely theoretical perspective Of course it ispossible for philosophers to influence statesmen as Locke influenced the drafters of the USConstitution But Lockersquos influence was effective more than a century after he wrote the SecondTreatise on Civil Government and so can hardly be called a political intervention The attempt tointervene politically in a concrete situation in which multiple forces and complex structures arein play is something very different than the delayed influence on the drafters of a constitutionwho have had an opportunity to ponder at leisure the meaning of a philosopherrsquos work The mostimportant question of politics is not so much ldquoWhat is to be donerdquo as ldquoWho is to do itrdquoSpinoza may have been right that the multitude was not the collective subject to defendrepublican liberty That is why he appealed to the Dutch bourgeoisie through its philosophicallyliterate elements But he was too much the philosopher to suppress his argument that ademocratic republic is the kind of state that best preserves freedom and encourages rationalityand he was willing to make his point even at the cost of alienating the collective agent he wasattempting to influence

The reference to common ownership in Letter 44 would have had an even more negativeeffect on his readers should Spinoza have made it in the TPT In private communication withJelles however he was able to raise the topic without risking further political difficultiesSpinozarsquos reference presumes an intellectual history with roots in both ancient Greek philosophyand early Christianity a history that was renewed practically as well as theoretically in earlymodern Europe In the passage from Letter 44 where he introduces the theme of commonownership he goes on to elaborate the position he attributes to Thales Here is the passage in fullthat we have already quoted partially

How far superior indeed and excellent were the reflections of Thales of Miletuscompared with this writer is shown by the following account All things he said are incommon among friends The wise are the friends of the Gods and all things belong tothe Gods therefore all things belong to the wise In this way the wise man makeshimself the richest by nobly despising riches instead of greedily pursuing them

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo (Amicorum communia omnia) is

the first entry in his book Adages by the late Renaissance humanist and reform-minded Catholicscholar Desiderius Erasmus The Adages were widely available in Spinozarsquos day and it is likelythat both Spinoza and Jelles had read them although the former must have also consultedErasmusrsquo source for the saying ndash Lives of the Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius We will seewhy in a moment Erasmus cites the same deduction from the maxim as Spinoza does in Letter44 except that he attributes it to Socrates rather than Thales

From this proverb Socrates deduced that all things belong to all good men just as theydo to the gods For to the gods he said belong all things good men are friends of thegods and among friends all possessions are in common

The fact that Spinoza refers to wise men while Erasmus refers to good men does not

indicate any real difference between them because both accepted the ancient Greek and biblicalequivalence between human goodness and wisdom The difference in attributing the deductiveconsequences of the proverb to Thales on the one hand and Socrates on the other also does notindicate any substantive disagreement between Spinoza and Erasmus although it does signify adifference in intellectual vocation and emphasis Interestingly however the attribution in bothcases is incorrect Their common source the Lives of the Philosophers places the argument intothe mouth of Diogenes the Cynic rather than Socrates or Thales Thus both Spinoza and Erasmushave had a failure of memory and probably for the same reason The author of Lives makes itclear that although Diogenes the Cynic despised the pursuit of wealth he was not a veryappealing character he was arrogant and could be verbally and physically abusive to those hejudged to be unwise It is understandable then that the figure of Diogenes would drop out of thememory of both Erasmus and Spinoza and be replaced by a philosopher with whom each tosome extent identified Erasmus the Renaissance humanist undoubtedly found Socrates well-suited to stand in for the part of Diogenes the Cynic because Socrates was a moral philosopherand the teacher of Plato whose influence on the Renaissance was profound As an admirer of thenatural sciences and a maker of telescopes Spinoza would have felt the same way about Thaleswho was an astronomer as well as a philosopher

In Letter 44 a story from Lives follows the identification of Thales as the figureresponsible for the drawing the deductive consequences of the proverb In order to demonstratethat his rejection of the pursuit of wealth was not an alibi for poverty Thales made use of hisexpert knowledge of the heavens Foreseeing a bountiful olive crop after the previous harvestrsquosdearth he rented all of the olive presses in Greece cheaply and then hired them out at a highprice to farmers who needed them to press the oil from their olives In this way he amassed agreat deal of wealth within a single year which ldquohe then distributed with a liberality equal to the

shrewdness by which he had acquired itrdquo Spinozarsquos memory of the story must have acted as abridge for the mistaken identification

The similarity between the ancient Greek proverb and the passages from Acts about thecommunal practices of the early Church with respect to property must have been evident to thebiblical scholar Spinoza Rendered into Latin by Erasmus the proverb ldquoAll things are incommon among friendsrdquo is amicorum communia omnia In Acts 244 ndash ldquoAll that believed weretogether and had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquohad all things in commonrdquo appears in theLatin Vulgate as habebant omnia communia In Acts 432 ndash ldquoNo one claimed that any of theirpossessions was their own but they had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquothey had all thingsin commonrdquo appears in the Vulgate as erant illis omnia communia The equivalence between thecommunia omnia of the proverb and the omnia communia of the two verses from Acts wouldhave been perfectly clear to Spinoza on linguistic grounds alone

In Adages Erasmus is more explicit than Spinoza in connecting the proverb with theverses from Acts He discusses the proverb in its appearance in book 5 of the Laws where Platoappeals to it in order to demonstrate that the best condition of society consists in the communityof possessions Erasmus writes

But it is extraordinary how Christians dislike this common ownership of Platorsquos how infact they throw stones at it although nothing comes closer to the mind of Christ

Further on Erasmus identifies the inventor of the proverb as Pythagoras who he saysestablished a community in which life and property were shared

hellipwhich is the very thing Christ wants to happen among Christians For all those whowere admitted by Pythagoras into that well-known band who followed his instructionswould give to the common fund whatever money and family property they possessed

Even apart from Erasmus the similarity between the Greek philosophersrsquo proverb and the

New Testament passages would have been evident to the Mennonite Jelles from MennoSimonrsquos discussion of the communal practice described in Acts (more on this below) Jelleswould also have found the parallel especially appealing because it makes the principle ofcommon ownership part of that rational philosophical version of Christianity that he and theother Waterlander Mennonites and Collegiants were seeking to establish

Although Erasmus was an advocate of religious reform he never joined the ProtestantReformation remaining a loyal Catholic until his death It is ironic then that during hislifetime the only vigorous champions of the common ownership he espoused were members ofthe most radical wing of the Reformation ironic but completely intelligible since the radicalsrsquoproject was to restore the Church to its original apostolic condition before its accommodationwith worldly power and wealth under Constantine

The Latin phrase designating Anabaptist communism in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies is Omnia sunt communia (for example it appears in this form in the confession theauthorities extracted from Thomas Muumlntzer under torture) It translates into English as ldquoAllthings are commonrdquo which is the present tense version of the phrase in Acts 432 ldquoall thingswere commonrdquo (ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά) to the members of the Church in Jerusalem Theparallel formulation in Acts 244 is slightly different although the distinction is lost in the LatinVulgate It reads that the members of the apostolic Church ldquohad all things in commonrdquo (εἶχονἅπαντα κοινὰ) In the second formulation εἶχον (had) seems to suggest a specific mode ofpossession or even an established quasi-legal form of property But it would be a mistake tointerpret it this way In both verses the anonymous author of Acts is articulating a generalprinciple rather than specifying a form of its implementation As we shall see the concreteapplication of the principle in the first century Church involved not a mode of possession orform of property but rather a practice of redistribution

Within the Anabaptist movement there was a broad range of beliefs and practices thatinvolved specific applications of the principle Omnia sunt communia We need to recognizetheir breadth in order to grasp just how subtle and variegated Anabaptist communism could beFor this purpose it is important to distinguish between communism as 1) a principle ofredistribution 2) a form of joint or communal property 3) a mode of the organization of workand 4) a kind of mutual aid In general all Anabaptist applications of Omnia sunt communia areintended to realize in different ways a communal and spiritual life in which all things arecommon We could say if we like that each of the four categories serves as a means for realizingthe end designated by that principle as long as we keep in mind that in this case the meanscannot be discarded once the end has been achieved Communism as a principle of redistributiona form of communal property a mode of the organization of work a kind of mutual aid ndash orsome combination of these ndash are the concrete ways in which communism as a mode ofcommunal and spiritual life is realized In this case the means are internal to the end That isbecause there can be no fellowship no community of the spirit unless those participating sharesomething ie have it in common Greek recognizes this internal relationship between acommon life and something shared in the word translated into English as fellowship κοινωνίαthe root of which is κοινός which means ldquocommonrdquo Its antonym ἴδιος means ldquobelonging toonerdquo It is the word κοινός that appears in the passages from Acts that refer to the practice ofsharing material wealth

244 ldquoAll who believed were together and had all things in common (Πάντες δὲ οἱπιστεύοντες ἦσαν ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό καὶ εἶχον ἅπαντα κοινὰ)

432 ldquoThe multitude of believers were one in heart and soul (Τοῦ δὲ πλήθους τῶνπιστευσάντων ἦν καρδία καὶ ψυχὴ microία) and no one claimed anything as his ownpossession but to them all things were in common (καὶ οὐδὲ εἷς τι τῶν ὑπαρχόντωναὐτῷ ἔλεγεν ἴδιον εἶναι ἀλλrsquo ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά)

Both verses affirm an internal relationship between living a common life and things

being in common or people having things in common But this is true of any collectiveendeavor A chess club for example is only possible if the members have a common interest inplaying chess But the verses from Acts mean to assert more than this They affirm the intensityand universality of the common life experienced in the early Church (being ldquoone in heart andsoulrdquo) They indicate this by referring to the fact that in the Church in Jerusalem all things areheld in common (ἅπαντα κοινά) Although ldquoall thingsrdquo (ἅπαντα) is not limited to materialpossessions the succeeding verses in chapters 2 and 4 of Acts indicate the depth of thecommitment the early Christians had to sharing a common life by referring to the practice inwhich they enacted it

245 And they sold their possessions and goods and divided them among everyoneaccording to need (καὶ τὰ κτήmicroατα καὶ τὰς ὑπάρξεις ἐπίπρασκον καὶ διεmicroέριζον αὐτὰπᾶσιν καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

434 There was no one among them in need as many as owned land or houses soldthem and brought the values of what was sold (οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐνδεής τις ἦν ἐν αὐτοῖς ὅσοιγὰρ κτήτορες χωρίων ἢ οἰκιῶν ὑπῆρχον πωλοῦντες ἔφερον τὰς τιmicroὰς τῶνπιπρασκοmicroένων) 435 and laid them at the feet of the apostles and distribution wasmade to each in accordance with need (καὶ ἐτίθουν παρὰ τοὺς πόδας τῶν ἀποστόλωνδιεδίδετο δὲ ἑκάστῳ καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

The needs of others are what break the bonds of individual ownership allowing the

transition from the private (ἴδιος) to the common (κοινά) Acts refers to making material goods

common rather than for example communicating private knowledge publicly presumablybecause of the difficulty people experience parting with private property and the correlativesignificance of the act of doing so For material possessions are the means by which they satisfytheir basic needs ndash for food shelter clothing and so on ndash and when possible their desire forluxuries The act of handing over possessions has two consequences The first is that thedistinction between rich and poor wealthy and needy owner and propertyless is abolished andthe members of the community come to stand on level ground The second consequence involvesa more fundamental risk on the part of property-owners By handing over their property theymake a leap of faith that the community will henceforth satisfy their needs as well through thesame practice of redistribution When applied in this fashion the general principle of being incommon or having in common results in an example of the first category of communism asspecified above ie communism as a principle of redistribution

Redistribution of property by the apostles creates occasions for active sharing asexpressions of the new form of common life 246 says that the members of the Church inJerusalem ldquoalso broke bread in each otherrsquos homes and took their meals in exaltation andsimplicity of heartrdquo (κλῶντές τε κατrsquo ο ἴκον ἄρτον microετελάmicroβανον τροφῆς ἐν ἀγαλλιάσει καὶἀφελότητι καρδίας) The value of sharing meals lies not merely in the fact that everyone is fedbut also in the experience of exaltation or ecstatic delight (ἀγαλλιάσεις) and sincerity orsimplicity of heart (ἀφελότητι καρδίας) The experience in common of exaltation and sincerity isat least as important as the act of satisfying needs although the two can be distinguished onlynotionally

The experience has its meaning in relation to the power (δυνάmicroις) that brings together themembers of the new community and inspires them to share their property The gathering of JewsGreeks and those from other nations (the circumcised and the uncircumcised as Paul says)occurs in the period following Pentecost when the Holy Spirit is supposed to have descended incloven tongues of flame upon the twelve apostles endowing them with the ability to speak inevery language Pentecost in turn follows by several weeks the resurrection of Christ and hisbodily ascension into heaven The gift of being able to speak in every language permits theapostles to convey their message to all nations That message ndash confirmed by ldquosigns andwondersrdquo ndash is testimony of their own first-hand witness to the Resurrection It is accompanied bythe baptism of the new members of the Church which repeats the Pentecostal experience byfilling them with the grace and power of the Holy Spirit

433 ldquoAnd with great power the apostles were giving witness to the resurrection of theLord Jesus and abundant grace was upon them all (καὶ δυνάmicroει microεγάλῃ ἀπεδίδουν τὸmicroαρτύριον οἱ ἀπόστολοι τοῦ Κυρίου Ἰησοῦ τῆς ἀναστάσεως χάρις τε microεγάλη ἦν ἐπὶπάντας αὐτούς)

The ecstatic delight and simplicity of heart that the members of the Church in Jerusalem

experience by sharing a common life is their enjoyment of this ldquoabundant gracerdquo (χάρις τεmicroεγάλη) The new community is built upon faith in the apostlesrsquo testimony that Jesus triumphedover death and that his victory promises an eternal life to all who believe That is the gift of theHoly Spirit Yet the ldquospiritualrdquo (πνευmicroατικός) content of early Christian experience does not denyits simultaneously material character For the significance of the Resurrection and the Ascensioninto Heaven is precisely that they concern the physical body of Christ When he appears toThomas who doubts that he has returned Jesus invites his disciple to place his hands into thewounds received from the Crucifixion The point is to show not only that the man standing infront of Thomas is not an imposter but also that the risen Christ is no disembodied ghost Andwhen the apostles witness the Ascension what they see is the physical body of Jesus rising toheaven There is little suggestion of soul-body dualism in Acts The spirit (πνεῦmicroα) infuses andtransfigures the body it does not exist apart from it In this respect it is similar to the life-givingbreath to which the word πνεῦmicroα originally referred Dualism is the result of a Platonizinginterpretation of Christianity that comes later The bodily character of the Resurrection extends tothe promise of eternal life for believers as well The promise is not that their souls will exist apart

from their bodies but that their bodies will rise up from the grave like that of their Savior Giventhis early Christian materialism it is not surprising that commonality of material goods wouldserve as a fundamental expression of the new life of the believers

As we already know the project of the sixteenth-century Anabaptists was to restore theChurch to its original apostolic condition by undoing the corruption they believed had set inwhen it made its peace with worldly wealth and power under Constantine Given the nature ofthe Anabaptist project it would seem that making material things common as described in Actswould follow as a matter of course However there is a long tradition ndash one that began aroundthe middle of the sixteenth century ndash of denying that Anabaptism has anything to do withcommunism regarding it as an accusation brought against the Anabaptists by their enemies It isunderstandable that this should be so The Anabaptists were the victims of a ldquored scarerdquo thatgripped the ruling classes of Europe in the aftermath of the Peasant War and the Muumlnstercommune It is impossible to explain the horrendous tortures forced relocations andinnumerable executions Anabaptists faced on the basis of heretical belief alone Nothing of aremotely similar scale was visited upon other schismatics The fact that the Anabaptistschallenged prevailing property relations is what made them victims of near-genocide It was amatter of survival then to create some distance between themselves and the charge ofadvocating common ownership of goods that came from Luther Zwingli and those whoextracted the confession from Thomas Muumlntzer that he held to the principle of Omnia communiasunt Recent scholarship however has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that having thingsin common was indeed a basic and widespread principle of Anabaptism at its origin just as it hasdemonstrated the influence veterans of the Peasant War had among the early Anabaptists

The dominant form of communist practice in early Anabaptism was appropriatelymodeled on the description of redistribution in Acts In Switzerland where the movementoriginated converts were often asked or required to make contributions to a ldquocommon purserdquoafter receiving adult baptism Some especially pious initiates went so far as to sell their land andhouses for that purpose in accordance with the biblical precedent When necessary officialsdistributed the contents of the purse to members of the community who were in need

Both proponents and enemies of Anabaptist communism often confused the redistributionof wealth with joint or communal property However except for the taking of meals in commonthere is no indication in Acts that redistribution collectivized ownership of wealth in this fashionbut only that it transferred wealth from the better-off members of the community to the worse-off Nevertheless some Anabaptists took joint or communal property as a paradigm for newproperty relations For example the visionary writing of the Nuremberg printer Hans Hergotwho was executed for rebellion in 1527 includes the following passage

And everything that grows on the land belongs to the church and the people who livethere Everything is bestowed for common use so that the people will eat from one potdrink from one vesselhellip And all things will be used in common so that no one is betteroff than another

The ldquowar communismrdquo of the city of Muumlnster involved an ad hoc form of communal propertythrough the edict that the doors to all homes be left open and the owners take in anyone whowished to reside with them But the most significant successful and long-lasting attempt toimplement communal property was that of the Hutterites

The Hutterites took their name from the charismatic hat-maker and Anabaptist leaderJacob Hutter However at their origins they were influenced by the revolutionary bookbinderHans Hut Hut shared Thomas Muumlntzerrsquos sanguinary apocalyptic view of social change andadvocated community ownership of goods in accordance with his own understanding of ActsHe survived the battle of Frankenhausen in which the peasant rebels were finally defeated butwas tortured and executed a few years later In the aftermath and under the influence of JacobHutter the Hutterites adopted pacifism and a strategy of creating autonomous communities Inorder escape persecution thousands of the brethren emigrated from Switzerland and Germany to

the more tolerant Moravia where they created hundreds of Bruderhofs farms and vineyards inwhich land houses farm implements produce and even objects of personal use were ownedcollectively The center of Bruderhof life was a large communal house in which craft productionoccurred on the ground floor and couples lived in small apartments on the upper levels The menengaged in farm labor and craftwork while the women were limited to traditional domesticduties in spite of the fact that children were raised communally apart from their parents TheBruderhofs enjoyed great economic success for a number of reasons People worked hard andconsumed little resulting in a surplus that could be used to purchase additional land seed andtools The size of the communities and of their agricultural production also enabled them to sellcheaply and to pay for supplies at generous prices both of which made the communitieseconomic assets to the areas in which they were located The Hutterites also organized both farmlabor and craft production cooperatively including the education boys were given in thenecessary skills They were therefore practitioners of the second and third forms of communismwe have identified namely communal ownership and cooperative organization of work Whenthey were ultimately forced out of Moravia by the triumph of Catholic forces in the Thirty YearsWar the Hutterites migrated eastward many finally relocating to Canada and the United Stateswhere the Bruderhofs continue to exist to this day

Communism as a kind of mutual aid was the contribution of the other major form ofAnabaptism that of the Mennonites With great political intelligence and skill Menno Simonswas able to reformulate the meaning of Omnia communia sunt in such a way as to avoidthreatening the property interests of nobles and clerics He did this in his book A Humble andChristian Justification and Replication First he denied that Mennonites were advocates ofcommunal property

This accusation is false and without all truth We do not teach and practice communityof goods but we teach and testify the Word of the Lord that all true believers in Christare of one body (1 Corinthians 1213) partakers of one bread (1 Corinthians 1017)have one God and one Lord (Ephesians 4)

In his assertion that the believers are of one body and partakers of one bread Simons is affirmingwhat we have called the general principle of communism while denying that Mennonitesembrace it in the specific form of communal property But he goes further by denying thatMennonites advocate a contemporary version of the apostolic redistribution of wealth

For although we know that the apostolic church had this practice in the beginning ascan be seen in the Acts of the Apostles nevertheless we note from their epistles that itdisappeared in their time and was no longer practiced

Instead of communal property or centralized redistribution of wealth the Mennonites derivefrom the general principle of Christian communism an alternative practice

Seeing then that they are one as said it is Christian and reasonable that they also havedivine love among them and that one member cares for another for both the Scripturesand nature teach this They show mercy and love as much as is in them They do notsuffer a beggar among them They have pity on the wants of the saints They receive thewretched They take strangers into their houses They comfort the sad They lend to theneedy They clothe the naked They share their bread with the hungry They do not turntheir face from the poorhellip

In the subsequent history of Mennonism the practice Simons describes came to be calledldquomutual aidrdquo Note that it is different from charitable giving and this in two ways First thereferences to receiving the wretched taking in strangers sharing bread and so on indicate a farmore personal even intimate form of involvement than simple charitable donation Second

there is the suggestion of reciprocity or mutuality (ldquoone member cares for anotherrdquo) that tends todeny the difference in status between the charitable giver and the recipient of charity Thepractice Simons describes is similar to what some anthropologists have called ldquogeneralizedreciprocityrdquo in which my obligation to give to you when you are in need corresponds to yourobligation to give to me when I am in need In a sense this is a form of redistribution inaccordance with need but it is enacted directly between individual members of the communityrather than administered centrally through a common purse

In line with his political purpose Simons is careful to distinguish between mutual aid andthe expropriation of private property

This is the kind of brotherhood we teach and not that some should take over andpossess the land soil and properties of others as we are falsely maligned accused andlied about by many

In this way he detaches the Mennonite version of communism from any revolutionary intentionThat was the prerequisite for communal survival during the long counter-revolution thatfollowed the Peasant War Still Simons never abandons the general principle Omnia communiasunt nor does he even really reject the practice of the early Church

Since we do not find it a permanent practice with the apostles we have not taught orpracticed community of goods but we urge earnestly and zealously to practice liberalgiving love and mercy as the apostolic writings teach and testify abundantly Andeven if we had taught and practiced community of goods as we are falsely accused ofdoing we would still not be doing otherwise than the holy apostles full of the HolySpirit themselves did in the former church at Jerusalem in the beginning of the holyChristian Church although they stopped the practice as has been said

Like the Hutterites Mennonite communities prospered once they managed to survive the

bloody period of reaction In Holland the Mennonite population consisted largely in successfulmerchants along with a number of lawyers doctors and other professionals Most of thepeasant artisan and laborer families who had started as Mennonites in the sixteenth century hadlong since converted to the Reform Church which is one reason Spinoza faced the problem ofpolitical agency in the TPT Although the idea of mutual aid persisted among the DutchMennonites it took the form predominantly of organized international philanthropy in which thecommunity made contributions not only to Mennonites abroad but to other populations in needThere was no escaping the fact however that in this philanthropic form mutual aid becamehardly distinguishable from conventional charity

Jarig Jelles was born into the Dutch Mennonite community around a century afterSimmons wrote his book when this process of slippage was well underway But there is littledoubt that Jelles knew the Mennonite teaching on mutual aid and its origin in the generalprinciple of Christian communism Even if Jelles never read Erasmusrsquo Adages Spinozarsquosreference to the supposed communism of Thales was likely to resonate with him on the basis ofhis own religious tradition

We cannot be certain how much Spinoza knew in detail about the communist practices ofthe Anabaptists but it is probably not a coincidence that he recommends three of the four atvarious places in his writings In Part 4 of the Ethics ldquoOf Human Bondage or the Strength of theEmotionsrdquo he identifies the chief virtue of the intellect as ldquostrength of the mindrdquo (fortitudo)According to him it takes two forms one directed to the self and one directed to others He callsthe inwardly directed form ldquocouragerdquo defining it as ldquothe desire whereby every individualendeavors to preserve his own being according to the dictates of reason alonerdquo The outwardlydirected form is generositas which Shirley translates as ldquonobilityrdquo though ldquosolidarityrdquo is closerto what Spinoza is getting at He defines it as ldquothe desire whereby every individual according to

the dictates of reason alone endeavors to assist others and make friends of themrdquo When twopeople in contact with one another possess the virtue of generositas they will clearly exhibit itreciprocally in the form of mutual aid the fourth communist practice

In Part 4 of the Ethics Spinoza also formulates a version of the first communist practicethat of the redistribution of wealth in accordance with need

Again men are won over by generosity especially those who do not have thewherewithal to produce what is necessary to support life Yet it is far beyond the powerand resources of a private person to come to the assistance of everyone in need For thewealth of a private person is quite unequal to such a demand It is also a practicalimpossibility for one man to establish friendship with all Therefore the care of the poordevolves upon society as a whole and looks only to the common good

The fact that society as a whole has responsibility for meeting the needs of the poor makes thepractice Spinoza recommends in this passage a version of the centralized redistribution of wealthdescribed in the Acts of the Apostles and institutionalized in Anabaptist form as the ldquocommonpurserdquo More than that the fact that society as a whole must take on this responsibility ratherthan a church or other sub-community makes Spinoza an early advocate of what will becomethree centuries later the European welfare state In our own period as the welfare state is beingdismantled it is easy to see that what neoliberals object to concerning it is precisely its implicitcommunism ie its practice of distribution in accordance with need

Spinoza advocates a third communist practice in his unfinished final work the PoliticalTreatise The context is his discussion of a maximally democratic version of monarchy in whichthe entire citizen body is armed and the king forbidden from making any decision contrary to thewill of a massive council of ordinary citizens In such a state

The fields and the soil and if possible the houses as well should be public property thatis should belong to the sovereign by whom they should be let at an annual rent tocitizens whether townsmen or country-dwellers Apart from this all citizens should befree or exempt from any form of taxation in time of peace Of this rent part should beallocated to the defense works of the commonwealth part to the kings domestic needsFor in time of peace it is still necessary to fortify cities as for war and to have in a stateof readiness ships and other armaments

Ownership of land and buildings by the sovereign is a form of communal property first becausethe citizens of the commonwealth delegate to him or them the property they hold in commonand second because that delegation occurs with the understanding that the sovereign will use theproperty in service of the common good

Spinoza supplies an argument based on more than simple utility for the practice ofholding land and buildings in common

hellip in a state of Nature the one thing a man cannot appropriate to himself and make hisown is land and whatever is so fixed to the land that he cannot conceal it anywhere orcarry it away where he pleases Thus the land and whatever is fixed to it in the way wehave described is especially the public property of the commonwealth that is of allthose who by their united strength can claim it or of him to whom all have delegated thepower to claim it

To state the argument differently since rights are the same as powers no individual has a naturalright to appropriate privately the land or any of its fixed structures because none has the powernecessary to do so The only response an individual can make to incursions by a more powerfulperson or group of people is flight in which he must leave the land and its buildings behind It is

only by entering into a community in which the strength of each is combined for the purpose ofdefense that people can effectively possess fixed property but they do so as a members of thecommunity rather than as an separate individuals According to Spinozarsquos theory of rights onlythe community has the right to own the land and its structures because only the community hasthe required power

The communal ownership of land houses and other buildings is a version of the secondcommunist practice on our list of which Hutterite joint ownership is the most developedhistorical example When adopted by a polity rather than a small community though thepractice has an added advantage Under those circumstances communal possession of fixedproperty eliminates the need for taxes except in time of war What takes their place is ageneration of revenue pegged to wealth since the members of society who are able to rent themost expensive and largest amounts of communal property will obviously pay the most in rentIn this way the form of communal ownership of land and buildings that Spinoza recommendsalso acts as a mechanism for the redistribution of wealth

The only communist practice of the Anabaptists that does not find an equivalent inSpinozarsquos writings is that of the cooperative organization of work The absence is related toSpinozarsquos inability to resolve the problem of political agency in the TPT An attempt to mobilizethe multitude on behalf of democratic social change would need to address the organization ofwork in such a way as to alleviate the burden of toil Reducing the number of hours spent inonerous labor is the only way to provide the multitude with the free time necessary to participatein institutionalized democratic politics Along with the redistribution of wealth and thedevelopment of communal property the cooperative reorganization of work would need to beincorporated as a plank in the latent political program that makes its first democratic appearancein the TPT and is extended in a communist direction in the passages from the Ethics and thePolitical Treatise that we have just examined But that would constitute an explicit anddangerous appeal to the multitude as the agent of political and social transformation an appealthat Spinoza consistently rejects It would involve nothing less than the revival of therevolutionary energies of the Peasant War on a new seventeenth-century foundation

In spite of his radicalism Spinoza doubted that revolution was capable of reconstructingsociety and the state in the way revolutionaries wanted In Chapter 18 of the TPT he takes aposition that is at least on the surface opposed to revolution or any attempt to change the formof the state fundamentally The context is a discussion of the transition from the early Hebrewcommonwealth in which the people held sovereignty to the rule of kings Spinoza tells us thatthe first period saw only a single civil war and concluded with a compassion for the vanquishedthat resulted in lasting peace By contrast the period of kings was marred by multiple warswaged only for the glory of the rulers and involved the massacre of hundreds of thousandsDuring the first period few prophets arose to rebuke the Jews while a great many emergedduring the time of the monarchies From this example Spinoza reasons that it is fatal for peopleaccustomed to popular sovereignty and governed by settled laws to adopt a new monarchicalform of government On the one hand they will be unable to tolerate the arbitrary exercise ofpower by a single individual while on the other the new monarch will be compelled to abolishthe existing laws because they did not originate by his own authority But it is just as dangerousaccording to Spinoza for the subjects of a monarch to attempt his replacement with popular ruleThis is because a popular revolution must advance to the point where it annihilates the king thekingrsquos family and the friends of the king in order to prevent the restoration of royal power But inthe process the revolutionary authority must assume a power even more draconian then thatpreviously exercised by the king In addition having committed regicide the new popularauthority faces the danger that it will fall victim to its own precedent For this reason as well andin the interest of survival it must wield power more repressively than the deposed sovereignSpinoza illustrates his point with reference to the English revolution which eliminated themonarch Charles I only to replace him with the Lord Protector Cromwell who was monarch inall but name and more repressive than Charles

Spinozarsquos point seems unassailable especially since the pattern he describes in the caseof the English Revolution repeated itself over the course of the next three centuries in the French

and Russian Revolutions It is at least arguable that Napoleon if not Robespierre was a newLouis XVI and Stalin a new Tsar even if this understates the more fundamental social changesthat resulted form the two revolutions Still Spinoza does not absolutely proscribe therevolutionary overthrow of a tyrannical government but says instead that there is a great dangerin making the attempt Besides his analysis of the conditions necessary for retaining sovereigntydoes not leave the decision about whether to engage in revolution up to militants He argues thatno state can survive that creates mass indignation in its people and this is precisely theunavoidable result of tyrannical government Spinozarsquos real purpose in Chapter 18 is to opposethe Orangist-Calvinist project of replacing the Dutch Republic with a monarchy ldquoAs for theEstates of Hollandrdquo he writes ldquoas far as we know they never had kings but counts to whom theright of sovereignty was never transferredrdquo His point is that the Dutch War of Independenceagainst Spain was justified because it restored the sovereignty of the people against the attemptby the Spanish ldquocountrdquo (King Philip II) to abolish it However any attempt to replace theRepublic with a monarchy would change the form of the state disastrously by divesting thepeople of their former rights

When Spinoza wrote his treatise the only revolutionary forces that existed were on theRight The danger he warns about in Chapter 18 of the TPT did indeed come to pass only oneyear after his letter to Jelles In 1672 a Calvinist-Orangist mob hacked Johan De Witt and hisbrother Cornelius to death at a time when Holland was invaded by the French army Streetorators stirred up the mob by claiming that the invasion was the result of the brothersrsquo treason Inthe aftermath of the murders William III prince of Orange was elevated to the position ofstadtholder of Holland Although William went on to become King of England he stopped shortof claiming a Dutch throne However in actuality he substituted his own power for much of thatwhich had belonged to the Estates General while the Reformed Church gained considerableinfluence in Dutch government According to a story made famous by Spinozarsquos earliestbiographer Johannes Colerus when the De Witt brothers were murdered Spinozarsquos landlordthwarted his attempt to go the site of the assassinations where the bodies of the brothers werestill on gruesome display in order to plant a sign reading Ultimi Barbarorum (the ultimatebarbarians) In this way the landlord undoubtedly saved the philosopherrsquos life It was the onlytime we know of when the mature Spinoza gave in to his passive affects in a significant way

There is a passage in Chapter 18 of the TPT that uncannily anticipates the murders

Tyranny is most violent where individual beliefs which are unalienable rights areregarded as criminal Indeed in such circumstances the anger of the common people[plebis] is usually the greatest tyrant of allhellip the vilest hypocrites urged on by that samefury which they call zeal for Gods law have everywhere persecuted men whoseblameless character and distinguished qualities have excited the hostility of the commonpeople [plebi] publicly denouncing their beliefs and inflaming the savage multitudersquos[multitudinem] anger against them

Spinoza was the first political philosopher who grappled with the problem of a mass-

based politics of the Right The problem would occur again with the fascist movements of the1920s and 1930s and with the return of the rightwing religious fundamentalisms of our own dayndash Jewish Christian Muslim and Hindu It is not surprising that he failed to solve the problemdefinitively since it continues to remain unsolved The remarkable thing about Spinoza thoughis not that he was skeptical about the liberatory possibilities of revolution by the masses but thathe defended the idea of a popular democracy nonetheless And this he continued to do even inthe aftermath of the De Witt murders In his work on the Political Treatise in the final year of hislife Spinoza developed a powerful critique of the elitist claim that the multitude are incapable ofgoverning

Yet perhaps our [democratic] suggestions will be received with ridicule by those whorestrict to the common people the faults that are inherent in all mankind saying There

is no moderation in the mob they terrorize unless they are frightened and Thecommon people is either a humble servant or an arrogant master there is no truth orjudgment in itrdquo and the like But all men share in one and the same nature it is powerand culture that mislead us with the result that when two men do the same thing weoften say that it is permissible for the one to do it and not the other not because of anydifference in the thing done but in the doer hellipThen again There is no moderation inthe mob they terrorize unless they are frightened For freedom and slavery do not gowell together Finally that there is no truth or judgment in the common people is notsurprising since the important affairs of state are conducted without their knowledgeand from the little that cannot be concealed they can only make conjecturehellip Howeveras we have said all men have the same nature ndash all grow haughty with rule terrorizeunless they are frightened ndash and everywhere truth becomes a casualty through hostilityor servility especially when despotic power is in the hands of one or a few who in trialspay attention not to justice or truth but to the extent of a persons wealth

Surprisingly Spinoza develops this democratic argument while discussing the institutions

appropriate to a monarchy But the key point he makes in the discussion is that a condition ofeffective monarchical rule is expansion of the democratic element within the state in the form ofa sizeable legislative council whose members are drawn from the general population of citizensover the age of fifty On Spinozarsquos view the mistake those who oppose democracy make isassuming that the faults exhibited by the common people ndash such as poor judgment arroganceand hostility ndash belong only to them while they are in fact typical of human beings Actually it iselitist politics that magnifies these all-too-human faults by restricting political power to a limitednumber of people while democratic politics minimizes them through the principle of majorityrule among numerous decision-makers The reason as we already know is that passions pullpeople in different directions making it nearly impossible for the members of a large council toagree on a common position unless they make decisions based not on passion but an idea of thecommon good On Spinozarsquos view it is when government is in the hands of a single person oronly a few people that the dangers the critics of democracy attribute to the common people are infact the greatest

Spinoza also argues against the claim that the common people are not qualified to makepolitical decisions because they lack the necessary education or degree of intellect There is noone he says who has been engaged in an occupation until the age of fifty who lacksunderstanding of his sphere of work ldquoevery man is reasonably competent and sagacious inmatters in which he has been long and attentively engagedrdquo So each is qualified at least to giveadvice in the kingrsquos council concerning his own business especially if given the time necessaryto reflect on the matter under discussion

Most of all the plebs are the group best suited to serving on the council because theirinterest is that of society as a whole ldquoHence it follows that counselors must necessarily beappointed whose private fortune and advantage depend on the general welfare and the peace ofallrdquo For example Spinoza emphasizes the idea that the common people have the highest stake inavoiding war or concluding an existing war with a settlement that brings lasting peace Thereason is they are ones who bear the heaviest burdens of war Unlike the wealthy well-bornmembers of society it is the common person whose occupation is most likely to be interrupted itis his taxes that are raised to onerous levels and it is his son who dies Thus the common interestof society in peace is best served not by a wealthy or educated elite but rather by those whohave the most to lose from war

At the end of the long paragraph defending popular power quoted above Spinozaconnects the question of who holds power within the state to that of who owns property Truthand justice he says are casualties in states where power is held by one person or a handful ofpeople who conduct courtroom trials that favor the rich The implication is that elitist politicalpower and ownership of wealth are intrinsically connected One of the reasons Spinozarecommends public ownership of land and buildings in a monarchy is to prevent the rise of aclass of wealthy landowners with interests different than those of the rest of society Under the

conditions of common ownership ldquothe greatest part of the council will generally have one andthe same attitude of mind towards their common interests and peaceful activitieshelliprdquo And yethaving gone this far he has trouble imagining a state where fixed property is owned collectivelyin which the actually existing multitude holds power The peasants artisans and urban poor whoconstitute the common people of the United Provinces drop out of the picture in the democratic-communist monarchy he describes and nearly everyone makes his living by selling merchandiseor lending money to countrymen ldquoall will have to make a living by engaging in trade or bylending money to their fellow citizensrdquo He seems to assume that the collectivization of land andfixed property would eliminate the occupations of peasant and artisan leaving trade and loaningat interest the only remaining possibilities of work But that of course is not true The fact thatpeople would have to rent farm land would not prevent them from farming any more than theneed to rent workshops in the cities and towns would prevent artisans from plying their tradesBut Spinoza finds the idea of a commonwealth based on commercial enterprise politicallyappealing This is because he regards commercial occupations as contributing to harmony andpeace since he claims they establish connections between people that further the interests of allwhile those who engage in them prosper only in peacetime Both of these assumptions are asquestionable as the expectation that non-commercial occupations will die out After all even inSpinozarsquos day colonialism and the struggle for colonies between imperialist states led to warsbetween the great powers including the United Provinces not to mention the military and otherforms of violence involved in subjugating the colonies The East India Company was not exactlya force for peace What seems to be at work here instead is a failure of social imaginationthough one we may find understandable given the fact that the capitalist economy was still at anearly stage in its development However this may be there is no denying the fact that despite hispowerful arguments in favor of democratic rule and communal property it is still a bourgeoissociety and state that Spinoza envisions

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of what we should not hesitate to call Spinozarsquoscommunism is the critique of private ownership he develops in the Ethics based on his theory ofaffects For him there is a paradox involved in social and political life It stems from the fact thaton the one hand people can survive and develop their capacities only by joining with oneanother in societies and states But on the other hand the necessity of combining with oneanother does not prevent them from seeking their own advantage above that of their fellowsbeing quarrelsome or hateful and erecting obstacles to each otherrsquos happiness Spinoza identifiesthe reason for these deep-rooted problems of social coexistence in Part IV Proposition 35 of theEthics ldquoInsofar as men are assailed by emotions that are passive they can be contrary to oneanotherrdquo Emotions are states of the body characterized by a transition from a lower degree of thepower to exist and act (conatus) to a higher one or conversely from a higher degree to a lowerone The first transition is the affect of joy while the second is that of sadness Passive emotionsare caused by an object external to the body or more precisely external to its essential natureSpinoza conceives of that nature as a specific proportion of motion-and-rest that the parts of thebody exhibit in relation to one another While joy is an increase in our capacity to preserve theproportion of motion-and-rest essential to our body (ie to exist and act as we do) sadness is adecrease in that capacity The political problem created by the passive emotions is that evenwhen they are joyful they are not under the control of the person who experiences themMoreover different people are affected by the same external object in different ways because theparts of their bodies and their proportionate relations of motion-and rest-differ The same objectmay elicit anger in one person and pity in another or love in one and hatred in another and soon And because people differ in their emotional reactions to the same things they also differ inthe judgments they frame on the basis of these reactions What one person praises anotherperson blames what one regards as fearless another believes to be timid etc Finally sincepeople act upon their judgments seeking to foster what they judge to be good and destroy whatthey judge to be bad their differing judgments can result in actions that are in conflict with oneanother In short ldquoinsofar as they are assailed by passive emotions [people] can be contrary toone anotherrdquo

In Proposition 34 Spinoza gives an example of the contrariety caused by the passiveaffects Suppose Peter has sole possession of something Paul loves Deprivation of the loved

object causes sadness in Paul with the idea of Peter as its cause In accordance with Spinozarsquosdefinition of hatred Paul will hate Peter and therefore seek to injure or destroy him in order toremove the cause of his Paulrsquos sadness Spinoza says that this example may seem wrong becausePaul and Peter appear to be contrary to one another because of something they share ndash ie theirlove for the thing Peter possesses But that is not the case Paul has an image of himself aslacking the loved object while Peter has an image of himself as possessing the loved object Sothey in fact differ from one another by virtue of the different images they have rather than bypossessing something in common It is clear from the example that the root of this contrariety ndashie this enmity ndash between Paul and Peter is the fact that the object can be possessed by only oneof them so that what one has the other must lack The difficulty with private property is that it isexclusive to the one who possesses it which means that what I experience as possession othersexperience as deprivation It may seem that there is no problem if other people are indifferent tothe thing I possess However in accordance with Spinozarsquos theory of the imitation of affects themere fact that I love the thing I own other things being equal will cause you to love it as wellMy exclusive possession of the thing will therefore cause sadness in you that takes the form ofhatred or more precisely the kind of hatred called envy which involves pain at the good fortuneof another ldquohuman nature is in general so constituted that men pity the unfortunate and envy thefortunate in the latter case with a hatred proportionate to their love of what they think anotherpossessesrdquo

Common Possession Friendship and Philosophy

In the Ethics Spinoza does not follow his analysis of the antagonisms of private property

by considering the collective possession of material goods (although he does advocateredistribution of wealth to the poor in Part 4 as we have seen) But the theme of commonpossession figures large in the book anyway in his treatment of the intellectual love of God Inorder to understand the connection between common possession and amor Dei intellectualis itwill be necessary to engage in a detailed analysis of Spinozarsquos metaphysics We will begin thattask in earnest in the next chapter At this point we will simply introduce the theme byexamining the relationship between friendship and common possession in the letter to Jelles andsome related writings

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo unlike the similar passages fromActs has its provenance among philosophers Spinoza mistakenly attributes it to Thales but itoccurs in Platorsquos Phaedrus and Laws and is present though not in so many words in thediscussion in the Republic of common ownership of property by the guardian class Thetradition cited by Erasmus that traces the proverb back to Pythagoras is plausible when weconsider the influence the Pythagorean community in Sicily had on Plato in the aftermath ofSocratesrsquo death Erasmus sees the supposed use of a common fund by the Pythagoreans as ananticipation of the similar practice in Acts But Spinozarsquos approach is different What interestshim in the letter is common ownership not as a religious practice but as a matter of thephilosopherrsquos relation to the world Remember the deductive consequences of the proverb sinceall things are in common among friends everything belongs to the wise because the wise arefriends of the gods and all things belong to the gods But what does it mean to say that the wiseare friends of the gods

Although Spinoza uses the word ldquofriendshiprdquo often in his writings he never supplies aformal definition However we can reconstruct the wordrsquos meaning from the contexts in whichhe uses it So for example Proposition 35 of Part III of the Ethics reads

If anyone thinks that there is between the object of his love and another person the sameor a more intimate bond of friendship than there was between them when he alone usedto possess the object loved he will be affected with hatred toward the object loved andwill envy his rival

According to the proposition friendship is an intimate bond between a person and the

object he loves I hate an object of love that I alone once possessed when it wounds my vanity byloving someone else more than me So the object of love must be capable of loving whichmeans that the bond of friendship is a relation of reciprocal love between persons Nowaccording to Spinoza I love something when I have the idea of that thing as the cause of myexperience of joy Joy is an increase in conatus which Spinoza defines as the tendency to persistin being or equivalently the ability to exist and act So friendship is a relation in which Iidentify the other person as the cause of an increase in my conatus and the other personidentifies me as the cause of a similar increase in his or hers Two things each of which causesan increase in the ability to exist and act of the other are said by Spinoza to be in harmony Sincetwo entities in harmony have more combined power than either does singly it is to the advantageof each to be in harmony with the other There is even greater advantage in entering intoharmonious connection with a third individual and the greatest advantage in combining with asmany individuals as possible This is a universal metaphysical principle For example it pertainsjust as much to chemical combination or herding among animals as it does to social relationsbetween people In the case of human relationships it is the fundamental basis of politics orrather one of its two bases the other one being the tendency human beings have to conflict withone another When the state is functioning well it involves not a random collection ofindividuals and certainly not the war of each against all but a group whose members are boundto one another by friendship the human form of harmony Thus for Spinoza friendship is apolitical virtue as it was for Plato and Aristotle

The opposite of friendship is enmity That person is my enemy whom I regard as thecause of my sadness or pain which is the same as saying the cause of a decrease in my abilityto exist and act Like friendship enmity is a reciprocal relationship If I identify you as the causeof my sadness I will seek to injure or eliminate you But that means I will be identified in yourmind as the cause of your sadness Enmity is a relation of reciprocal hatred just as friendship is arelation of reciprocal love Just as there is harmony between friends there is discord betweenenemies The fundamental task of a rational politics is easy to state it is to extend and intensifyfriendship and to reduce and mollify enmity

We have already seen that Spinoza identifies solidarity (generositas) as one of the twoforms of strength of mind (fortitudo) which is the virtue that belongs to the exercise of theintellect Solidarity is the desire to assist others and foster friendship on the basis of reason aloneThe friendship fostered by solidarity is a bond of active love The love of friends for one anotheris active when each person who loves is the adequate cause of his or her love To say that theperson is the adequate cause means that the cause of love is internal to the person who feels it inother words that the love is self-generated Active love differs from passive love in that thecause of passive love is at least partially something that exists outside the person who has theemotion The problem with passive love is that it need not be constant If the bodily dispositionof the person changes in a particular way then the object of erstwhile love will have a differentemotional effect Passive love can change into boredom or indifference or even hatred This isnot possible in the case of active love because it is self-generated Since love involves theexperience of joy no one actively abandons it

There seems to be something odd about the idea of a love between persons that isinternally generated by each of the partners in the relationship Is it not the case that part of theessence of love is the fact that the object of my love is the cause of my love Without denyingthis Spinoza identifies two forms of love that are self-generated in the Ethics One is myintellectual love of God It is indeed true that God is the cause of my love but only insofar as myintellect is part of the infinite intellect of God Thus the object that causes my love - ie God - isinternal to my mind and conversely my mind is internal to it Such reciprocal internality ndash hardas it is to visualize ndash is what Spinoza means by immanence God he tells us is the immanentcause of everything that exists Nothing can exist apart from God while God expresses himselfin all of the things that exist My love of God and Gods love of himself are one and the samebecause Godrsquos intellect is immanent in mine The second form of self-generated love is the

friendship that exists between me and others who love God through the exercise of the intellectThe reason is that the joy I feel in loving God is by the imitation of affects augmented by thejoy you feel in loving God But your love as well as mine is joy caused by the same immanentbeing Another way of saying this is that your intellect and mine are parts (ie finiteexpressions) of the infinite intellect of God Thus the relationship between friends who are boundtogether by the common exercise of the intellect and the love of God that flows from it is basedon an internal bond an internal object and cause of love In this kind of love you and I as itwere discover one another internally You are inside of me and I am inside of you Thus whenyou augment my love and I augment yours it is Gods power as the intellect immanent in us boththat causes the augmentation even though we remain finite individual beings In this state ofaffairs which is admittedly difficult to grasp we can see the rational meaning of the command tolove God by loving the neighbor In intellectual love God not insofar as he is infinite butinsofar as he expresses himself in my finite intellect loves God as he expresses himself in yourfinite intellect

For Spinoza the exercise of the intellect is very different than our ordinary experience ofthe world In the course of ordinary experience we encounter objects in a way that appearshaphazard disordered and incomplete This is so first of all because our encounters are part ofan infinitely complex chain of natural causes and effects of which we know only very limitedparts In addition our experience of objects has as much to do with the condition our bodies arein when we encounter them as it does with the nature of the objects themselves By contrast inexercising the intellect we arrange our ideas in an intelligible pattern that is internal to the mindand entirely different than the images we accumulate through sensory experience The ideas arean expression of our power while the images result from our hapless deliverance to chanceEmotions caused by objects we encounter in the course of ordinary experience are externallydetermined and therefore passive while emotions caused by acts of intellectual comprehensionare internally generated and therefore active That is why love as an active emotion has its originin the exercise of the intellect and the most satisfying form of friendship is based on thereciprocal experience of such love In a letter to Willem van Blyenberg Spinoza provides themost complete description of this kind of friendship to be found in his writings

For my part of all things that are not under my control what I most value is to enterinto a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth For I believe that such a lovingrelationship affords us a serenity surpassing any other boon in the whole wide worldThe love that such men bear to one another grounded as it is in the love that each hasfor knowledge of truth is as unshakable as is the acceptance of truth once it has beenperceived It is moreover the highest source of happiness to be found in things notunder our command for truth more than anything else has the power to effect a closeunion between different sentiments and dispositions

Spinoza says that a friendship based on the love of truth is not under our control But how

can that be if intellectual friendship involves a form of love internally generated by each friendIt would seem that the love we generate through the exercise of the intellect is fully under ourcontrol Spinoza however is referring to the fact that we are able to become friends only withpeople we actually meet which is something that occurs in the course of ordinary haphazarddisordered experience To a large extent our friendships are a matter of chance By way ofillustrating this point it turned out that Spinoza decided his initial judgment of Blyenberg wasmistaken He broke off their correspondence when he realized that the infinite chain of causesand effects had brought his way not a lover of truth but a dogmatic worshipper of the ldquopaperand inkrdquo of the Bible

People create commonwealths because the power of each to exist and act is increased byall others who transfer their rights to the sovereign For reasons we have already considered thepolitical bond is one of friendship ldquoIt is of the first importance to men to establish closerelationships and to bind themselves together with such ties as may most effectively unite theminto one body and as an absolute rule to act in such a way as serves to strengthen friendshiprdquo If

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

believe and what they are allowed to say Indignation is inevitable if the state attempts to controlthought and expression not only because such attempts harm the multitude but also becausethey are futile Spinoza recognizes that it is possible for the state to deceive its citizens and toeffect their beliefs in other ways But he also assets that no state has the power to suspend thelaws of human nature by for example ordering its people to free themselves from anger to hatethose who have benefited them or to regard as false what they believe to be true Any attempt toexercise power in this fashion provokes indignation in part because of the emptiness of thepower it vainly seeks to assert All that it demonstrates is the sovereignrsquos weakness therebyencouraging the further spread of indignation It also makes enemies of those who refuse to hidetheir deepest beliefs and honors those who lie about what they believe which is both unjust tothose falsely reviled and dangerous to the state because it encourages duplicity and corruption inthose who hold political office Far from protecting the state the attempt to control thought andexpression undermines it

The remarkable thing about the theory of politics Spinoza develops in the TPT is that itderives liberal conclusions from absolutist premises The power of the state is absolute but it isnonetheless fragile No state Spinoza says has more to fear from external enemies than it doesfrom its own people Polices that avoid or minimize indignation are vital to its health Howeverwhile he advocates full freedom of thought and expression as necessary to preserving thepolitical community Spinoza draws the line at action which comes under the province of lawand command After all what else could sovereignty mean but the power to command orprohibit action Action includes such functions of a church as public worship and the provisionof charity both of which for this reason are appropriate objects of state control Most of allcivil peace requires the prohibition of church interference with government which would reversethe proper order of obedience and command Thus Spinoza identifies two conditions of stablepolitical power freedom of thought and expression and the iron will of the state to brook nochallenge to its sovereign authority over action especially from organized religion

If Spinozarsquos program for political reform is liberal it is liberalism of a unique kindUnlike the main currents in the liberal tradition it is based on neither a theory of rights nor oneof individual utility The concept of rights has no normative role to play in the TPT becauseSpinoza insists that rights are the same as powers For example there is no right of free speechunless there is the effective power to speak freely Thus the right cannot function as a normbecause it has no reality until it actually exists and whether or not it exists depends upon thebalance of political forces Moreover although the state is necessary to security and civil peaceno one chooses to create it in order to maximize his or her utility People are driven by self-interest but this is true no matter what their conditions of life happen to be Spinoza makes muchof the irrefutable but neglected point that people do not have the ability to survive withoutcombining their power with that of others There is no possible scenario in which isolatedindividuals choose for or against political organization in the interest of maximizing their utilityfor the simple reason that there are no isolated individuals

It is true that Spinoza argues that democracy is the only ldquonaturalrdquo form of governmentbecause it preserves collectively the right to make decisions that each person enjoys individuallyin the ldquostate of naturerdquo For this reason it is the form of government most compatible withfreedom But the idea of a state of nature that precedes political organization and the associatedidea of natural rights are no more than hypothetical because it is precisely in a state of naturethat people would be unable to protect their rights against the aggression of others But forSpinoza this is the same as saying that these rights do not exist The idea of natural rights in apre-political condition is purely notional The only way to enjoy rights effectively ndash which is tosay the only way to exercise the powers they involve ndash is to entrust them to a sovereign authoritycapable of replacing unbridled aggression with the rule of law If ever there were a socialcontract theorist who employed the concept of the state of nature as an hypothesis in a thoughtexperiment without taking the myth of an original condition seriously it is Spinoza The idea thatdemocracy is the most natural form of government simply means that it comes closest to thehypothetical freedom of the state of nature In a democracy people retain their power to decidewhat actions to take but as members of the sovereign authority ndash ie as citizens ndash while theyare bound as subjects to obey the laws that result from their collective deliberations ldquoIn a

democratic state nobody transfers his natural right to another so completely that thereafter he isnot to be consulted he transfers it to the majority of the entire community of which he is partrdquo

In addition to the claim of naturalism in his advocacy of democracy in the TPT Spinozaargues that democratic governments are less prone to irrationality than monarchical oraristocratic ones A large number of people is less likely to endorse the same irrational decisionthan a small council (aristocracy) or a single person (monarchy) ldquohellip In a democracy there is lessdanger of an assembly behaving unreasonably for it is practically impossible for the majority ofa single assembly if it is of some size to agree on the same piece of follyrdquo The sentence thatfollows the one just quoted throws some light on what ldquothe same piece of follyrdquo means byreferring to ldquothe follies of appetiterdquo Spinozarsquos claim is that a democratic state is more rationalthan the alternatives in that it does the best job avoiding the foolish decisions people make whenled by their appetites

Spinoza does not provide an argument in support of this claim in the TPT but in thePolitical Treatise which he began to write two years later there is a passage that that helpscorrect the omission It concerns the wisdom of establishing a governing council with a largenumber of members in an aristocratic state Although an aristocracy excludes the commonpeople from political power reserving it for an elite Spinoza argues that it is capable ofguaranteeing liberties similar to those of democratic government provided that the members ofits governing council are sufficiently numerous

The fact that sovereignty is conferred absolutely on the council need not give thecommon people [plebi] any reason to fear oppressive slavery at its hands For when acouncil is so large its will is determined by reason rather than mere caprice becauselusts [libidine] draw men asunder and it is only when they have as their objective whatis honorable or at least appears so that they can be guided as if by one mind

Spinozarsquos argument is more complicated than a quick reading might indicate It is

impossible he claims for the members of a large council to come to agreement on the basis oftheir libidine because these affects draw them in different and incompatible directions Whilelibidine generally refers to sexual appetites Spinoza uses the word in this context to refer to thefull range of disreputable passions The corresponding point in the TPT is that it is ldquopracticallyimpossiblerdquo for the members of the democratic council to endorse the same ldquopiece of follyrdquo Inorder to reach agreement the members of the governing council in an aristocratic state must takeas their goal ldquowhat is honorable or at least appears sordquo In the Ethics Spinoza defines thehonorable (honestum) as ldquowhat is praised by men who live by the guidance of reasonrdquo and hemakes it clear that what such men praise is ldquothe desire to establish friendshiprdquo In accordancewith this definition the objective of the council members in an aristocracy is not so much to actwith reason as to be regarded by the reasonable as acting with reason ie as promotingfriendship That is why they are able to reach agreement even when their objective appears to behonorable although it is not But with whom do they wish to be or appear to be friends SinceSpinoza intends his argument to allay the fear of the plebs it seems obvious that it is theirfriendship that the council members seek But why would aristocrats be interested in makingfriends with commoners Although Spinoza does not tell us why in this passage the answer canbe found elsewhere in the Political Treatise The reason that the council members must seek thefriendship of the common people is that aristocratic government is not nor can it be absolute inthe full sense of the word in other words it cannot hold a complete monopoly on powerAlthough they have no institutional role in an aristocratic regime the common people retain thepower to undermine state authority by refusing to obey it or even by waging war against it Therulers recognize that power in the fear with which they regard the masses

In the Introduction to the Political Treatise Spinoza dissociates himself from the rosyview of human nature held by the authors of utopias In order to develop a political philosophythat is useful in the world of actual human affairs it is necessary to design institutions inaccordance with which those in government realize the rational end of politics ndash ie the common

good ndash whether or not that is their intention The desire of the members of the council to be seenas seeking the friendship of the masses ensures the rationality of the formerrsquos decisions becauseit causes them to seek the common good even if they do so from fear rather than dedication toreason One might object that appearing to seek the friendship of the masses entails only that thecouncil appear to seek the common good not that it actually does so But it is not possible for thecouncil to neglect the common interest over the long run without dire consequences unless weassume that the masses are so benighted that they are unable to discern the consistent violation oftheir interests The appearance and reality of seeking the friendship of the masses areindistinguishable as proved nearly two hundred years later by a theorem of Abraham LincolnsIt is possible to fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the timebut not all of the people all of the time If that theorem were not true then there would be nolimit to the power of tyrants while Spinoza is fond of quoting Tacitus that tyrannies never lastlong Once again the reason for their inevitable downfall is the indignation they provokethrough the harm they cause to the interests of the multitude

Although Spinoza does not make the point explicitly it is easy to see that a democraticcouncil does not require the same concern with the honorable as an aristocratic one because fearof the masses has no role to play in a democracy Since the common people who are the vastmajority of society are empowered to make decisions they have no need to evoke fear indecision-makers different than themselves in order to protect their own interests Thus in the caseof a democratic council the impossibility of a large number of people agreeing on ldquothe samepiece of follyrdquo is enough to secure political rationality ie the discovery and implementation ofthe common good

An implication of Spinozarsquos emphasis on the affinity between democracy and reason isthat democracy is a kind school for developing rationality The need to make and assess publicarguments about the common good requires clarity of thought and some understanding of theprinciples of logical implication In addition while citizens of a democracy agree to obey the lawor decree established by a vote of the majority they retain their freedom of judgment includingthe right to argue in favor of reversing decisions already made Thus there is no point in ademocracy at which citizens must give up their efforts to influence collective decisions andtherefore no point at which rationality becomes irrelevant However reason is not simply ameans of achieving the common good as an external end It is part of the common good forhuman beings and therefore itself one the ends it seeks to achieve The highest good is theintellectual love of God ndash so Spinoza argues in the Ethics ndash which we cannot attain withoutexercising reason Democracy then turns out to be not only the best way of securing thecommon good of the members of a polity but the best way of advancing the ultimate goodappropriate to human beings in general

Spinozarsquos advocacy of democracy was exceedingly radical at a time when monarchy wasthe political norm in Europe and even the oligarchic regent-dominated Dutch Republic waswidely regarded as an ultra-left anomaly But it sits uncomfortably with another aspect of theTPT namely its apparently low opinion of ldquothe multituderdquo (multitudo) In the Introduction to thebook which was written in Latin Spinoza tells his readers that he would prefer that ldquothecommon peoplerdquo (plebs) not read the work since they are incapable of understanding it andlikely to distort its meaning He pictures its members as entirely driven by their passions andincapable of using reason

I know how deeply rooted in the mind are the prejudices embraced under the guise ofpiety I know too that the masses [vulgo] can no more be freed from their superstitionthan from their fears Finally I know that they are unchanging in their obstinacy thatthey are not guided by reason and that their praise and blame is at the mercy of impulse

But this judgment throws into question the affinity between democracy and reason that

Spinoza affirms in the TPT For in order for such an affinity to exist the common people mustbe able to make decisions on the basis of reason Is the negative picture he paints of the masses

in the Introduction to the TPT simply a rhetorical device meant to appeal to the vanity of hiseducated readership It does not seem to be because a similarly low opinion appears again in theEthics and in some of his letters where there is no need to appeal to anyonersquos vanity Instead offunctioning simply as a rhetorical ploy Spinozarsquos generally negative view of the vast majority ofsociety and the positive view he develops in his advocacy of democracy indicate a tension in hispolitics

In the Ethics and TPT Spinoza uses the words vulgus plebs and multitudointerchangeably When any of the three word appears it is usually accompanied by suchqualifiers as ldquoirrationalrdquo ldquoignorantrdquo ldquouneducatedrdquo ldquosuperstitiousrdquo and ldquogoverned by passionsrdquoStill for Spinoza reason is not the possession of a natural elite Rather it is a universally humancapacity whose occurrence among people in developed form is rare Above all the cultivation ofreason requires free time There are two references to this requirement in the TPT that bear onthe ability of the multitude to develop their rational capacities One passage refers to ldquothecommon peoplerdquo as ldquofor the most part knowing nothing of logical reasoning or without leisurefor itrdquo Another refers to Spinozarsquos method of biblical exegesis noting that ldquoour own methoddemands a knowledge of Hebrew for which study the common people can likewise have noleisurerdquo A third passage which we have already referred to is relevant to the relationshipbetween leisure and the cultivation of reason while not mentioning it directly ldquothe multitude arealways at the same level of miseryrdquo Although Spinoza does not specify what he means by thelast statement it is likely that he is referring at least in part to the misery of onerous labor Thepoverty of the multitude demands that they spend most of their time engaged in hard physicalwork and the resulting absence of leisure prevents them from acquiring knowledge anddeveloping rational skills Lacking developed reason it is easy for them to fall under the sway ofthose who manipulate their fears and hopes for their own personal advantage the priestsministers rabbis and other religious officials In Spinozarsquos view fears and hopes make themultitude credulous and willing to accept superstitious beliefs (in divination the ability ofprayer to change the natural course of events the purchase of indulgences etc) that promisecontrol of an uncertain future For clerics the key to power and money is manipulation of thegreat majority of society through the instrument of superstition masked as religion

While the words plebs vulgus and multitudo do not designate a particular social classthey are not free of class reference either Spinoza uses the word plebs much as it was used in theearly Roman Republic to refer to the free subjects of a state who have no right to participate ingovernment Although plebs designates a political status rather than an economic class Spinozais clear that the group it refers to consists largely in those who work with their hands Forexample in the Political Treatise he identifies artisans as an example of the plebs the onlyexample in any of his writings Undoubtedly he would also have included peasants and wageworkers in that category and probably small retail merchants who were also politicallydisenfranchised Patricians by contrast certainly include nobles but may also include at least thewealthier burghers as was the case in the United Provinces Germany and much of the rest ofEurope The word vulgus as Spinoza uses it refers to the same members of society as the wordplebs but with the specific connotation of a lack of education and culture whose most extremeexpression is the unruly and irrational behavior of mobs In fact depending upon the contextvulgus is sometimes best translated as ldquocrowdrdquo or ldquomobrdquo Multitudo means ldquothe manyrdquo Spinozauses it to designate any group with numerous members including for example the simplebodies that make up a chemical substance In the context of political theory he uses the word torefer to the same people who comprise the plebs or vulgus but with the specific connotation ofbeing the vast majority of society Thus plebs vulgus and multitudo have the same referentalthough their principal connotations differ However in Spinozarsquos usage each word tends tobecome a synecdoche for the combined meaning of all three Thus in general the plebs vulgusor multitudo comprise the vast majority of society comprised largely of those who work withtheir hands are denied political rights except in democracies lack culture and education and aregiven to uncouth irrational or unruly behavior

The tension in Spinozarsquos politics between his critical view of the multitude and hisadvocacy of a democratic state in which it is sovereign can be explained by drawing a distinctionbetween the multitude as it is under the conditions of the actually existing Dutch Republic and

the multitude as it could be were Spinozarsquos reforms to be implemented With an uncontrolledReform Church and a Republic dominated by regents who represent the wealthy burghers themultitude has no chancing of shedding its superstitions or developing its rational capacities TheChurch manipulates their hopes and fears through the instrument of superstition and therepublican oligarchs block their participation in political decision-making which is the only waythey can develop rationality on a significant scale The story would be very different however ifthe state were both democratic and prohibited the Church from involvement in politics Twomajor conditions would then exist for the development of reason on a mass scale

The idea of a democracy raises the problem of how people without significant materialresources are to participate in making decisions when they must spend their lives in toil It mightbe thought that the problem can be solved by a universal franchise enabling all citizens to votefor representatives to a legislative assembly and other state offices But even if measures were inplace to prevent the wealthy minority from exercising unequal influence in elected bodiesrepresentative government is not Spinozarsquos idea of democracy Like Plato and Aristotle when heuses the term ldquodemocracyrdquo he has in mind a state such as the Athenian polis in which all adult(male) citizens were empowered to vote directly on legislation and other public matters Spinozamakes this clear in the unfinished chapter on democracy in the Political Treatise

hellipin this state all who are born of citizen parents or on native soil or have done serviceto the commonwealth or are qualified on any other grounds on which the right ofcitizenship is granted by law all I say can lawfully demand for themselves the right tovote in the supreme council and to undertake offices of state nor can they be refusedexcept for crime or dishonor

At a relatively advanced stage in its development the Athenian polis solved the problem

of the multitudersquos participation in government by paying citizens to attend sessions of theAssembly thereby compensating them for missed days of work If Spinoza was aware of theAthenian solution he gives no indication of it in his writings although it is likely that he wouldhave considered the problem of participation in politics by those without leisure in the part of thePolitical Treatise he left unfinished at his death Following the pattern of the completed chapterson monarchy and aristocracy the unfinished chapters on democracy would undoubtedly havespecified the institutional structures and practices necessary to sustain a democratic state In anyevent without something like the Athenian solution the idea of a democratic republic in theUnited Provinces would have been no more than the sort of utopian dream Spinoza rejects in theIntroduction to the Political Treatise

Returning to the earlier work the program for reforming the Dutch Republic that emergesin the TPT has three planks 1) establish state control over the churches as public institutions 2)guarantee freedom of thought expression and private worship and 3) democratize the oligarchicRepublic Although Spinozarsquos book is a work of philosophy it is equally a political interventionin a concrete historical situation a fact that he indicates in his letter to Jelles by referring to theldquocauserdquo he asks his friend to serve by blocking the Dutch translation of the book But in order toact as a political intervention the book must influence the beliefs and through them the actionsof people That raises the question To whom is the TPT addressed Since the decision to write inLatin effectively prevented the multitude from reading the work (which as we have seen wasSpinozarsquos intention) and on the assumption that not many aristocrats were likely to be swayedby its radical arguments the addressee of the book can only have been the educated section ofthe bourgeoisie Since Spinoza was unlikely to sway many conservative Calvinists with hisrationalist conception of religion there were only two groups within the bourgeoisie ndash at leastsome of whose members were capable of reading Latin ndash that the work could effectively addressThe first consists in republicans including the regents who hesitated to support the kind of stateauthority over religion that Spinoza advocated for ideological or pragmatic reasons The secondconsists in Orangists who were liberals in matters of religion and so in conflict with the ReformChurch As odd as it may seem there were a good number of people who fit into the secondcategory Even many of the Collegiantrsquos were loyal to the House of Orange in spite of theirpronounced religious liberalism

Had the TPTrsquos program been limited to its first two planks ndash state control of the churchesand freedom of thought and expression ndash it would have been politically coherent But where doesthe idea of democratizing the United Provinces fit into this picture Neither bourgeoisrepublicans nor religious liberals were apt to be sympathetic to the idea of a democratic republicthat would place power in the hands of the multitude If Spinoza wanted to make an appeal to therepublican and liberal Orangist sections of the bourgeoisie he ought to have been defending theexisting oligarchic Republic against its conservative Calvinist and monarchist enemies ratherthan elaborating an argument for its democratization There is only one audience who wouldhave been sympathetic to that argument namely the peasants artisans wage-workers and smallmerchants who comprised the multitude But that is precisely the readership Spinoza deniedhimself by writing in Latin

And yet Spinoza understood that the only way the Republic could survive in face of thealliance between the Reform Church and the House of Orange was to shift the allegiance of themultitude by winning its support Thus the contradiction in Spinozarsquos program is not a theoreticalflaw but a reflection of the real contradiction involved in the stadtholderless Republic or if youprefer the instability in the balance of social forces that enabled it to exist The Republic couldsurvive only by means of an impossible alliance between the multitude and the regents IfSpinoza erred it was in believing that it was possible to convince the regents to democratize bythe force of his arguments But this was the same as asking them to commit political suicidesince their power on the urban and national levels depended upon their ability to defend theirmonopoly on state offices The only alternative which Spinoza rejected was a popularrevolution that would create a new and radically democratic republic But that republic wouldshare with the existing one no more than the name like the animal dog and the dog star thatSpinoza refers to in a different context For that reason it would have fallen under his warningthat those who attempt to change the form of the state are likely to see it restored in a morerepressive version (see page 25 below) In short there was no solution to the problem the TPTattempted to solve or at least none within the limits of Spinozarsquos thinking As a political theoryand a theory of biblical hermeneutics the book is a brilliant work that went on to influencephilosophers and ironically theologians for the next three centuries As an intervention in theextraordinarily difficult and complex political situation of the seventeenth-century Netherlands itwas and had to be an utter failure

There are in fact two political programs in the TPT an overt program and a latent oneThe overt program is liberal republican and bourgeois in the sense that its addressee andintended agent of change is the educated bourgeoisie The latent program lies quite a bit furtherto the left It is radically democratic and its only possible agent of change is the multitude Letter44 makes a contribution to the latent program that moves in an even more radical direction

The Communist Idea

In his letter to Jelles Spinoza develops an idea of the highest good for human beings as

an alternative to what he argues is the false conception of Homo Politicus For the author of thatbook wealth and honors comprise the highest good But Spinoza claims in the letter thatcommonwealths devoted to the pursuit of wealth and honors ldquomust necessarily perish and haveperishedrdquo He then writes

How far superior indeed and excellent were the reflections of Thales of Miletus compared with this writer is shown by the following account All things he said are incommon among friends

The fact that this paragraph follows Spinozarsquos critique of Homo Politicus while proposing

an alternative to the apparent position of its author justifies an interpretation that takes it in apolitical sense Spinoza should be read as offering the saying of Thales as an addendum to the

latent program he articulates in the TPT Like democracy common ownership could have onlyone social basis in the Netherlands of the seventeenth century ndash namely the peasants artisanswage-workers and small retail merchants The problem this raises is how to make the transitionfrom a multitude given to irrationality and superstition ndash and therefore under the sway of theReformed Church ndash to one capable of the rationality necessary to create the democraticcommunism (the content of which we have yet to define) that Letter 44 implies when consideredalong with the TPT Spinoza saw no answer to this problem That is why he suppressed his latentproject in favor of the overt one for a liberal republic able to assert its sovereign authority overthe Church It seemed to him that the educated bourgeoisie had political capacities that themultitude lacked

Spinozarsquos judgment on this matter is similar mutatis mutandis to that of FrederickEngels in the Peasant War in Germany For Engels the Peasant War of the sixteenth century wasa heroic but premature revolution Under the leadership of Thomas Muumlntzer the peasantsadopted a program that included the expropriation of ecclesiastic and aristocratic property andthe common ownership of goods But the princes were the only group with the wealth andmilitary resources necessary to benefit from the ensuing turmoil while their rivals for power ndashthe Catholic prelates and lesser nobility ndash were ruined by the confiscation of property andplundering or destruction of fixed wealth by the peasant masses The rising bourgeoisie was ableto frame an independent liberal political program but did not yet have the social weightnecessary to play a leading role in the economy and the state According to Engels the peasantrywas incapable of mastering the new forces of production unleashed by the world market and theonly class that might have played a progressive role alongside the peasants ndash the proletarianwage-working element in the towns ndash was a very small part of laboring population It would takeanother three centuries for the proletariat to develop along with industry to the point where itwould be able to draft a meaningful equivalent of the communist program first framed by thesixteenth-century German peasantry Spinoza certainly had no idea that industrialization and asizeable proletariat were on their way But he shared with Engels a pessimistic assessment of thechances for a successful social transformation led by peasants and their allies Perhaps with thedisastrous defeat of the German peasants in mind (as well as the allegiance of the Dutchmultitude to the Reformed Church) Spinoza judged that relying upon the common people as anagent of social and political change in his own century would have been equally futile

Why then does Spinoza raise the issue of common ownership in Letter 44 The answer isthe same as for why he discusses democracy in the TPT when it makes no contribution to hispolitical intervention but on the contrary damages it We could say that Spinoza is either a badmilitant or a good philosopher The truth is he is both Like Platorsquos attempt to influence thecourse of events in Syracuse or Aristotlersquos decision to tutor Alexander the Great Spinozarsquos faithin the political efficacy of philosophical reasoning was misguided There is ample historicalevidence that the philosopher who attempts to be politically effective as a philosopher is doomedto defeat That is why Marx ceased considering himself a philosopher in 1845 as he indicates inthe eleventh of his Theses on Feuerbach ldquoUntil now philosophers have only attempted tounderstand the world the point however is to change itrdquo The project of changing the world isdifferent than that of understanding it from a purely theoretical perspective Of course it ispossible for philosophers to influence statesmen as Locke influenced the drafters of the USConstitution But Lockersquos influence was effective more than a century after he wrote the SecondTreatise on Civil Government and so can hardly be called a political intervention The attempt tointervene politically in a concrete situation in which multiple forces and complex structures arein play is something very different than the delayed influence on the drafters of a constitutionwho have had an opportunity to ponder at leisure the meaning of a philosopherrsquos work The mostimportant question of politics is not so much ldquoWhat is to be donerdquo as ldquoWho is to do itrdquoSpinoza may have been right that the multitude was not the collective subject to defendrepublican liberty That is why he appealed to the Dutch bourgeoisie through its philosophicallyliterate elements But he was too much the philosopher to suppress his argument that ademocratic republic is the kind of state that best preserves freedom and encourages rationalityand he was willing to make his point even at the cost of alienating the collective agent he wasattempting to influence

The reference to common ownership in Letter 44 would have had an even more negativeeffect on his readers should Spinoza have made it in the TPT In private communication withJelles however he was able to raise the topic without risking further political difficultiesSpinozarsquos reference presumes an intellectual history with roots in both ancient Greek philosophyand early Christianity a history that was renewed practically as well as theoretically in earlymodern Europe In the passage from Letter 44 where he introduces the theme of commonownership he goes on to elaborate the position he attributes to Thales Here is the passage in fullthat we have already quoted partially

How far superior indeed and excellent were the reflections of Thales of Miletuscompared with this writer is shown by the following account All things he said are incommon among friends The wise are the friends of the Gods and all things belong tothe Gods therefore all things belong to the wise In this way the wise man makeshimself the richest by nobly despising riches instead of greedily pursuing them

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo (Amicorum communia omnia) is

the first entry in his book Adages by the late Renaissance humanist and reform-minded Catholicscholar Desiderius Erasmus The Adages were widely available in Spinozarsquos day and it is likelythat both Spinoza and Jelles had read them although the former must have also consultedErasmusrsquo source for the saying ndash Lives of the Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius We will seewhy in a moment Erasmus cites the same deduction from the maxim as Spinoza does in Letter44 except that he attributes it to Socrates rather than Thales

From this proverb Socrates deduced that all things belong to all good men just as theydo to the gods For to the gods he said belong all things good men are friends of thegods and among friends all possessions are in common

The fact that Spinoza refers to wise men while Erasmus refers to good men does not

indicate any real difference between them because both accepted the ancient Greek and biblicalequivalence between human goodness and wisdom The difference in attributing the deductiveconsequences of the proverb to Thales on the one hand and Socrates on the other also does notindicate any substantive disagreement between Spinoza and Erasmus although it does signify adifference in intellectual vocation and emphasis Interestingly however the attribution in bothcases is incorrect Their common source the Lives of the Philosophers places the argument intothe mouth of Diogenes the Cynic rather than Socrates or Thales Thus both Spinoza and Erasmushave had a failure of memory and probably for the same reason The author of Lives makes itclear that although Diogenes the Cynic despised the pursuit of wealth he was not a veryappealing character he was arrogant and could be verbally and physically abusive to those hejudged to be unwise It is understandable then that the figure of Diogenes would drop out of thememory of both Erasmus and Spinoza and be replaced by a philosopher with whom each tosome extent identified Erasmus the Renaissance humanist undoubtedly found Socrates well-suited to stand in for the part of Diogenes the Cynic because Socrates was a moral philosopherand the teacher of Plato whose influence on the Renaissance was profound As an admirer of thenatural sciences and a maker of telescopes Spinoza would have felt the same way about Thaleswho was an astronomer as well as a philosopher

In Letter 44 a story from Lives follows the identification of Thales as the figureresponsible for the drawing the deductive consequences of the proverb In order to demonstratethat his rejection of the pursuit of wealth was not an alibi for poverty Thales made use of hisexpert knowledge of the heavens Foreseeing a bountiful olive crop after the previous harvestrsquosdearth he rented all of the olive presses in Greece cheaply and then hired them out at a highprice to farmers who needed them to press the oil from their olives In this way he amassed agreat deal of wealth within a single year which ldquohe then distributed with a liberality equal to the

shrewdness by which he had acquired itrdquo Spinozarsquos memory of the story must have acted as abridge for the mistaken identification

The similarity between the ancient Greek proverb and the passages from Acts about thecommunal practices of the early Church with respect to property must have been evident to thebiblical scholar Spinoza Rendered into Latin by Erasmus the proverb ldquoAll things are incommon among friendsrdquo is amicorum communia omnia In Acts 244 ndash ldquoAll that believed weretogether and had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquohad all things in commonrdquo appears in theLatin Vulgate as habebant omnia communia In Acts 432 ndash ldquoNo one claimed that any of theirpossessions was their own but they had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquothey had all thingsin commonrdquo appears in the Vulgate as erant illis omnia communia The equivalence between thecommunia omnia of the proverb and the omnia communia of the two verses from Acts wouldhave been perfectly clear to Spinoza on linguistic grounds alone

In Adages Erasmus is more explicit than Spinoza in connecting the proverb with theverses from Acts He discusses the proverb in its appearance in book 5 of the Laws where Platoappeals to it in order to demonstrate that the best condition of society consists in the communityof possessions Erasmus writes

But it is extraordinary how Christians dislike this common ownership of Platorsquos how infact they throw stones at it although nothing comes closer to the mind of Christ

Further on Erasmus identifies the inventor of the proverb as Pythagoras who he saysestablished a community in which life and property were shared

hellipwhich is the very thing Christ wants to happen among Christians For all those whowere admitted by Pythagoras into that well-known band who followed his instructionswould give to the common fund whatever money and family property they possessed

Even apart from Erasmus the similarity between the Greek philosophersrsquo proverb and the

New Testament passages would have been evident to the Mennonite Jelles from MennoSimonrsquos discussion of the communal practice described in Acts (more on this below) Jelleswould also have found the parallel especially appealing because it makes the principle ofcommon ownership part of that rational philosophical version of Christianity that he and theother Waterlander Mennonites and Collegiants were seeking to establish

Although Erasmus was an advocate of religious reform he never joined the ProtestantReformation remaining a loyal Catholic until his death It is ironic then that during hislifetime the only vigorous champions of the common ownership he espoused were members ofthe most radical wing of the Reformation ironic but completely intelligible since the radicalsrsquoproject was to restore the Church to its original apostolic condition before its accommodationwith worldly power and wealth under Constantine

The Latin phrase designating Anabaptist communism in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies is Omnia sunt communia (for example it appears in this form in the confession theauthorities extracted from Thomas Muumlntzer under torture) It translates into English as ldquoAllthings are commonrdquo which is the present tense version of the phrase in Acts 432 ldquoall thingswere commonrdquo (ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά) to the members of the Church in Jerusalem Theparallel formulation in Acts 244 is slightly different although the distinction is lost in the LatinVulgate It reads that the members of the apostolic Church ldquohad all things in commonrdquo (εἶχονἅπαντα κοινὰ) In the second formulation εἶχον (had) seems to suggest a specific mode ofpossession or even an established quasi-legal form of property But it would be a mistake tointerpret it this way In both verses the anonymous author of Acts is articulating a generalprinciple rather than specifying a form of its implementation As we shall see the concreteapplication of the principle in the first century Church involved not a mode of possession orform of property but rather a practice of redistribution

Within the Anabaptist movement there was a broad range of beliefs and practices thatinvolved specific applications of the principle Omnia sunt communia We need to recognizetheir breadth in order to grasp just how subtle and variegated Anabaptist communism could beFor this purpose it is important to distinguish between communism as 1) a principle ofredistribution 2) a form of joint or communal property 3) a mode of the organization of workand 4) a kind of mutual aid In general all Anabaptist applications of Omnia sunt communia areintended to realize in different ways a communal and spiritual life in which all things arecommon We could say if we like that each of the four categories serves as a means for realizingthe end designated by that principle as long as we keep in mind that in this case the meanscannot be discarded once the end has been achieved Communism as a principle of redistributiona form of communal property a mode of the organization of work a kind of mutual aid ndash orsome combination of these ndash are the concrete ways in which communism as a mode ofcommunal and spiritual life is realized In this case the means are internal to the end That isbecause there can be no fellowship no community of the spirit unless those participating sharesomething ie have it in common Greek recognizes this internal relationship between acommon life and something shared in the word translated into English as fellowship κοινωνίαthe root of which is κοινός which means ldquocommonrdquo Its antonym ἴδιος means ldquobelonging toonerdquo It is the word κοινός that appears in the passages from Acts that refer to the practice ofsharing material wealth

244 ldquoAll who believed were together and had all things in common (Πάντες δὲ οἱπιστεύοντες ἦσαν ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό καὶ εἶχον ἅπαντα κοινὰ)

432 ldquoThe multitude of believers were one in heart and soul (Τοῦ δὲ πλήθους τῶνπιστευσάντων ἦν καρδία καὶ ψυχὴ microία) and no one claimed anything as his ownpossession but to them all things were in common (καὶ οὐδὲ εἷς τι τῶν ὑπαρχόντωναὐτῷ ἔλεγεν ἴδιον εἶναι ἀλλrsquo ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά)

Both verses affirm an internal relationship between living a common life and things

being in common or people having things in common But this is true of any collectiveendeavor A chess club for example is only possible if the members have a common interest inplaying chess But the verses from Acts mean to assert more than this They affirm the intensityand universality of the common life experienced in the early Church (being ldquoone in heart andsoulrdquo) They indicate this by referring to the fact that in the Church in Jerusalem all things areheld in common (ἅπαντα κοινά) Although ldquoall thingsrdquo (ἅπαντα) is not limited to materialpossessions the succeeding verses in chapters 2 and 4 of Acts indicate the depth of thecommitment the early Christians had to sharing a common life by referring to the practice inwhich they enacted it

245 And they sold their possessions and goods and divided them among everyoneaccording to need (καὶ τὰ κτήmicroατα καὶ τὰς ὑπάρξεις ἐπίπρασκον καὶ διεmicroέριζον αὐτὰπᾶσιν καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

434 There was no one among them in need as many as owned land or houses soldthem and brought the values of what was sold (οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐνδεής τις ἦν ἐν αὐτοῖς ὅσοιγὰρ κτήτορες χωρίων ἢ οἰκιῶν ὑπῆρχον πωλοῦντες ἔφερον τὰς τιmicroὰς τῶνπιπρασκοmicroένων) 435 and laid them at the feet of the apostles and distribution wasmade to each in accordance with need (καὶ ἐτίθουν παρὰ τοὺς πόδας τῶν ἀποστόλωνδιεδίδετο δὲ ἑκάστῳ καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

The needs of others are what break the bonds of individual ownership allowing the

transition from the private (ἴδιος) to the common (κοινά) Acts refers to making material goods

common rather than for example communicating private knowledge publicly presumablybecause of the difficulty people experience parting with private property and the correlativesignificance of the act of doing so For material possessions are the means by which they satisfytheir basic needs ndash for food shelter clothing and so on ndash and when possible their desire forluxuries The act of handing over possessions has two consequences The first is that thedistinction between rich and poor wealthy and needy owner and propertyless is abolished andthe members of the community come to stand on level ground The second consequence involvesa more fundamental risk on the part of property-owners By handing over their property theymake a leap of faith that the community will henceforth satisfy their needs as well through thesame practice of redistribution When applied in this fashion the general principle of being incommon or having in common results in an example of the first category of communism asspecified above ie communism as a principle of redistribution

Redistribution of property by the apostles creates occasions for active sharing asexpressions of the new form of common life 246 says that the members of the Church inJerusalem ldquoalso broke bread in each otherrsquos homes and took their meals in exaltation andsimplicity of heartrdquo (κλῶντές τε κατrsquo ο ἴκον ἄρτον microετελάmicroβανον τροφῆς ἐν ἀγαλλιάσει καὶἀφελότητι καρδίας) The value of sharing meals lies not merely in the fact that everyone is fedbut also in the experience of exaltation or ecstatic delight (ἀγαλλιάσεις) and sincerity orsimplicity of heart (ἀφελότητι καρδίας) The experience in common of exaltation and sincerity isat least as important as the act of satisfying needs although the two can be distinguished onlynotionally

The experience has its meaning in relation to the power (δυνάmicroις) that brings together themembers of the new community and inspires them to share their property The gathering of JewsGreeks and those from other nations (the circumcised and the uncircumcised as Paul says)occurs in the period following Pentecost when the Holy Spirit is supposed to have descended incloven tongues of flame upon the twelve apostles endowing them with the ability to speak inevery language Pentecost in turn follows by several weeks the resurrection of Christ and hisbodily ascension into heaven The gift of being able to speak in every language permits theapostles to convey their message to all nations That message ndash confirmed by ldquosigns andwondersrdquo ndash is testimony of their own first-hand witness to the Resurrection It is accompanied bythe baptism of the new members of the Church which repeats the Pentecostal experience byfilling them with the grace and power of the Holy Spirit

433 ldquoAnd with great power the apostles were giving witness to the resurrection of theLord Jesus and abundant grace was upon them all (καὶ δυνάmicroει microεγάλῃ ἀπεδίδουν τὸmicroαρτύριον οἱ ἀπόστολοι τοῦ Κυρίου Ἰησοῦ τῆς ἀναστάσεως χάρις τε microεγάλη ἦν ἐπὶπάντας αὐτούς)

The ecstatic delight and simplicity of heart that the members of the Church in Jerusalem

experience by sharing a common life is their enjoyment of this ldquoabundant gracerdquo (χάρις τεmicroεγάλη) The new community is built upon faith in the apostlesrsquo testimony that Jesus triumphedover death and that his victory promises an eternal life to all who believe That is the gift of theHoly Spirit Yet the ldquospiritualrdquo (πνευmicroατικός) content of early Christian experience does not denyits simultaneously material character For the significance of the Resurrection and the Ascensioninto Heaven is precisely that they concern the physical body of Christ When he appears toThomas who doubts that he has returned Jesus invites his disciple to place his hands into thewounds received from the Crucifixion The point is to show not only that the man standing infront of Thomas is not an imposter but also that the risen Christ is no disembodied ghost Andwhen the apostles witness the Ascension what they see is the physical body of Jesus rising toheaven There is little suggestion of soul-body dualism in Acts The spirit (πνεῦmicroα) infuses andtransfigures the body it does not exist apart from it In this respect it is similar to the life-givingbreath to which the word πνεῦmicroα originally referred Dualism is the result of a Platonizinginterpretation of Christianity that comes later The bodily character of the Resurrection extends tothe promise of eternal life for believers as well The promise is not that their souls will exist apart

from their bodies but that their bodies will rise up from the grave like that of their Savior Giventhis early Christian materialism it is not surprising that commonality of material goods wouldserve as a fundamental expression of the new life of the believers

As we already know the project of the sixteenth-century Anabaptists was to restore theChurch to its original apostolic condition by undoing the corruption they believed had set inwhen it made its peace with worldly wealth and power under Constantine Given the nature ofthe Anabaptist project it would seem that making material things common as described in Actswould follow as a matter of course However there is a long tradition ndash one that began aroundthe middle of the sixteenth century ndash of denying that Anabaptism has anything to do withcommunism regarding it as an accusation brought against the Anabaptists by their enemies It isunderstandable that this should be so The Anabaptists were the victims of a ldquored scarerdquo thatgripped the ruling classes of Europe in the aftermath of the Peasant War and the Muumlnstercommune It is impossible to explain the horrendous tortures forced relocations andinnumerable executions Anabaptists faced on the basis of heretical belief alone Nothing of aremotely similar scale was visited upon other schismatics The fact that the Anabaptistschallenged prevailing property relations is what made them victims of near-genocide It was amatter of survival then to create some distance between themselves and the charge ofadvocating common ownership of goods that came from Luther Zwingli and those whoextracted the confession from Thomas Muumlntzer that he held to the principle of Omnia communiasunt Recent scholarship however has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that having thingsin common was indeed a basic and widespread principle of Anabaptism at its origin just as it hasdemonstrated the influence veterans of the Peasant War had among the early Anabaptists

The dominant form of communist practice in early Anabaptism was appropriatelymodeled on the description of redistribution in Acts In Switzerland where the movementoriginated converts were often asked or required to make contributions to a ldquocommon purserdquoafter receiving adult baptism Some especially pious initiates went so far as to sell their land andhouses for that purpose in accordance with the biblical precedent When necessary officialsdistributed the contents of the purse to members of the community who were in need

Both proponents and enemies of Anabaptist communism often confused the redistributionof wealth with joint or communal property However except for the taking of meals in commonthere is no indication in Acts that redistribution collectivized ownership of wealth in this fashionbut only that it transferred wealth from the better-off members of the community to the worse-off Nevertheless some Anabaptists took joint or communal property as a paradigm for newproperty relations For example the visionary writing of the Nuremberg printer Hans Hergotwho was executed for rebellion in 1527 includes the following passage

And everything that grows on the land belongs to the church and the people who livethere Everything is bestowed for common use so that the people will eat from one potdrink from one vesselhellip And all things will be used in common so that no one is betteroff than another

The ldquowar communismrdquo of the city of Muumlnster involved an ad hoc form of communal propertythrough the edict that the doors to all homes be left open and the owners take in anyone whowished to reside with them But the most significant successful and long-lasting attempt toimplement communal property was that of the Hutterites

The Hutterites took their name from the charismatic hat-maker and Anabaptist leaderJacob Hutter However at their origins they were influenced by the revolutionary bookbinderHans Hut Hut shared Thomas Muumlntzerrsquos sanguinary apocalyptic view of social change andadvocated community ownership of goods in accordance with his own understanding of ActsHe survived the battle of Frankenhausen in which the peasant rebels were finally defeated butwas tortured and executed a few years later In the aftermath and under the influence of JacobHutter the Hutterites adopted pacifism and a strategy of creating autonomous communities Inorder escape persecution thousands of the brethren emigrated from Switzerland and Germany to

the more tolerant Moravia where they created hundreds of Bruderhofs farms and vineyards inwhich land houses farm implements produce and even objects of personal use were ownedcollectively The center of Bruderhof life was a large communal house in which craft productionoccurred on the ground floor and couples lived in small apartments on the upper levels The menengaged in farm labor and craftwork while the women were limited to traditional domesticduties in spite of the fact that children were raised communally apart from their parents TheBruderhofs enjoyed great economic success for a number of reasons People worked hard andconsumed little resulting in a surplus that could be used to purchase additional land seed andtools The size of the communities and of their agricultural production also enabled them to sellcheaply and to pay for supplies at generous prices both of which made the communitieseconomic assets to the areas in which they were located The Hutterites also organized both farmlabor and craft production cooperatively including the education boys were given in thenecessary skills They were therefore practitioners of the second and third forms of communismwe have identified namely communal ownership and cooperative organization of work Whenthey were ultimately forced out of Moravia by the triumph of Catholic forces in the Thirty YearsWar the Hutterites migrated eastward many finally relocating to Canada and the United Stateswhere the Bruderhofs continue to exist to this day

Communism as a kind of mutual aid was the contribution of the other major form ofAnabaptism that of the Mennonites With great political intelligence and skill Menno Simonswas able to reformulate the meaning of Omnia communia sunt in such a way as to avoidthreatening the property interests of nobles and clerics He did this in his book A Humble andChristian Justification and Replication First he denied that Mennonites were advocates ofcommunal property

This accusation is false and without all truth We do not teach and practice communityof goods but we teach and testify the Word of the Lord that all true believers in Christare of one body (1 Corinthians 1213) partakers of one bread (1 Corinthians 1017)have one God and one Lord (Ephesians 4)

In his assertion that the believers are of one body and partakers of one bread Simons is affirmingwhat we have called the general principle of communism while denying that Mennonitesembrace it in the specific form of communal property But he goes further by denying thatMennonites advocate a contemporary version of the apostolic redistribution of wealth

For although we know that the apostolic church had this practice in the beginning ascan be seen in the Acts of the Apostles nevertheless we note from their epistles that itdisappeared in their time and was no longer practiced

Instead of communal property or centralized redistribution of wealth the Mennonites derivefrom the general principle of Christian communism an alternative practice

Seeing then that they are one as said it is Christian and reasonable that they also havedivine love among them and that one member cares for another for both the Scripturesand nature teach this They show mercy and love as much as is in them They do notsuffer a beggar among them They have pity on the wants of the saints They receive thewretched They take strangers into their houses They comfort the sad They lend to theneedy They clothe the naked They share their bread with the hungry They do not turntheir face from the poorhellip

In the subsequent history of Mennonism the practice Simons describes came to be calledldquomutual aidrdquo Note that it is different from charitable giving and this in two ways First thereferences to receiving the wretched taking in strangers sharing bread and so on indicate a farmore personal even intimate form of involvement than simple charitable donation Second

there is the suggestion of reciprocity or mutuality (ldquoone member cares for anotherrdquo) that tends todeny the difference in status between the charitable giver and the recipient of charity Thepractice Simons describes is similar to what some anthropologists have called ldquogeneralizedreciprocityrdquo in which my obligation to give to you when you are in need corresponds to yourobligation to give to me when I am in need In a sense this is a form of redistribution inaccordance with need but it is enacted directly between individual members of the communityrather than administered centrally through a common purse

In line with his political purpose Simons is careful to distinguish between mutual aid andthe expropriation of private property

This is the kind of brotherhood we teach and not that some should take over andpossess the land soil and properties of others as we are falsely maligned accused andlied about by many

In this way he detaches the Mennonite version of communism from any revolutionary intentionThat was the prerequisite for communal survival during the long counter-revolution thatfollowed the Peasant War Still Simons never abandons the general principle Omnia communiasunt nor does he even really reject the practice of the early Church

Since we do not find it a permanent practice with the apostles we have not taught orpracticed community of goods but we urge earnestly and zealously to practice liberalgiving love and mercy as the apostolic writings teach and testify abundantly Andeven if we had taught and practiced community of goods as we are falsely accused ofdoing we would still not be doing otherwise than the holy apostles full of the HolySpirit themselves did in the former church at Jerusalem in the beginning of the holyChristian Church although they stopped the practice as has been said

Like the Hutterites Mennonite communities prospered once they managed to survive the

bloody period of reaction In Holland the Mennonite population consisted largely in successfulmerchants along with a number of lawyers doctors and other professionals Most of thepeasant artisan and laborer families who had started as Mennonites in the sixteenth century hadlong since converted to the Reform Church which is one reason Spinoza faced the problem ofpolitical agency in the TPT Although the idea of mutual aid persisted among the DutchMennonites it took the form predominantly of organized international philanthropy in which thecommunity made contributions not only to Mennonites abroad but to other populations in needThere was no escaping the fact however that in this philanthropic form mutual aid becamehardly distinguishable from conventional charity

Jarig Jelles was born into the Dutch Mennonite community around a century afterSimmons wrote his book when this process of slippage was well underway But there is littledoubt that Jelles knew the Mennonite teaching on mutual aid and its origin in the generalprinciple of Christian communism Even if Jelles never read Erasmusrsquo Adages Spinozarsquosreference to the supposed communism of Thales was likely to resonate with him on the basis ofhis own religious tradition

We cannot be certain how much Spinoza knew in detail about the communist practices ofthe Anabaptists but it is probably not a coincidence that he recommends three of the four atvarious places in his writings In Part 4 of the Ethics ldquoOf Human Bondage or the Strength of theEmotionsrdquo he identifies the chief virtue of the intellect as ldquostrength of the mindrdquo (fortitudo)According to him it takes two forms one directed to the self and one directed to others He callsthe inwardly directed form ldquocouragerdquo defining it as ldquothe desire whereby every individualendeavors to preserve his own being according to the dictates of reason alonerdquo The outwardlydirected form is generositas which Shirley translates as ldquonobilityrdquo though ldquosolidarityrdquo is closerto what Spinoza is getting at He defines it as ldquothe desire whereby every individual according to

the dictates of reason alone endeavors to assist others and make friends of themrdquo When twopeople in contact with one another possess the virtue of generositas they will clearly exhibit itreciprocally in the form of mutual aid the fourth communist practice

In Part 4 of the Ethics Spinoza also formulates a version of the first communist practicethat of the redistribution of wealth in accordance with need

Again men are won over by generosity especially those who do not have thewherewithal to produce what is necessary to support life Yet it is far beyond the powerand resources of a private person to come to the assistance of everyone in need For thewealth of a private person is quite unequal to such a demand It is also a practicalimpossibility for one man to establish friendship with all Therefore the care of the poordevolves upon society as a whole and looks only to the common good

The fact that society as a whole has responsibility for meeting the needs of the poor makes thepractice Spinoza recommends in this passage a version of the centralized redistribution of wealthdescribed in the Acts of the Apostles and institutionalized in Anabaptist form as the ldquocommonpurserdquo More than that the fact that society as a whole must take on this responsibility ratherthan a church or other sub-community makes Spinoza an early advocate of what will becomethree centuries later the European welfare state In our own period as the welfare state is beingdismantled it is easy to see that what neoliberals object to concerning it is precisely its implicitcommunism ie its practice of distribution in accordance with need

Spinoza advocates a third communist practice in his unfinished final work the PoliticalTreatise The context is his discussion of a maximally democratic version of monarchy in whichthe entire citizen body is armed and the king forbidden from making any decision contrary to thewill of a massive council of ordinary citizens In such a state

The fields and the soil and if possible the houses as well should be public property thatis should belong to the sovereign by whom they should be let at an annual rent tocitizens whether townsmen or country-dwellers Apart from this all citizens should befree or exempt from any form of taxation in time of peace Of this rent part should beallocated to the defense works of the commonwealth part to the kings domestic needsFor in time of peace it is still necessary to fortify cities as for war and to have in a stateof readiness ships and other armaments

Ownership of land and buildings by the sovereign is a form of communal property first becausethe citizens of the commonwealth delegate to him or them the property they hold in commonand second because that delegation occurs with the understanding that the sovereign will use theproperty in service of the common good

Spinoza supplies an argument based on more than simple utility for the practice ofholding land and buildings in common

hellip in a state of Nature the one thing a man cannot appropriate to himself and make hisown is land and whatever is so fixed to the land that he cannot conceal it anywhere orcarry it away where he pleases Thus the land and whatever is fixed to it in the way wehave described is especially the public property of the commonwealth that is of allthose who by their united strength can claim it or of him to whom all have delegated thepower to claim it

To state the argument differently since rights are the same as powers no individual has a naturalright to appropriate privately the land or any of its fixed structures because none has the powernecessary to do so The only response an individual can make to incursions by a more powerfulperson or group of people is flight in which he must leave the land and its buildings behind It is

only by entering into a community in which the strength of each is combined for the purpose ofdefense that people can effectively possess fixed property but they do so as a members of thecommunity rather than as an separate individuals According to Spinozarsquos theory of rights onlythe community has the right to own the land and its structures because only the community hasthe required power

The communal ownership of land houses and other buildings is a version of the secondcommunist practice on our list of which Hutterite joint ownership is the most developedhistorical example When adopted by a polity rather than a small community though thepractice has an added advantage Under those circumstances communal possession of fixedproperty eliminates the need for taxes except in time of war What takes their place is ageneration of revenue pegged to wealth since the members of society who are able to rent themost expensive and largest amounts of communal property will obviously pay the most in rentIn this way the form of communal ownership of land and buildings that Spinoza recommendsalso acts as a mechanism for the redistribution of wealth

The only communist practice of the Anabaptists that does not find an equivalent inSpinozarsquos writings is that of the cooperative organization of work The absence is related toSpinozarsquos inability to resolve the problem of political agency in the TPT An attempt to mobilizethe multitude on behalf of democratic social change would need to address the organization ofwork in such a way as to alleviate the burden of toil Reducing the number of hours spent inonerous labor is the only way to provide the multitude with the free time necessary to participatein institutionalized democratic politics Along with the redistribution of wealth and thedevelopment of communal property the cooperative reorganization of work would need to beincorporated as a plank in the latent political program that makes its first democratic appearancein the TPT and is extended in a communist direction in the passages from the Ethics and thePolitical Treatise that we have just examined But that would constitute an explicit anddangerous appeal to the multitude as the agent of political and social transformation an appealthat Spinoza consistently rejects It would involve nothing less than the revival of therevolutionary energies of the Peasant War on a new seventeenth-century foundation

In spite of his radicalism Spinoza doubted that revolution was capable of reconstructingsociety and the state in the way revolutionaries wanted In Chapter 18 of the TPT he takes aposition that is at least on the surface opposed to revolution or any attempt to change the formof the state fundamentally The context is a discussion of the transition from the early Hebrewcommonwealth in which the people held sovereignty to the rule of kings Spinoza tells us thatthe first period saw only a single civil war and concluded with a compassion for the vanquishedthat resulted in lasting peace By contrast the period of kings was marred by multiple warswaged only for the glory of the rulers and involved the massacre of hundreds of thousandsDuring the first period few prophets arose to rebuke the Jews while a great many emergedduring the time of the monarchies From this example Spinoza reasons that it is fatal for peopleaccustomed to popular sovereignty and governed by settled laws to adopt a new monarchicalform of government On the one hand they will be unable to tolerate the arbitrary exercise ofpower by a single individual while on the other the new monarch will be compelled to abolishthe existing laws because they did not originate by his own authority But it is just as dangerousaccording to Spinoza for the subjects of a monarch to attempt his replacement with popular ruleThis is because a popular revolution must advance to the point where it annihilates the king thekingrsquos family and the friends of the king in order to prevent the restoration of royal power But inthe process the revolutionary authority must assume a power even more draconian then thatpreviously exercised by the king In addition having committed regicide the new popularauthority faces the danger that it will fall victim to its own precedent For this reason as well andin the interest of survival it must wield power more repressively than the deposed sovereignSpinoza illustrates his point with reference to the English revolution which eliminated themonarch Charles I only to replace him with the Lord Protector Cromwell who was monarch inall but name and more repressive than Charles

Spinozarsquos point seems unassailable especially since the pattern he describes in the caseof the English Revolution repeated itself over the course of the next three centuries in the French

and Russian Revolutions It is at least arguable that Napoleon if not Robespierre was a newLouis XVI and Stalin a new Tsar even if this understates the more fundamental social changesthat resulted form the two revolutions Still Spinoza does not absolutely proscribe therevolutionary overthrow of a tyrannical government but says instead that there is a great dangerin making the attempt Besides his analysis of the conditions necessary for retaining sovereigntydoes not leave the decision about whether to engage in revolution up to militants He argues thatno state can survive that creates mass indignation in its people and this is precisely theunavoidable result of tyrannical government Spinozarsquos real purpose in Chapter 18 is to opposethe Orangist-Calvinist project of replacing the Dutch Republic with a monarchy ldquoAs for theEstates of Hollandrdquo he writes ldquoas far as we know they never had kings but counts to whom theright of sovereignty was never transferredrdquo His point is that the Dutch War of Independenceagainst Spain was justified because it restored the sovereignty of the people against the attemptby the Spanish ldquocountrdquo (King Philip II) to abolish it However any attempt to replace theRepublic with a monarchy would change the form of the state disastrously by divesting thepeople of their former rights

When Spinoza wrote his treatise the only revolutionary forces that existed were on theRight The danger he warns about in Chapter 18 of the TPT did indeed come to pass only oneyear after his letter to Jelles In 1672 a Calvinist-Orangist mob hacked Johan De Witt and hisbrother Cornelius to death at a time when Holland was invaded by the French army Streetorators stirred up the mob by claiming that the invasion was the result of the brothersrsquo treason Inthe aftermath of the murders William III prince of Orange was elevated to the position ofstadtholder of Holland Although William went on to become King of England he stopped shortof claiming a Dutch throne However in actuality he substituted his own power for much of thatwhich had belonged to the Estates General while the Reformed Church gained considerableinfluence in Dutch government According to a story made famous by Spinozarsquos earliestbiographer Johannes Colerus when the De Witt brothers were murdered Spinozarsquos landlordthwarted his attempt to go the site of the assassinations where the bodies of the brothers werestill on gruesome display in order to plant a sign reading Ultimi Barbarorum (the ultimatebarbarians) In this way the landlord undoubtedly saved the philosopherrsquos life It was the onlytime we know of when the mature Spinoza gave in to his passive affects in a significant way

There is a passage in Chapter 18 of the TPT that uncannily anticipates the murders

Tyranny is most violent where individual beliefs which are unalienable rights areregarded as criminal Indeed in such circumstances the anger of the common people[plebis] is usually the greatest tyrant of allhellip the vilest hypocrites urged on by that samefury which they call zeal for Gods law have everywhere persecuted men whoseblameless character and distinguished qualities have excited the hostility of the commonpeople [plebi] publicly denouncing their beliefs and inflaming the savage multitudersquos[multitudinem] anger against them

Spinoza was the first political philosopher who grappled with the problem of a mass-

based politics of the Right The problem would occur again with the fascist movements of the1920s and 1930s and with the return of the rightwing religious fundamentalisms of our own dayndash Jewish Christian Muslim and Hindu It is not surprising that he failed to solve the problemdefinitively since it continues to remain unsolved The remarkable thing about Spinoza thoughis not that he was skeptical about the liberatory possibilities of revolution by the masses but thathe defended the idea of a popular democracy nonetheless And this he continued to do even inthe aftermath of the De Witt murders In his work on the Political Treatise in the final year of hislife Spinoza developed a powerful critique of the elitist claim that the multitude are incapable ofgoverning

Yet perhaps our [democratic] suggestions will be received with ridicule by those whorestrict to the common people the faults that are inherent in all mankind saying There

is no moderation in the mob they terrorize unless they are frightened and Thecommon people is either a humble servant or an arrogant master there is no truth orjudgment in itrdquo and the like But all men share in one and the same nature it is powerand culture that mislead us with the result that when two men do the same thing weoften say that it is permissible for the one to do it and not the other not because of anydifference in the thing done but in the doer hellipThen again There is no moderation inthe mob they terrorize unless they are frightened For freedom and slavery do not gowell together Finally that there is no truth or judgment in the common people is notsurprising since the important affairs of state are conducted without their knowledgeand from the little that cannot be concealed they can only make conjecturehellip Howeveras we have said all men have the same nature ndash all grow haughty with rule terrorizeunless they are frightened ndash and everywhere truth becomes a casualty through hostilityor servility especially when despotic power is in the hands of one or a few who in trialspay attention not to justice or truth but to the extent of a persons wealth

Surprisingly Spinoza develops this democratic argument while discussing the institutions

appropriate to a monarchy But the key point he makes in the discussion is that a condition ofeffective monarchical rule is expansion of the democratic element within the state in the form ofa sizeable legislative council whose members are drawn from the general population of citizensover the age of fifty On Spinozarsquos view the mistake those who oppose democracy make isassuming that the faults exhibited by the common people ndash such as poor judgment arroganceand hostility ndash belong only to them while they are in fact typical of human beings Actually it iselitist politics that magnifies these all-too-human faults by restricting political power to a limitednumber of people while democratic politics minimizes them through the principle of majorityrule among numerous decision-makers The reason as we already know is that passions pullpeople in different directions making it nearly impossible for the members of a large council toagree on a common position unless they make decisions based not on passion but an idea of thecommon good On Spinozarsquos view it is when government is in the hands of a single person oronly a few people that the dangers the critics of democracy attribute to the common people are infact the greatest

Spinoza also argues against the claim that the common people are not qualified to makepolitical decisions because they lack the necessary education or degree of intellect There is noone he says who has been engaged in an occupation until the age of fifty who lacksunderstanding of his sphere of work ldquoevery man is reasonably competent and sagacious inmatters in which he has been long and attentively engagedrdquo So each is qualified at least to giveadvice in the kingrsquos council concerning his own business especially if given the time necessaryto reflect on the matter under discussion

Most of all the plebs are the group best suited to serving on the council because theirinterest is that of society as a whole ldquoHence it follows that counselors must necessarily beappointed whose private fortune and advantage depend on the general welfare and the peace ofallrdquo For example Spinoza emphasizes the idea that the common people have the highest stake inavoiding war or concluding an existing war with a settlement that brings lasting peace Thereason is they are ones who bear the heaviest burdens of war Unlike the wealthy well-bornmembers of society it is the common person whose occupation is most likely to be interrupted itis his taxes that are raised to onerous levels and it is his son who dies Thus the common interestof society in peace is best served not by a wealthy or educated elite but rather by those whohave the most to lose from war

At the end of the long paragraph defending popular power quoted above Spinozaconnects the question of who holds power within the state to that of who owns property Truthand justice he says are casualties in states where power is held by one person or a handful ofpeople who conduct courtroom trials that favor the rich The implication is that elitist politicalpower and ownership of wealth are intrinsically connected One of the reasons Spinozarecommends public ownership of land and buildings in a monarchy is to prevent the rise of aclass of wealthy landowners with interests different than those of the rest of society Under the

conditions of common ownership ldquothe greatest part of the council will generally have one andthe same attitude of mind towards their common interests and peaceful activitieshelliprdquo And yethaving gone this far he has trouble imagining a state where fixed property is owned collectivelyin which the actually existing multitude holds power The peasants artisans and urban poor whoconstitute the common people of the United Provinces drop out of the picture in the democratic-communist monarchy he describes and nearly everyone makes his living by selling merchandiseor lending money to countrymen ldquoall will have to make a living by engaging in trade or bylending money to their fellow citizensrdquo He seems to assume that the collectivization of land andfixed property would eliminate the occupations of peasant and artisan leaving trade and loaningat interest the only remaining possibilities of work But that of course is not true The fact thatpeople would have to rent farm land would not prevent them from farming any more than theneed to rent workshops in the cities and towns would prevent artisans from plying their tradesBut Spinoza finds the idea of a commonwealth based on commercial enterprise politicallyappealing This is because he regards commercial occupations as contributing to harmony andpeace since he claims they establish connections between people that further the interests of allwhile those who engage in them prosper only in peacetime Both of these assumptions are asquestionable as the expectation that non-commercial occupations will die out After all even inSpinozarsquos day colonialism and the struggle for colonies between imperialist states led to warsbetween the great powers including the United Provinces not to mention the military and otherforms of violence involved in subjugating the colonies The East India Company was not exactlya force for peace What seems to be at work here instead is a failure of social imaginationthough one we may find understandable given the fact that the capitalist economy was still at anearly stage in its development However this may be there is no denying the fact that despite hispowerful arguments in favor of democratic rule and communal property it is still a bourgeoissociety and state that Spinoza envisions

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of what we should not hesitate to call Spinozarsquoscommunism is the critique of private ownership he develops in the Ethics based on his theory ofaffects For him there is a paradox involved in social and political life It stems from the fact thaton the one hand people can survive and develop their capacities only by joining with oneanother in societies and states But on the other hand the necessity of combining with oneanother does not prevent them from seeking their own advantage above that of their fellowsbeing quarrelsome or hateful and erecting obstacles to each otherrsquos happiness Spinoza identifiesthe reason for these deep-rooted problems of social coexistence in Part IV Proposition 35 of theEthics ldquoInsofar as men are assailed by emotions that are passive they can be contrary to oneanotherrdquo Emotions are states of the body characterized by a transition from a lower degree of thepower to exist and act (conatus) to a higher one or conversely from a higher degree to a lowerone The first transition is the affect of joy while the second is that of sadness Passive emotionsare caused by an object external to the body or more precisely external to its essential natureSpinoza conceives of that nature as a specific proportion of motion-and-rest that the parts of thebody exhibit in relation to one another While joy is an increase in our capacity to preserve theproportion of motion-and-rest essential to our body (ie to exist and act as we do) sadness is adecrease in that capacity The political problem created by the passive emotions is that evenwhen they are joyful they are not under the control of the person who experiences themMoreover different people are affected by the same external object in different ways because theparts of their bodies and their proportionate relations of motion-and rest-differ The same objectmay elicit anger in one person and pity in another or love in one and hatred in another and soon And because people differ in their emotional reactions to the same things they also differ inthe judgments they frame on the basis of these reactions What one person praises anotherperson blames what one regards as fearless another believes to be timid etc Finally sincepeople act upon their judgments seeking to foster what they judge to be good and destroy whatthey judge to be bad their differing judgments can result in actions that are in conflict with oneanother In short ldquoinsofar as they are assailed by passive emotions [people] can be contrary toone anotherrdquo

In Proposition 34 Spinoza gives an example of the contrariety caused by the passiveaffects Suppose Peter has sole possession of something Paul loves Deprivation of the loved

object causes sadness in Paul with the idea of Peter as its cause In accordance with Spinozarsquosdefinition of hatred Paul will hate Peter and therefore seek to injure or destroy him in order toremove the cause of his Paulrsquos sadness Spinoza says that this example may seem wrong becausePaul and Peter appear to be contrary to one another because of something they share ndash ie theirlove for the thing Peter possesses But that is not the case Paul has an image of himself aslacking the loved object while Peter has an image of himself as possessing the loved object Sothey in fact differ from one another by virtue of the different images they have rather than bypossessing something in common It is clear from the example that the root of this contrariety ndashie this enmity ndash between Paul and Peter is the fact that the object can be possessed by only oneof them so that what one has the other must lack The difficulty with private property is that it isexclusive to the one who possesses it which means that what I experience as possession othersexperience as deprivation It may seem that there is no problem if other people are indifferent tothe thing I possess However in accordance with Spinozarsquos theory of the imitation of affects themere fact that I love the thing I own other things being equal will cause you to love it as wellMy exclusive possession of the thing will therefore cause sadness in you that takes the form ofhatred or more precisely the kind of hatred called envy which involves pain at the good fortuneof another ldquohuman nature is in general so constituted that men pity the unfortunate and envy thefortunate in the latter case with a hatred proportionate to their love of what they think anotherpossessesrdquo

Common Possession Friendship and Philosophy

In the Ethics Spinoza does not follow his analysis of the antagonisms of private property

by considering the collective possession of material goods (although he does advocateredistribution of wealth to the poor in Part 4 as we have seen) But the theme of commonpossession figures large in the book anyway in his treatment of the intellectual love of God Inorder to understand the connection between common possession and amor Dei intellectualis itwill be necessary to engage in a detailed analysis of Spinozarsquos metaphysics We will begin thattask in earnest in the next chapter At this point we will simply introduce the theme byexamining the relationship between friendship and common possession in the letter to Jelles andsome related writings

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo unlike the similar passages fromActs has its provenance among philosophers Spinoza mistakenly attributes it to Thales but itoccurs in Platorsquos Phaedrus and Laws and is present though not in so many words in thediscussion in the Republic of common ownership of property by the guardian class Thetradition cited by Erasmus that traces the proverb back to Pythagoras is plausible when weconsider the influence the Pythagorean community in Sicily had on Plato in the aftermath ofSocratesrsquo death Erasmus sees the supposed use of a common fund by the Pythagoreans as ananticipation of the similar practice in Acts But Spinozarsquos approach is different What interestshim in the letter is common ownership not as a religious practice but as a matter of thephilosopherrsquos relation to the world Remember the deductive consequences of the proverb sinceall things are in common among friends everything belongs to the wise because the wise arefriends of the gods and all things belong to the gods But what does it mean to say that the wiseare friends of the gods

Although Spinoza uses the word ldquofriendshiprdquo often in his writings he never supplies aformal definition However we can reconstruct the wordrsquos meaning from the contexts in whichhe uses it So for example Proposition 35 of Part III of the Ethics reads

If anyone thinks that there is between the object of his love and another person the sameor a more intimate bond of friendship than there was between them when he alone usedto possess the object loved he will be affected with hatred toward the object loved andwill envy his rival

According to the proposition friendship is an intimate bond between a person and the

object he loves I hate an object of love that I alone once possessed when it wounds my vanity byloving someone else more than me So the object of love must be capable of loving whichmeans that the bond of friendship is a relation of reciprocal love between persons Nowaccording to Spinoza I love something when I have the idea of that thing as the cause of myexperience of joy Joy is an increase in conatus which Spinoza defines as the tendency to persistin being or equivalently the ability to exist and act So friendship is a relation in which Iidentify the other person as the cause of an increase in my conatus and the other personidentifies me as the cause of a similar increase in his or hers Two things each of which causesan increase in the ability to exist and act of the other are said by Spinoza to be in harmony Sincetwo entities in harmony have more combined power than either does singly it is to the advantageof each to be in harmony with the other There is even greater advantage in entering intoharmonious connection with a third individual and the greatest advantage in combining with asmany individuals as possible This is a universal metaphysical principle For example it pertainsjust as much to chemical combination or herding among animals as it does to social relationsbetween people In the case of human relationships it is the fundamental basis of politics orrather one of its two bases the other one being the tendency human beings have to conflict withone another When the state is functioning well it involves not a random collection ofindividuals and certainly not the war of each against all but a group whose members are boundto one another by friendship the human form of harmony Thus for Spinoza friendship is apolitical virtue as it was for Plato and Aristotle

The opposite of friendship is enmity That person is my enemy whom I regard as thecause of my sadness or pain which is the same as saying the cause of a decrease in my abilityto exist and act Like friendship enmity is a reciprocal relationship If I identify you as the causeof my sadness I will seek to injure or eliminate you But that means I will be identified in yourmind as the cause of your sadness Enmity is a relation of reciprocal hatred just as friendship is arelation of reciprocal love Just as there is harmony between friends there is discord betweenenemies The fundamental task of a rational politics is easy to state it is to extend and intensifyfriendship and to reduce and mollify enmity

We have already seen that Spinoza identifies solidarity (generositas) as one of the twoforms of strength of mind (fortitudo) which is the virtue that belongs to the exercise of theintellect Solidarity is the desire to assist others and foster friendship on the basis of reason aloneThe friendship fostered by solidarity is a bond of active love The love of friends for one anotheris active when each person who loves is the adequate cause of his or her love To say that theperson is the adequate cause means that the cause of love is internal to the person who feels it inother words that the love is self-generated Active love differs from passive love in that thecause of passive love is at least partially something that exists outside the person who has theemotion The problem with passive love is that it need not be constant If the bodily dispositionof the person changes in a particular way then the object of erstwhile love will have a differentemotional effect Passive love can change into boredom or indifference or even hatred This isnot possible in the case of active love because it is self-generated Since love involves theexperience of joy no one actively abandons it

There seems to be something odd about the idea of a love between persons that isinternally generated by each of the partners in the relationship Is it not the case that part of theessence of love is the fact that the object of my love is the cause of my love Without denyingthis Spinoza identifies two forms of love that are self-generated in the Ethics One is myintellectual love of God It is indeed true that God is the cause of my love but only insofar as myintellect is part of the infinite intellect of God Thus the object that causes my love - ie God - isinternal to my mind and conversely my mind is internal to it Such reciprocal internality ndash hardas it is to visualize ndash is what Spinoza means by immanence God he tells us is the immanentcause of everything that exists Nothing can exist apart from God while God expresses himselfin all of the things that exist My love of God and Gods love of himself are one and the samebecause Godrsquos intellect is immanent in mine The second form of self-generated love is the

friendship that exists between me and others who love God through the exercise of the intellectThe reason is that the joy I feel in loving God is by the imitation of affects augmented by thejoy you feel in loving God But your love as well as mine is joy caused by the same immanentbeing Another way of saying this is that your intellect and mine are parts (ie finiteexpressions) of the infinite intellect of God Thus the relationship between friends who are boundtogether by the common exercise of the intellect and the love of God that flows from it is basedon an internal bond an internal object and cause of love In this kind of love you and I as itwere discover one another internally You are inside of me and I am inside of you Thus whenyou augment my love and I augment yours it is Gods power as the intellect immanent in us boththat causes the augmentation even though we remain finite individual beings In this state ofaffairs which is admittedly difficult to grasp we can see the rational meaning of the command tolove God by loving the neighbor In intellectual love God not insofar as he is infinite butinsofar as he expresses himself in my finite intellect loves God as he expresses himself in yourfinite intellect

For Spinoza the exercise of the intellect is very different than our ordinary experience ofthe world In the course of ordinary experience we encounter objects in a way that appearshaphazard disordered and incomplete This is so first of all because our encounters are part ofan infinitely complex chain of natural causes and effects of which we know only very limitedparts In addition our experience of objects has as much to do with the condition our bodies arein when we encounter them as it does with the nature of the objects themselves By contrast inexercising the intellect we arrange our ideas in an intelligible pattern that is internal to the mindand entirely different than the images we accumulate through sensory experience The ideas arean expression of our power while the images result from our hapless deliverance to chanceEmotions caused by objects we encounter in the course of ordinary experience are externallydetermined and therefore passive while emotions caused by acts of intellectual comprehensionare internally generated and therefore active That is why love as an active emotion has its originin the exercise of the intellect and the most satisfying form of friendship is based on thereciprocal experience of such love In a letter to Willem van Blyenberg Spinoza provides themost complete description of this kind of friendship to be found in his writings

For my part of all things that are not under my control what I most value is to enterinto a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth For I believe that such a lovingrelationship affords us a serenity surpassing any other boon in the whole wide worldThe love that such men bear to one another grounded as it is in the love that each hasfor knowledge of truth is as unshakable as is the acceptance of truth once it has beenperceived It is moreover the highest source of happiness to be found in things notunder our command for truth more than anything else has the power to effect a closeunion between different sentiments and dispositions

Spinoza says that a friendship based on the love of truth is not under our control But how

can that be if intellectual friendship involves a form of love internally generated by each friendIt would seem that the love we generate through the exercise of the intellect is fully under ourcontrol Spinoza however is referring to the fact that we are able to become friends only withpeople we actually meet which is something that occurs in the course of ordinary haphazarddisordered experience To a large extent our friendships are a matter of chance By way ofillustrating this point it turned out that Spinoza decided his initial judgment of Blyenberg wasmistaken He broke off their correspondence when he realized that the infinite chain of causesand effects had brought his way not a lover of truth but a dogmatic worshipper of the ldquopaperand inkrdquo of the Bible

People create commonwealths because the power of each to exist and act is increased byall others who transfer their rights to the sovereign For reasons we have already considered thepolitical bond is one of friendship ldquoIt is of the first importance to men to establish closerelationships and to bind themselves together with such ties as may most effectively unite theminto one body and as an absolute rule to act in such a way as serves to strengthen friendshiprdquo If

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

democratic state nobody transfers his natural right to another so completely that thereafter he isnot to be consulted he transfers it to the majority of the entire community of which he is partrdquo

In addition to the claim of naturalism in his advocacy of democracy in the TPT Spinozaargues that democratic governments are less prone to irrationality than monarchical oraristocratic ones A large number of people is less likely to endorse the same irrational decisionthan a small council (aristocracy) or a single person (monarchy) ldquohellip In a democracy there is lessdanger of an assembly behaving unreasonably for it is practically impossible for the majority ofa single assembly if it is of some size to agree on the same piece of follyrdquo The sentence thatfollows the one just quoted throws some light on what ldquothe same piece of follyrdquo means byreferring to ldquothe follies of appetiterdquo Spinozarsquos claim is that a democratic state is more rationalthan the alternatives in that it does the best job avoiding the foolish decisions people make whenled by their appetites

Spinoza does not provide an argument in support of this claim in the TPT but in thePolitical Treatise which he began to write two years later there is a passage that that helpscorrect the omission It concerns the wisdom of establishing a governing council with a largenumber of members in an aristocratic state Although an aristocracy excludes the commonpeople from political power reserving it for an elite Spinoza argues that it is capable ofguaranteeing liberties similar to those of democratic government provided that the members ofits governing council are sufficiently numerous

The fact that sovereignty is conferred absolutely on the council need not give thecommon people [plebi] any reason to fear oppressive slavery at its hands For when acouncil is so large its will is determined by reason rather than mere caprice becauselusts [libidine] draw men asunder and it is only when they have as their objective whatis honorable or at least appears so that they can be guided as if by one mind

Spinozarsquos argument is more complicated than a quick reading might indicate It is

impossible he claims for the members of a large council to come to agreement on the basis oftheir libidine because these affects draw them in different and incompatible directions Whilelibidine generally refers to sexual appetites Spinoza uses the word in this context to refer to thefull range of disreputable passions The corresponding point in the TPT is that it is ldquopracticallyimpossiblerdquo for the members of the democratic council to endorse the same ldquopiece of follyrdquo Inorder to reach agreement the members of the governing council in an aristocratic state must takeas their goal ldquowhat is honorable or at least appears sordquo In the Ethics Spinoza defines thehonorable (honestum) as ldquowhat is praised by men who live by the guidance of reasonrdquo and hemakes it clear that what such men praise is ldquothe desire to establish friendshiprdquo In accordancewith this definition the objective of the council members in an aristocracy is not so much to actwith reason as to be regarded by the reasonable as acting with reason ie as promotingfriendship That is why they are able to reach agreement even when their objective appears to behonorable although it is not But with whom do they wish to be or appear to be friends SinceSpinoza intends his argument to allay the fear of the plebs it seems obvious that it is theirfriendship that the council members seek But why would aristocrats be interested in makingfriends with commoners Although Spinoza does not tell us why in this passage the answer canbe found elsewhere in the Political Treatise The reason that the council members must seek thefriendship of the common people is that aristocratic government is not nor can it be absolute inthe full sense of the word in other words it cannot hold a complete monopoly on powerAlthough they have no institutional role in an aristocratic regime the common people retain thepower to undermine state authority by refusing to obey it or even by waging war against it Therulers recognize that power in the fear with which they regard the masses

In the Introduction to the Political Treatise Spinoza dissociates himself from the rosyview of human nature held by the authors of utopias In order to develop a political philosophythat is useful in the world of actual human affairs it is necessary to design institutions inaccordance with which those in government realize the rational end of politics ndash ie the common

good ndash whether or not that is their intention The desire of the members of the council to be seenas seeking the friendship of the masses ensures the rationality of the formerrsquos decisions becauseit causes them to seek the common good even if they do so from fear rather than dedication toreason One might object that appearing to seek the friendship of the masses entails only that thecouncil appear to seek the common good not that it actually does so But it is not possible for thecouncil to neglect the common interest over the long run without dire consequences unless weassume that the masses are so benighted that they are unable to discern the consistent violation oftheir interests The appearance and reality of seeking the friendship of the masses areindistinguishable as proved nearly two hundred years later by a theorem of Abraham LincolnsIt is possible to fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the timebut not all of the people all of the time If that theorem were not true then there would be nolimit to the power of tyrants while Spinoza is fond of quoting Tacitus that tyrannies never lastlong Once again the reason for their inevitable downfall is the indignation they provokethrough the harm they cause to the interests of the multitude

Although Spinoza does not make the point explicitly it is easy to see that a democraticcouncil does not require the same concern with the honorable as an aristocratic one because fearof the masses has no role to play in a democracy Since the common people who are the vastmajority of society are empowered to make decisions they have no need to evoke fear indecision-makers different than themselves in order to protect their own interests Thus in the caseof a democratic council the impossibility of a large number of people agreeing on ldquothe samepiece of follyrdquo is enough to secure political rationality ie the discovery and implementation ofthe common good

An implication of Spinozarsquos emphasis on the affinity between democracy and reason isthat democracy is a kind school for developing rationality The need to make and assess publicarguments about the common good requires clarity of thought and some understanding of theprinciples of logical implication In addition while citizens of a democracy agree to obey the lawor decree established by a vote of the majority they retain their freedom of judgment includingthe right to argue in favor of reversing decisions already made Thus there is no point in ademocracy at which citizens must give up their efforts to influence collective decisions andtherefore no point at which rationality becomes irrelevant However reason is not simply ameans of achieving the common good as an external end It is part of the common good forhuman beings and therefore itself one the ends it seeks to achieve The highest good is theintellectual love of God ndash so Spinoza argues in the Ethics ndash which we cannot attain withoutexercising reason Democracy then turns out to be not only the best way of securing thecommon good of the members of a polity but the best way of advancing the ultimate goodappropriate to human beings in general

Spinozarsquos advocacy of democracy was exceedingly radical at a time when monarchy wasthe political norm in Europe and even the oligarchic regent-dominated Dutch Republic waswidely regarded as an ultra-left anomaly But it sits uncomfortably with another aspect of theTPT namely its apparently low opinion of ldquothe multituderdquo (multitudo) In the Introduction to thebook which was written in Latin Spinoza tells his readers that he would prefer that ldquothecommon peoplerdquo (plebs) not read the work since they are incapable of understanding it andlikely to distort its meaning He pictures its members as entirely driven by their passions andincapable of using reason

I know how deeply rooted in the mind are the prejudices embraced under the guise ofpiety I know too that the masses [vulgo] can no more be freed from their superstitionthan from their fears Finally I know that they are unchanging in their obstinacy thatthey are not guided by reason and that their praise and blame is at the mercy of impulse

But this judgment throws into question the affinity between democracy and reason that

Spinoza affirms in the TPT For in order for such an affinity to exist the common people mustbe able to make decisions on the basis of reason Is the negative picture he paints of the masses

in the Introduction to the TPT simply a rhetorical device meant to appeal to the vanity of hiseducated readership It does not seem to be because a similarly low opinion appears again in theEthics and in some of his letters where there is no need to appeal to anyonersquos vanity Instead offunctioning simply as a rhetorical ploy Spinozarsquos generally negative view of the vast majority ofsociety and the positive view he develops in his advocacy of democracy indicate a tension in hispolitics

In the Ethics and TPT Spinoza uses the words vulgus plebs and multitudointerchangeably When any of the three word appears it is usually accompanied by suchqualifiers as ldquoirrationalrdquo ldquoignorantrdquo ldquouneducatedrdquo ldquosuperstitiousrdquo and ldquogoverned by passionsrdquoStill for Spinoza reason is not the possession of a natural elite Rather it is a universally humancapacity whose occurrence among people in developed form is rare Above all the cultivation ofreason requires free time There are two references to this requirement in the TPT that bear onthe ability of the multitude to develop their rational capacities One passage refers to ldquothecommon peoplerdquo as ldquofor the most part knowing nothing of logical reasoning or without leisurefor itrdquo Another refers to Spinozarsquos method of biblical exegesis noting that ldquoour own methoddemands a knowledge of Hebrew for which study the common people can likewise have noleisurerdquo A third passage which we have already referred to is relevant to the relationshipbetween leisure and the cultivation of reason while not mentioning it directly ldquothe multitude arealways at the same level of miseryrdquo Although Spinoza does not specify what he means by thelast statement it is likely that he is referring at least in part to the misery of onerous labor Thepoverty of the multitude demands that they spend most of their time engaged in hard physicalwork and the resulting absence of leisure prevents them from acquiring knowledge anddeveloping rational skills Lacking developed reason it is easy for them to fall under the sway ofthose who manipulate their fears and hopes for their own personal advantage the priestsministers rabbis and other religious officials In Spinozarsquos view fears and hopes make themultitude credulous and willing to accept superstitious beliefs (in divination the ability ofprayer to change the natural course of events the purchase of indulgences etc) that promisecontrol of an uncertain future For clerics the key to power and money is manipulation of thegreat majority of society through the instrument of superstition masked as religion

While the words plebs vulgus and multitudo do not designate a particular social classthey are not free of class reference either Spinoza uses the word plebs much as it was used in theearly Roman Republic to refer to the free subjects of a state who have no right to participate ingovernment Although plebs designates a political status rather than an economic class Spinozais clear that the group it refers to consists largely in those who work with their hands Forexample in the Political Treatise he identifies artisans as an example of the plebs the onlyexample in any of his writings Undoubtedly he would also have included peasants and wageworkers in that category and probably small retail merchants who were also politicallydisenfranchised Patricians by contrast certainly include nobles but may also include at least thewealthier burghers as was the case in the United Provinces Germany and much of the rest ofEurope The word vulgus as Spinoza uses it refers to the same members of society as the wordplebs but with the specific connotation of a lack of education and culture whose most extremeexpression is the unruly and irrational behavior of mobs In fact depending upon the contextvulgus is sometimes best translated as ldquocrowdrdquo or ldquomobrdquo Multitudo means ldquothe manyrdquo Spinozauses it to designate any group with numerous members including for example the simplebodies that make up a chemical substance In the context of political theory he uses the word torefer to the same people who comprise the plebs or vulgus but with the specific connotation ofbeing the vast majority of society Thus plebs vulgus and multitudo have the same referentalthough their principal connotations differ However in Spinozarsquos usage each word tends tobecome a synecdoche for the combined meaning of all three Thus in general the plebs vulgusor multitudo comprise the vast majority of society comprised largely of those who work withtheir hands are denied political rights except in democracies lack culture and education and aregiven to uncouth irrational or unruly behavior

The tension in Spinozarsquos politics between his critical view of the multitude and hisadvocacy of a democratic state in which it is sovereign can be explained by drawing a distinctionbetween the multitude as it is under the conditions of the actually existing Dutch Republic and

the multitude as it could be were Spinozarsquos reforms to be implemented With an uncontrolledReform Church and a Republic dominated by regents who represent the wealthy burghers themultitude has no chancing of shedding its superstitions or developing its rational capacities TheChurch manipulates their hopes and fears through the instrument of superstition and therepublican oligarchs block their participation in political decision-making which is the only waythey can develop rationality on a significant scale The story would be very different however ifthe state were both democratic and prohibited the Church from involvement in politics Twomajor conditions would then exist for the development of reason on a mass scale

The idea of a democracy raises the problem of how people without significant materialresources are to participate in making decisions when they must spend their lives in toil It mightbe thought that the problem can be solved by a universal franchise enabling all citizens to votefor representatives to a legislative assembly and other state offices But even if measures were inplace to prevent the wealthy minority from exercising unequal influence in elected bodiesrepresentative government is not Spinozarsquos idea of democracy Like Plato and Aristotle when heuses the term ldquodemocracyrdquo he has in mind a state such as the Athenian polis in which all adult(male) citizens were empowered to vote directly on legislation and other public matters Spinozamakes this clear in the unfinished chapter on democracy in the Political Treatise

hellipin this state all who are born of citizen parents or on native soil or have done serviceto the commonwealth or are qualified on any other grounds on which the right ofcitizenship is granted by law all I say can lawfully demand for themselves the right tovote in the supreme council and to undertake offices of state nor can they be refusedexcept for crime or dishonor

At a relatively advanced stage in its development the Athenian polis solved the problem

of the multitudersquos participation in government by paying citizens to attend sessions of theAssembly thereby compensating them for missed days of work If Spinoza was aware of theAthenian solution he gives no indication of it in his writings although it is likely that he wouldhave considered the problem of participation in politics by those without leisure in the part of thePolitical Treatise he left unfinished at his death Following the pattern of the completed chapterson monarchy and aristocracy the unfinished chapters on democracy would undoubtedly havespecified the institutional structures and practices necessary to sustain a democratic state In anyevent without something like the Athenian solution the idea of a democratic republic in theUnited Provinces would have been no more than the sort of utopian dream Spinoza rejects in theIntroduction to the Political Treatise

Returning to the earlier work the program for reforming the Dutch Republic that emergesin the TPT has three planks 1) establish state control over the churches as public institutions 2)guarantee freedom of thought expression and private worship and 3) democratize the oligarchicRepublic Although Spinozarsquos book is a work of philosophy it is equally a political interventionin a concrete historical situation a fact that he indicates in his letter to Jelles by referring to theldquocauserdquo he asks his friend to serve by blocking the Dutch translation of the book But in order toact as a political intervention the book must influence the beliefs and through them the actionsof people That raises the question To whom is the TPT addressed Since the decision to write inLatin effectively prevented the multitude from reading the work (which as we have seen wasSpinozarsquos intention) and on the assumption that not many aristocrats were likely to be swayedby its radical arguments the addressee of the book can only have been the educated section ofthe bourgeoisie Since Spinoza was unlikely to sway many conservative Calvinists with hisrationalist conception of religion there were only two groups within the bourgeoisie ndash at leastsome of whose members were capable of reading Latin ndash that the work could effectively addressThe first consists in republicans including the regents who hesitated to support the kind of stateauthority over religion that Spinoza advocated for ideological or pragmatic reasons The secondconsists in Orangists who were liberals in matters of religion and so in conflict with the ReformChurch As odd as it may seem there were a good number of people who fit into the secondcategory Even many of the Collegiantrsquos were loyal to the House of Orange in spite of theirpronounced religious liberalism

Had the TPTrsquos program been limited to its first two planks ndash state control of the churchesand freedom of thought and expression ndash it would have been politically coherent But where doesthe idea of democratizing the United Provinces fit into this picture Neither bourgeoisrepublicans nor religious liberals were apt to be sympathetic to the idea of a democratic republicthat would place power in the hands of the multitude If Spinoza wanted to make an appeal to therepublican and liberal Orangist sections of the bourgeoisie he ought to have been defending theexisting oligarchic Republic against its conservative Calvinist and monarchist enemies ratherthan elaborating an argument for its democratization There is only one audience who wouldhave been sympathetic to that argument namely the peasants artisans wage-workers and smallmerchants who comprised the multitude But that is precisely the readership Spinoza deniedhimself by writing in Latin

And yet Spinoza understood that the only way the Republic could survive in face of thealliance between the Reform Church and the House of Orange was to shift the allegiance of themultitude by winning its support Thus the contradiction in Spinozarsquos program is not a theoreticalflaw but a reflection of the real contradiction involved in the stadtholderless Republic or if youprefer the instability in the balance of social forces that enabled it to exist The Republic couldsurvive only by means of an impossible alliance between the multitude and the regents IfSpinoza erred it was in believing that it was possible to convince the regents to democratize bythe force of his arguments But this was the same as asking them to commit political suicidesince their power on the urban and national levels depended upon their ability to defend theirmonopoly on state offices The only alternative which Spinoza rejected was a popularrevolution that would create a new and radically democratic republic But that republic wouldshare with the existing one no more than the name like the animal dog and the dog star thatSpinoza refers to in a different context For that reason it would have fallen under his warningthat those who attempt to change the form of the state are likely to see it restored in a morerepressive version (see page 25 below) In short there was no solution to the problem the TPTattempted to solve or at least none within the limits of Spinozarsquos thinking As a political theoryand a theory of biblical hermeneutics the book is a brilliant work that went on to influencephilosophers and ironically theologians for the next three centuries As an intervention in theextraordinarily difficult and complex political situation of the seventeenth-century Netherlands itwas and had to be an utter failure

There are in fact two political programs in the TPT an overt program and a latent oneThe overt program is liberal republican and bourgeois in the sense that its addressee andintended agent of change is the educated bourgeoisie The latent program lies quite a bit furtherto the left It is radically democratic and its only possible agent of change is the multitude Letter44 makes a contribution to the latent program that moves in an even more radical direction

The Communist Idea

In his letter to Jelles Spinoza develops an idea of the highest good for human beings as

an alternative to what he argues is the false conception of Homo Politicus For the author of thatbook wealth and honors comprise the highest good But Spinoza claims in the letter thatcommonwealths devoted to the pursuit of wealth and honors ldquomust necessarily perish and haveperishedrdquo He then writes

How far superior indeed and excellent were the reflections of Thales of Miletus compared with this writer is shown by the following account All things he said are incommon among friends

The fact that this paragraph follows Spinozarsquos critique of Homo Politicus while proposing

an alternative to the apparent position of its author justifies an interpretation that takes it in apolitical sense Spinoza should be read as offering the saying of Thales as an addendum to the

latent program he articulates in the TPT Like democracy common ownership could have onlyone social basis in the Netherlands of the seventeenth century ndash namely the peasants artisanswage-workers and small retail merchants The problem this raises is how to make the transitionfrom a multitude given to irrationality and superstition ndash and therefore under the sway of theReformed Church ndash to one capable of the rationality necessary to create the democraticcommunism (the content of which we have yet to define) that Letter 44 implies when consideredalong with the TPT Spinoza saw no answer to this problem That is why he suppressed his latentproject in favor of the overt one for a liberal republic able to assert its sovereign authority overthe Church It seemed to him that the educated bourgeoisie had political capacities that themultitude lacked

Spinozarsquos judgment on this matter is similar mutatis mutandis to that of FrederickEngels in the Peasant War in Germany For Engels the Peasant War of the sixteenth century wasa heroic but premature revolution Under the leadership of Thomas Muumlntzer the peasantsadopted a program that included the expropriation of ecclesiastic and aristocratic property andthe common ownership of goods But the princes were the only group with the wealth andmilitary resources necessary to benefit from the ensuing turmoil while their rivals for power ndashthe Catholic prelates and lesser nobility ndash were ruined by the confiscation of property andplundering or destruction of fixed wealth by the peasant masses The rising bourgeoisie was ableto frame an independent liberal political program but did not yet have the social weightnecessary to play a leading role in the economy and the state According to Engels the peasantrywas incapable of mastering the new forces of production unleashed by the world market and theonly class that might have played a progressive role alongside the peasants ndash the proletarianwage-working element in the towns ndash was a very small part of laboring population It would takeanother three centuries for the proletariat to develop along with industry to the point where itwould be able to draft a meaningful equivalent of the communist program first framed by thesixteenth-century German peasantry Spinoza certainly had no idea that industrialization and asizeable proletariat were on their way But he shared with Engels a pessimistic assessment of thechances for a successful social transformation led by peasants and their allies Perhaps with thedisastrous defeat of the German peasants in mind (as well as the allegiance of the Dutchmultitude to the Reformed Church) Spinoza judged that relying upon the common people as anagent of social and political change in his own century would have been equally futile

Why then does Spinoza raise the issue of common ownership in Letter 44 The answer isthe same as for why he discusses democracy in the TPT when it makes no contribution to hispolitical intervention but on the contrary damages it We could say that Spinoza is either a badmilitant or a good philosopher The truth is he is both Like Platorsquos attempt to influence thecourse of events in Syracuse or Aristotlersquos decision to tutor Alexander the Great Spinozarsquos faithin the political efficacy of philosophical reasoning was misguided There is ample historicalevidence that the philosopher who attempts to be politically effective as a philosopher is doomedto defeat That is why Marx ceased considering himself a philosopher in 1845 as he indicates inthe eleventh of his Theses on Feuerbach ldquoUntil now philosophers have only attempted tounderstand the world the point however is to change itrdquo The project of changing the world isdifferent than that of understanding it from a purely theoretical perspective Of course it ispossible for philosophers to influence statesmen as Locke influenced the drafters of the USConstitution But Lockersquos influence was effective more than a century after he wrote the SecondTreatise on Civil Government and so can hardly be called a political intervention The attempt tointervene politically in a concrete situation in which multiple forces and complex structures arein play is something very different than the delayed influence on the drafters of a constitutionwho have had an opportunity to ponder at leisure the meaning of a philosopherrsquos work The mostimportant question of politics is not so much ldquoWhat is to be donerdquo as ldquoWho is to do itrdquoSpinoza may have been right that the multitude was not the collective subject to defendrepublican liberty That is why he appealed to the Dutch bourgeoisie through its philosophicallyliterate elements But he was too much the philosopher to suppress his argument that ademocratic republic is the kind of state that best preserves freedom and encourages rationalityand he was willing to make his point even at the cost of alienating the collective agent he wasattempting to influence

The reference to common ownership in Letter 44 would have had an even more negativeeffect on his readers should Spinoza have made it in the TPT In private communication withJelles however he was able to raise the topic without risking further political difficultiesSpinozarsquos reference presumes an intellectual history with roots in both ancient Greek philosophyand early Christianity a history that was renewed practically as well as theoretically in earlymodern Europe In the passage from Letter 44 where he introduces the theme of commonownership he goes on to elaborate the position he attributes to Thales Here is the passage in fullthat we have already quoted partially

How far superior indeed and excellent were the reflections of Thales of Miletuscompared with this writer is shown by the following account All things he said are incommon among friends The wise are the friends of the Gods and all things belong tothe Gods therefore all things belong to the wise In this way the wise man makeshimself the richest by nobly despising riches instead of greedily pursuing them

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo (Amicorum communia omnia) is

the first entry in his book Adages by the late Renaissance humanist and reform-minded Catholicscholar Desiderius Erasmus The Adages were widely available in Spinozarsquos day and it is likelythat both Spinoza and Jelles had read them although the former must have also consultedErasmusrsquo source for the saying ndash Lives of the Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius We will seewhy in a moment Erasmus cites the same deduction from the maxim as Spinoza does in Letter44 except that he attributes it to Socrates rather than Thales

From this proverb Socrates deduced that all things belong to all good men just as theydo to the gods For to the gods he said belong all things good men are friends of thegods and among friends all possessions are in common

The fact that Spinoza refers to wise men while Erasmus refers to good men does not

indicate any real difference between them because both accepted the ancient Greek and biblicalequivalence between human goodness and wisdom The difference in attributing the deductiveconsequences of the proverb to Thales on the one hand and Socrates on the other also does notindicate any substantive disagreement between Spinoza and Erasmus although it does signify adifference in intellectual vocation and emphasis Interestingly however the attribution in bothcases is incorrect Their common source the Lives of the Philosophers places the argument intothe mouth of Diogenes the Cynic rather than Socrates or Thales Thus both Spinoza and Erasmushave had a failure of memory and probably for the same reason The author of Lives makes itclear that although Diogenes the Cynic despised the pursuit of wealth he was not a veryappealing character he was arrogant and could be verbally and physically abusive to those hejudged to be unwise It is understandable then that the figure of Diogenes would drop out of thememory of both Erasmus and Spinoza and be replaced by a philosopher with whom each tosome extent identified Erasmus the Renaissance humanist undoubtedly found Socrates well-suited to stand in for the part of Diogenes the Cynic because Socrates was a moral philosopherand the teacher of Plato whose influence on the Renaissance was profound As an admirer of thenatural sciences and a maker of telescopes Spinoza would have felt the same way about Thaleswho was an astronomer as well as a philosopher

In Letter 44 a story from Lives follows the identification of Thales as the figureresponsible for the drawing the deductive consequences of the proverb In order to demonstratethat his rejection of the pursuit of wealth was not an alibi for poverty Thales made use of hisexpert knowledge of the heavens Foreseeing a bountiful olive crop after the previous harvestrsquosdearth he rented all of the olive presses in Greece cheaply and then hired them out at a highprice to farmers who needed them to press the oil from their olives In this way he amassed agreat deal of wealth within a single year which ldquohe then distributed with a liberality equal to the

shrewdness by which he had acquired itrdquo Spinozarsquos memory of the story must have acted as abridge for the mistaken identification

The similarity between the ancient Greek proverb and the passages from Acts about thecommunal practices of the early Church with respect to property must have been evident to thebiblical scholar Spinoza Rendered into Latin by Erasmus the proverb ldquoAll things are incommon among friendsrdquo is amicorum communia omnia In Acts 244 ndash ldquoAll that believed weretogether and had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquohad all things in commonrdquo appears in theLatin Vulgate as habebant omnia communia In Acts 432 ndash ldquoNo one claimed that any of theirpossessions was their own but they had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquothey had all thingsin commonrdquo appears in the Vulgate as erant illis omnia communia The equivalence between thecommunia omnia of the proverb and the omnia communia of the two verses from Acts wouldhave been perfectly clear to Spinoza on linguistic grounds alone

In Adages Erasmus is more explicit than Spinoza in connecting the proverb with theverses from Acts He discusses the proverb in its appearance in book 5 of the Laws where Platoappeals to it in order to demonstrate that the best condition of society consists in the communityof possessions Erasmus writes

But it is extraordinary how Christians dislike this common ownership of Platorsquos how infact they throw stones at it although nothing comes closer to the mind of Christ

Further on Erasmus identifies the inventor of the proverb as Pythagoras who he saysestablished a community in which life and property were shared

hellipwhich is the very thing Christ wants to happen among Christians For all those whowere admitted by Pythagoras into that well-known band who followed his instructionswould give to the common fund whatever money and family property they possessed

Even apart from Erasmus the similarity between the Greek philosophersrsquo proverb and the

New Testament passages would have been evident to the Mennonite Jelles from MennoSimonrsquos discussion of the communal practice described in Acts (more on this below) Jelleswould also have found the parallel especially appealing because it makes the principle ofcommon ownership part of that rational philosophical version of Christianity that he and theother Waterlander Mennonites and Collegiants were seeking to establish

Although Erasmus was an advocate of religious reform he never joined the ProtestantReformation remaining a loyal Catholic until his death It is ironic then that during hislifetime the only vigorous champions of the common ownership he espoused were members ofthe most radical wing of the Reformation ironic but completely intelligible since the radicalsrsquoproject was to restore the Church to its original apostolic condition before its accommodationwith worldly power and wealth under Constantine

The Latin phrase designating Anabaptist communism in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies is Omnia sunt communia (for example it appears in this form in the confession theauthorities extracted from Thomas Muumlntzer under torture) It translates into English as ldquoAllthings are commonrdquo which is the present tense version of the phrase in Acts 432 ldquoall thingswere commonrdquo (ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά) to the members of the Church in Jerusalem Theparallel formulation in Acts 244 is slightly different although the distinction is lost in the LatinVulgate It reads that the members of the apostolic Church ldquohad all things in commonrdquo (εἶχονἅπαντα κοινὰ) In the second formulation εἶχον (had) seems to suggest a specific mode ofpossession or even an established quasi-legal form of property But it would be a mistake tointerpret it this way In both verses the anonymous author of Acts is articulating a generalprinciple rather than specifying a form of its implementation As we shall see the concreteapplication of the principle in the first century Church involved not a mode of possession orform of property but rather a practice of redistribution

Within the Anabaptist movement there was a broad range of beliefs and practices thatinvolved specific applications of the principle Omnia sunt communia We need to recognizetheir breadth in order to grasp just how subtle and variegated Anabaptist communism could beFor this purpose it is important to distinguish between communism as 1) a principle ofredistribution 2) a form of joint or communal property 3) a mode of the organization of workand 4) a kind of mutual aid In general all Anabaptist applications of Omnia sunt communia areintended to realize in different ways a communal and spiritual life in which all things arecommon We could say if we like that each of the four categories serves as a means for realizingthe end designated by that principle as long as we keep in mind that in this case the meanscannot be discarded once the end has been achieved Communism as a principle of redistributiona form of communal property a mode of the organization of work a kind of mutual aid ndash orsome combination of these ndash are the concrete ways in which communism as a mode ofcommunal and spiritual life is realized In this case the means are internal to the end That isbecause there can be no fellowship no community of the spirit unless those participating sharesomething ie have it in common Greek recognizes this internal relationship between acommon life and something shared in the word translated into English as fellowship κοινωνίαthe root of which is κοινός which means ldquocommonrdquo Its antonym ἴδιος means ldquobelonging toonerdquo It is the word κοινός that appears in the passages from Acts that refer to the practice ofsharing material wealth

244 ldquoAll who believed were together and had all things in common (Πάντες δὲ οἱπιστεύοντες ἦσαν ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό καὶ εἶχον ἅπαντα κοινὰ)

432 ldquoThe multitude of believers were one in heart and soul (Τοῦ δὲ πλήθους τῶνπιστευσάντων ἦν καρδία καὶ ψυχὴ microία) and no one claimed anything as his ownpossession but to them all things were in common (καὶ οὐδὲ εἷς τι τῶν ὑπαρχόντωναὐτῷ ἔλεγεν ἴδιον εἶναι ἀλλrsquo ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά)

Both verses affirm an internal relationship between living a common life and things

being in common or people having things in common But this is true of any collectiveendeavor A chess club for example is only possible if the members have a common interest inplaying chess But the verses from Acts mean to assert more than this They affirm the intensityand universality of the common life experienced in the early Church (being ldquoone in heart andsoulrdquo) They indicate this by referring to the fact that in the Church in Jerusalem all things areheld in common (ἅπαντα κοινά) Although ldquoall thingsrdquo (ἅπαντα) is not limited to materialpossessions the succeeding verses in chapters 2 and 4 of Acts indicate the depth of thecommitment the early Christians had to sharing a common life by referring to the practice inwhich they enacted it

245 And they sold their possessions and goods and divided them among everyoneaccording to need (καὶ τὰ κτήmicroατα καὶ τὰς ὑπάρξεις ἐπίπρασκον καὶ διεmicroέριζον αὐτὰπᾶσιν καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

434 There was no one among them in need as many as owned land or houses soldthem and brought the values of what was sold (οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐνδεής τις ἦν ἐν αὐτοῖς ὅσοιγὰρ κτήτορες χωρίων ἢ οἰκιῶν ὑπῆρχον πωλοῦντες ἔφερον τὰς τιmicroὰς τῶνπιπρασκοmicroένων) 435 and laid them at the feet of the apostles and distribution wasmade to each in accordance with need (καὶ ἐτίθουν παρὰ τοὺς πόδας τῶν ἀποστόλωνδιεδίδετο δὲ ἑκάστῳ καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

The needs of others are what break the bonds of individual ownership allowing the

transition from the private (ἴδιος) to the common (κοινά) Acts refers to making material goods

common rather than for example communicating private knowledge publicly presumablybecause of the difficulty people experience parting with private property and the correlativesignificance of the act of doing so For material possessions are the means by which they satisfytheir basic needs ndash for food shelter clothing and so on ndash and when possible their desire forluxuries The act of handing over possessions has two consequences The first is that thedistinction between rich and poor wealthy and needy owner and propertyless is abolished andthe members of the community come to stand on level ground The second consequence involvesa more fundamental risk on the part of property-owners By handing over their property theymake a leap of faith that the community will henceforth satisfy their needs as well through thesame practice of redistribution When applied in this fashion the general principle of being incommon or having in common results in an example of the first category of communism asspecified above ie communism as a principle of redistribution

Redistribution of property by the apostles creates occasions for active sharing asexpressions of the new form of common life 246 says that the members of the Church inJerusalem ldquoalso broke bread in each otherrsquos homes and took their meals in exaltation andsimplicity of heartrdquo (κλῶντές τε κατrsquo ο ἴκον ἄρτον microετελάmicroβανον τροφῆς ἐν ἀγαλλιάσει καὶἀφελότητι καρδίας) The value of sharing meals lies not merely in the fact that everyone is fedbut also in the experience of exaltation or ecstatic delight (ἀγαλλιάσεις) and sincerity orsimplicity of heart (ἀφελότητι καρδίας) The experience in common of exaltation and sincerity isat least as important as the act of satisfying needs although the two can be distinguished onlynotionally

The experience has its meaning in relation to the power (δυνάmicroις) that brings together themembers of the new community and inspires them to share their property The gathering of JewsGreeks and those from other nations (the circumcised and the uncircumcised as Paul says)occurs in the period following Pentecost when the Holy Spirit is supposed to have descended incloven tongues of flame upon the twelve apostles endowing them with the ability to speak inevery language Pentecost in turn follows by several weeks the resurrection of Christ and hisbodily ascension into heaven The gift of being able to speak in every language permits theapostles to convey their message to all nations That message ndash confirmed by ldquosigns andwondersrdquo ndash is testimony of their own first-hand witness to the Resurrection It is accompanied bythe baptism of the new members of the Church which repeats the Pentecostal experience byfilling them with the grace and power of the Holy Spirit

433 ldquoAnd with great power the apostles were giving witness to the resurrection of theLord Jesus and abundant grace was upon them all (καὶ δυνάmicroει microεγάλῃ ἀπεδίδουν τὸmicroαρτύριον οἱ ἀπόστολοι τοῦ Κυρίου Ἰησοῦ τῆς ἀναστάσεως χάρις τε microεγάλη ἦν ἐπὶπάντας αὐτούς)

The ecstatic delight and simplicity of heart that the members of the Church in Jerusalem

experience by sharing a common life is their enjoyment of this ldquoabundant gracerdquo (χάρις τεmicroεγάλη) The new community is built upon faith in the apostlesrsquo testimony that Jesus triumphedover death and that his victory promises an eternal life to all who believe That is the gift of theHoly Spirit Yet the ldquospiritualrdquo (πνευmicroατικός) content of early Christian experience does not denyits simultaneously material character For the significance of the Resurrection and the Ascensioninto Heaven is precisely that they concern the physical body of Christ When he appears toThomas who doubts that he has returned Jesus invites his disciple to place his hands into thewounds received from the Crucifixion The point is to show not only that the man standing infront of Thomas is not an imposter but also that the risen Christ is no disembodied ghost Andwhen the apostles witness the Ascension what they see is the physical body of Jesus rising toheaven There is little suggestion of soul-body dualism in Acts The spirit (πνεῦmicroα) infuses andtransfigures the body it does not exist apart from it In this respect it is similar to the life-givingbreath to which the word πνεῦmicroα originally referred Dualism is the result of a Platonizinginterpretation of Christianity that comes later The bodily character of the Resurrection extends tothe promise of eternal life for believers as well The promise is not that their souls will exist apart

from their bodies but that their bodies will rise up from the grave like that of their Savior Giventhis early Christian materialism it is not surprising that commonality of material goods wouldserve as a fundamental expression of the new life of the believers

As we already know the project of the sixteenth-century Anabaptists was to restore theChurch to its original apostolic condition by undoing the corruption they believed had set inwhen it made its peace with worldly wealth and power under Constantine Given the nature ofthe Anabaptist project it would seem that making material things common as described in Actswould follow as a matter of course However there is a long tradition ndash one that began aroundthe middle of the sixteenth century ndash of denying that Anabaptism has anything to do withcommunism regarding it as an accusation brought against the Anabaptists by their enemies It isunderstandable that this should be so The Anabaptists were the victims of a ldquored scarerdquo thatgripped the ruling classes of Europe in the aftermath of the Peasant War and the Muumlnstercommune It is impossible to explain the horrendous tortures forced relocations andinnumerable executions Anabaptists faced on the basis of heretical belief alone Nothing of aremotely similar scale was visited upon other schismatics The fact that the Anabaptistschallenged prevailing property relations is what made them victims of near-genocide It was amatter of survival then to create some distance between themselves and the charge ofadvocating common ownership of goods that came from Luther Zwingli and those whoextracted the confession from Thomas Muumlntzer that he held to the principle of Omnia communiasunt Recent scholarship however has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that having thingsin common was indeed a basic and widespread principle of Anabaptism at its origin just as it hasdemonstrated the influence veterans of the Peasant War had among the early Anabaptists

The dominant form of communist practice in early Anabaptism was appropriatelymodeled on the description of redistribution in Acts In Switzerland where the movementoriginated converts were often asked or required to make contributions to a ldquocommon purserdquoafter receiving adult baptism Some especially pious initiates went so far as to sell their land andhouses for that purpose in accordance with the biblical precedent When necessary officialsdistributed the contents of the purse to members of the community who were in need

Both proponents and enemies of Anabaptist communism often confused the redistributionof wealth with joint or communal property However except for the taking of meals in commonthere is no indication in Acts that redistribution collectivized ownership of wealth in this fashionbut only that it transferred wealth from the better-off members of the community to the worse-off Nevertheless some Anabaptists took joint or communal property as a paradigm for newproperty relations For example the visionary writing of the Nuremberg printer Hans Hergotwho was executed for rebellion in 1527 includes the following passage

And everything that grows on the land belongs to the church and the people who livethere Everything is bestowed for common use so that the people will eat from one potdrink from one vesselhellip And all things will be used in common so that no one is betteroff than another

The ldquowar communismrdquo of the city of Muumlnster involved an ad hoc form of communal propertythrough the edict that the doors to all homes be left open and the owners take in anyone whowished to reside with them But the most significant successful and long-lasting attempt toimplement communal property was that of the Hutterites

The Hutterites took their name from the charismatic hat-maker and Anabaptist leaderJacob Hutter However at their origins they were influenced by the revolutionary bookbinderHans Hut Hut shared Thomas Muumlntzerrsquos sanguinary apocalyptic view of social change andadvocated community ownership of goods in accordance with his own understanding of ActsHe survived the battle of Frankenhausen in which the peasant rebels were finally defeated butwas tortured and executed a few years later In the aftermath and under the influence of JacobHutter the Hutterites adopted pacifism and a strategy of creating autonomous communities Inorder escape persecution thousands of the brethren emigrated from Switzerland and Germany to

the more tolerant Moravia where they created hundreds of Bruderhofs farms and vineyards inwhich land houses farm implements produce and even objects of personal use were ownedcollectively The center of Bruderhof life was a large communal house in which craft productionoccurred on the ground floor and couples lived in small apartments on the upper levels The menengaged in farm labor and craftwork while the women were limited to traditional domesticduties in spite of the fact that children were raised communally apart from their parents TheBruderhofs enjoyed great economic success for a number of reasons People worked hard andconsumed little resulting in a surplus that could be used to purchase additional land seed andtools The size of the communities and of their agricultural production also enabled them to sellcheaply and to pay for supplies at generous prices both of which made the communitieseconomic assets to the areas in which they were located The Hutterites also organized both farmlabor and craft production cooperatively including the education boys were given in thenecessary skills They were therefore practitioners of the second and third forms of communismwe have identified namely communal ownership and cooperative organization of work Whenthey were ultimately forced out of Moravia by the triumph of Catholic forces in the Thirty YearsWar the Hutterites migrated eastward many finally relocating to Canada and the United Stateswhere the Bruderhofs continue to exist to this day

Communism as a kind of mutual aid was the contribution of the other major form ofAnabaptism that of the Mennonites With great political intelligence and skill Menno Simonswas able to reformulate the meaning of Omnia communia sunt in such a way as to avoidthreatening the property interests of nobles and clerics He did this in his book A Humble andChristian Justification and Replication First he denied that Mennonites were advocates ofcommunal property

This accusation is false and without all truth We do not teach and practice communityof goods but we teach and testify the Word of the Lord that all true believers in Christare of one body (1 Corinthians 1213) partakers of one bread (1 Corinthians 1017)have one God and one Lord (Ephesians 4)

In his assertion that the believers are of one body and partakers of one bread Simons is affirmingwhat we have called the general principle of communism while denying that Mennonitesembrace it in the specific form of communal property But he goes further by denying thatMennonites advocate a contemporary version of the apostolic redistribution of wealth

For although we know that the apostolic church had this practice in the beginning ascan be seen in the Acts of the Apostles nevertheless we note from their epistles that itdisappeared in their time and was no longer practiced

Instead of communal property or centralized redistribution of wealth the Mennonites derivefrom the general principle of Christian communism an alternative practice

Seeing then that they are one as said it is Christian and reasonable that they also havedivine love among them and that one member cares for another for both the Scripturesand nature teach this They show mercy and love as much as is in them They do notsuffer a beggar among them They have pity on the wants of the saints They receive thewretched They take strangers into their houses They comfort the sad They lend to theneedy They clothe the naked They share their bread with the hungry They do not turntheir face from the poorhellip

In the subsequent history of Mennonism the practice Simons describes came to be calledldquomutual aidrdquo Note that it is different from charitable giving and this in two ways First thereferences to receiving the wretched taking in strangers sharing bread and so on indicate a farmore personal even intimate form of involvement than simple charitable donation Second

there is the suggestion of reciprocity or mutuality (ldquoone member cares for anotherrdquo) that tends todeny the difference in status between the charitable giver and the recipient of charity Thepractice Simons describes is similar to what some anthropologists have called ldquogeneralizedreciprocityrdquo in which my obligation to give to you when you are in need corresponds to yourobligation to give to me when I am in need In a sense this is a form of redistribution inaccordance with need but it is enacted directly between individual members of the communityrather than administered centrally through a common purse

In line with his political purpose Simons is careful to distinguish between mutual aid andthe expropriation of private property

This is the kind of brotherhood we teach and not that some should take over andpossess the land soil and properties of others as we are falsely maligned accused andlied about by many

In this way he detaches the Mennonite version of communism from any revolutionary intentionThat was the prerequisite for communal survival during the long counter-revolution thatfollowed the Peasant War Still Simons never abandons the general principle Omnia communiasunt nor does he even really reject the practice of the early Church

Since we do not find it a permanent practice with the apostles we have not taught orpracticed community of goods but we urge earnestly and zealously to practice liberalgiving love and mercy as the apostolic writings teach and testify abundantly Andeven if we had taught and practiced community of goods as we are falsely accused ofdoing we would still not be doing otherwise than the holy apostles full of the HolySpirit themselves did in the former church at Jerusalem in the beginning of the holyChristian Church although they stopped the practice as has been said

Like the Hutterites Mennonite communities prospered once they managed to survive the

bloody period of reaction In Holland the Mennonite population consisted largely in successfulmerchants along with a number of lawyers doctors and other professionals Most of thepeasant artisan and laborer families who had started as Mennonites in the sixteenth century hadlong since converted to the Reform Church which is one reason Spinoza faced the problem ofpolitical agency in the TPT Although the idea of mutual aid persisted among the DutchMennonites it took the form predominantly of organized international philanthropy in which thecommunity made contributions not only to Mennonites abroad but to other populations in needThere was no escaping the fact however that in this philanthropic form mutual aid becamehardly distinguishable from conventional charity

Jarig Jelles was born into the Dutch Mennonite community around a century afterSimmons wrote his book when this process of slippage was well underway But there is littledoubt that Jelles knew the Mennonite teaching on mutual aid and its origin in the generalprinciple of Christian communism Even if Jelles never read Erasmusrsquo Adages Spinozarsquosreference to the supposed communism of Thales was likely to resonate with him on the basis ofhis own religious tradition

We cannot be certain how much Spinoza knew in detail about the communist practices ofthe Anabaptists but it is probably not a coincidence that he recommends three of the four atvarious places in his writings In Part 4 of the Ethics ldquoOf Human Bondage or the Strength of theEmotionsrdquo he identifies the chief virtue of the intellect as ldquostrength of the mindrdquo (fortitudo)According to him it takes two forms one directed to the self and one directed to others He callsthe inwardly directed form ldquocouragerdquo defining it as ldquothe desire whereby every individualendeavors to preserve his own being according to the dictates of reason alonerdquo The outwardlydirected form is generositas which Shirley translates as ldquonobilityrdquo though ldquosolidarityrdquo is closerto what Spinoza is getting at He defines it as ldquothe desire whereby every individual according to

the dictates of reason alone endeavors to assist others and make friends of themrdquo When twopeople in contact with one another possess the virtue of generositas they will clearly exhibit itreciprocally in the form of mutual aid the fourth communist practice

In Part 4 of the Ethics Spinoza also formulates a version of the first communist practicethat of the redistribution of wealth in accordance with need

Again men are won over by generosity especially those who do not have thewherewithal to produce what is necessary to support life Yet it is far beyond the powerand resources of a private person to come to the assistance of everyone in need For thewealth of a private person is quite unequal to such a demand It is also a practicalimpossibility for one man to establish friendship with all Therefore the care of the poordevolves upon society as a whole and looks only to the common good

The fact that society as a whole has responsibility for meeting the needs of the poor makes thepractice Spinoza recommends in this passage a version of the centralized redistribution of wealthdescribed in the Acts of the Apostles and institutionalized in Anabaptist form as the ldquocommonpurserdquo More than that the fact that society as a whole must take on this responsibility ratherthan a church or other sub-community makes Spinoza an early advocate of what will becomethree centuries later the European welfare state In our own period as the welfare state is beingdismantled it is easy to see that what neoliberals object to concerning it is precisely its implicitcommunism ie its practice of distribution in accordance with need

Spinoza advocates a third communist practice in his unfinished final work the PoliticalTreatise The context is his discussion of a maximally democratic version of monarchy in whichthe entire citizen body is armed and the king forbidden from making any decision contrary to thewill of a massive council of ordinary citizens In such a state

The fields and the soil and if possible the houses as well should be public property thatis should belong to the sovereign by whom they should be let at an annual rent tocitizens whether townsmen or country-dwellers Apart from this all citizens should befree or exempt from any form of taxation in time of peace Of this rent part should beallocated to the defense works of the commonwealth part to the kings domestic needsFor in time of peace it is still necessary to fortify cities as for war and to have in a stateof readiness ships and other armaments

Ownership of land and buildings by the sovereign is a form of communal property first becausethe citizens of the commonwealth delegate to him or them the property they hold in commonand second because that delegation occurs with the understanding that the sovereign will use theproperty in service of the common good

Spinoza supplies an argument based on more than simple utility for the practice ofholding land and buildings in common

hellip in a state of Nature the one thing a man cannot appropriate to himself and make hisown is land and whatever is so fixed to the land that he cannot conceal it anywhere orcarry it away where he pleases Thus the land and whatever is fixed to it in the way wehave described is especially the public property of the commonwealth that is of allthose who by their united strength can claim it or of him to whom all have delegated thepower to claim it

To state the argument differently since rights are the same as powers no individual has a naturalright to appropriate privately the land or any of its fixed structures because none has the powernecessary to do so The only response an individual can make to incursions by a more powerfulperson or group of people is flight in which he must leave the land and its buildings behind It is

only by entering into a community in which the strength of each is combined for the purpose ofdefense that people can effectively possess fixed property but they do so as a members of thecommunity rather than as an separate individuals According to Spinozarsquos theory of rights onlythe community has the right to own the land and its structures because only the community hasthe required power

The communal ownership of land houses and other buildings is a version of the secondcommunist practice on our list of which Hutterite joint ownership is the most developedhistorical example When adopted by a polity rather than a small community though thepractice has an added advantage Under those circumstances communal possession of fixedproperty eliminates the need for taxes except in time of war What takes their place is ageneration of revenue pegged to wealth since the members of society who are able to rent themost expensive and largest amounts of communal property will obviously pay the most in rentIn this way the form of communal ownership of land and buildings that Spinoza recommendsalso acts as a mechanism for the redistribution of wealth

The only communist practice of the Anabaptists that does not find an equivalent inSpinozarsquos writings is that of the cooperative organization of work The absence is related toSpinozarsquos inability to resolve the problem of political agency in the TPT An attempt to mobilizethe multitude on behalf of democratic social change would need to address the organization ofwork in such a way as to alleviate the burden of toil Reducing the number of hours spent inonerous labor is the only way to provide the multitude with the free time necessary to participatein institutionalized democratic politics Along with the redistribution of wealth and thedevelopment of communal property the cooperative reorganization of work would need to beincorporated as a plank in the latent political program that makes its first democratic appearancein the TPT and is extended in a communist direction in the passages from the Ethics and thePolitical Treatise that we have just examined But that would constitute an explicit anddangerous appeal to the multitude as the agent of political and social transformation an appealthat Spinoza consistently rejects It would involve nothing less than the revival of therevolutionary energies of the Peasant War on a new seventeenth-century foundation

In spite of his radicalism Spinoza doubted that revolution was capable of reconstructingsociety and the state in the way revolutionaries wanted In Chapter 18 of the TPT he takes aposition that is at least on the surface opposed to revolution or any attempt to change the formof the state fundamentally The context is a discussion of the transition from the early Hebrewcommonwealth in which the people held sovereignty to the rule of kings Spinoza tells us thatthe first period saw only a single civil war and concluded with a compassion for the vanquishedthat resulted in lasting peace By contrast the period of kings was marred by multiple warswaged only for the glory of the rulers and involved the massacre of hundreds of thousandsDuring the first period few prophets arose to rebuke the Jews while a great many emergedduring the time of the monarchies From this example Spinoza reasons that it is fatal for peopleaccustomed to popular sovereignty and governed by settled laws to adopt a new monarchicalform of government On the one hand they will be unable to tolerate the arbitrary exercise ofpower by a single individual while on the other the new monarch will be compelled to abolishthe existing laws because they did not originate by his own authority But it is just as dangerousaccording to Spinoza for the subjects of a monarch to attempt his replacement with popular ruleThis is because a popular revolution must advance to the point where it annihilates the king thekingrsquos family and the friends of the king in order to prevent the restoration of royal power But inthe process the revolutionary authority must assume a power even more draconian then thatpreviously exercised by the king In addition having committed regicide the new popularauthority faces the danger that it will fall victim to its own precedent For this reason as well andin the interest of survival it must wield power more repressively than the deposed sovereignSpinoza illustrates his point with reference to the English revolution which eliminated themonarch Charles I only to replace him with the Lord Protector Cromwell who was monarch inall but name and more repressive than Charles

Spinozarsquos point seems unassailable especially since the pattern he describes in the caseof the English Revolution repeated itself over the course of the next three centuries in the French

and Russian Revolutions It is at least arguable that Napoleon if not Robespierre was a newLouis XVI and Stalin a new Tsar even if this understates the more fundamental social changesthat resulted form the two revolutions Still Spinoza does not absolutely proscribe therevolutionary overthrow of a tyrannical government but says instead that there is a great dangerin making the attempt Besides his analysis of the conditions necessary for retaining sovereigntydoes not leave the decision about whether to engage in revolution up to militants He argues thatno state can survive that creates mass indignation in its people and this is precisely theunavoidable result of tyrannical government Spinozarsquos real purpose in Chapter 18 is to opposethe Orangist-Calvinist project of replacing the Dutch Republic with a monarchy ldquoAs for theEstates of Hollandrdquo he writes ldquoas far as we know they never had kings but counts to whom theright of sovereignty was never transferredrdquo His point is that the Dutch War of Independenceagainst Spain was justified because it restored the sovereignty of the people against the attemptby the Spanish ldquocountrdquo (King Philip II) to abolish it However any attempt to replace theRepublic with a monarchy would change the form of the state disastrously by divesting thepeople of their former rights

When Spinoza wrote his treatise the only revolutionary forces that existed were on theRight The danger he warns about in Chapter 18 of the TPT did indeed come to pass only oneyear after his letter to Jelles In 1672 a Calvinist-Orangist mob hacked Johan De Witt and hisbrother Cornelius to death at a time when Holland was invaded by the French army Streetorators stirred up the mob by claiming that the invasion was the result of the brothersrsquo treason Inthe aftermath of the murders William III prince of Orange was elevated to the position ofstadtholder of Holland Although William went on to become King of England he stopped shortof claiming a Dutch throne However in actuality he substituted his own power for much of thatwhich had belonged to the Estates General while the Reformed Church gained considerableinfluence in Dutch government According to a story made famous by Spinozarsquos earliestbiographer Johannes Colerus when the De Witt brothers were murdered Spinozarsquos landlordthwarted his attempt to go the site of the assassinations where the bodies of the brothers werestill on gruesome display in order to plant a sign reading Ultimi Barbarorum (the ultimatebarbarians) In this way the landlord undoubtedly saved the philosopherrsquos life It was the onlytime we know of when the mature Spinoza gave in to his passive affects in a significant way

There is a passage in Chapter 18 of the TPT that uncannily anticipates the murders

Tyranny is most violent where individual beliefs which are unalienable rights areregarded as criminal Indeed in such circumstances the anger of the common people[plebis] is usually the greatest tyrant of allhellip the vilest hypocrites urged on by that samefury which they call zeal for Gods law have everywhere persecuted men whoseblameless character and distinguished qualities have excited the hostility of the commonpeople [plebi] publicly denouncing their beliefs and inflaming the savage multitudersquos[multitudinem] anger against them

Spinoza was the first political philosopher who grappled with the problem of a mass-

based politics of the Right The problem would occur again with the fascist movements of the1920s and 1930s and with the return of the rightwing religious fundamentalisms of our own dayndash Jewish Christian Muslim and Hindu It is not surprising that he failed to solve the problemdefinitively since it continues to remain unsolved The remarkable thing about Spinoza thoughis not that he was skeptical about the liberatory possibilities of revolution by the masses but thathe defended the idea of a popular democracy nonetheless And this he continued to do even inthe aftermath of the De Witt murders In his work on the Political Treatise in the final year of hislife Spinoza developed a powerful critique of the elitist claim that the multitude are incapable ofgoverning

Yet perhaps our [democratic] suggestions will be received with ridicule by those whorestrict to the common people the faults that are inherent in all mankind saying There

is no moderation in the mob they terrorize unless they are frightened and Thecommon people is either a humble servant or an arrogant master there is no truth orjudgment in itrdquo and the like But all men share in one and the same nature it is powerand culture that mislead us with the result that when two men do the same thing weoften say that it is permissible for the one to do it and not the other not because of anydifference in the thing done but in the doer hellipThen again There is no moderation inthe mob they terrorize unless they are frightened For freedom and slavery do not gowell together Finally that there is no truth or judgment in the common people is notsurprising since the important affairs of state are conducted without their knowledgeand from the little that cannot be concealed they can only make conjecturehellip Howeveras we have said all men have the same nature ndash all grow haughty with rule terrorizeunless they are frightened ndash and everywhere truth becomes a casualty through hostilityor servility especially when despotic power is in the hands of one or a few who in trialspay attention not to justice or truth but to the extent of a persons wealth

Surprisingly Spinoza develops this democratic argument while discussing the institutions

appropriate to a monarchy But the key point he makes in the discussion is that a condition ofeffective monarchical rule is expansion of the democratic element within the state in the form ofa sizeable legislative council whose members are drawn from the general population of citizensover the age of fifty On Spinozarsquos view the mistake those who oppose democracy make isassuming that the faults exhibited by the common people ndash such as poor judgment arroganceand hostility ndash belong only to them while they are in fact typical of human beings Actually it iselitist politics that magnifies these all-too-human faults by restricting political power to a limitednumber of people while democratic politics minimizes them through the principle of majorityrule among numerous decision-makers The reason as we already know is that passions pullpeople in different directions making it nearly impossible for the members of a large council toagree on a common position unless they make decisions based not on passion but an idea of thecommon good On Spinozarsquos view it is when government is in the hands of a single person oronly a few people that the dangers the critics of democracy attribute to the common people are infact the greatest

Spinoza also argues against the claim that the common people are not qualified to makepolitical decisions because they lack the necessary education or degree of intellect There is noone he says who has been engaged in an occupation until the age of fifty who lacksunderstanding of his sphere of work ldquoevery man is reasonably competent and sagacious inmatters in which he has been long and attentively engagedrdquo So each is qualified at least to giveadvice in the kingrsquos council concerning his own business especially if given the time necessaryto reflect on the matter under discussion

Most of all the plebs are the group best suited to serving on the council because theirinterest is that of society as a whole ldquoHence it follows that counselors must necessarily beappointed whose private fortune and advantage depend on the general welfare and the peace ofallrdquo For example Spinoza emphasizes the idea that the common people have the highest stake inavoiding war or concluding an existing war with a settlement that brings lasting peace Thereason is they are ones who bear the heaviest burdens of war Unlike the wealthy well-bornmembers of society it is the common person whose occupation is most likely to be interrupted itis his taxes that are raised to onerous levels and it is his son who dies Thus the common interestof society in peace is best served not by a wealthy or educated elite but rather by those whohave the most to lose from war

At the end of the long paragraph defending popular power quoted above Spinozaconnects the question of who holds power within the state to that of who owns property Truthand justice he says are casualties in states where power is held by one person or a handful ofpeople who conduct courtroom trials that favor the rich The implication is that elitist politicalpower and ownership of wealth are intrinsically connected One of the reasons Spinozarecommends public ownership of land and buildings in a monarchy is to prevent the rise of aclass of wealthy landowners with interests different than those of the rest of society Under the

conditions of common ownership ldquothe greatest part of the council will generally have one andthe same attitude of mind towards their common interests and peaceful activitieshelliprdquo And yethaving gone this far he has trouble imagining a state where fixed property is owned collectivelyin which the actually existing multitude holds power The peasants artisans and urban poor whoconstitute the common people of the United Provinces drop out of the picture in the democratic-communist monarchy he describes and nearly everyone makes his living by selling merchandiseor lending money to countrymen ldquoall will have to make a living by engaging in trade or bylending money to their fellow citizensrdquo He seems to assume that the collectivization of land andfixed property would eliminate the occupations of peasant and artisan leaving trade and loaningat interest the only remaining possibilities of work But that of course is not true The fact thatpeople would have to rent farm land would not prevent them from farming any more than theneed to rent workshops in the cities and towns would prevent artisans from plying their tradesBut Spinoza finds the idea of a commonwealth based on commercial enterprise politicallyappealing This is because he regards commercial occupations as contributing to harmony andpeace since he claims they establish connections between people that further the interests of allwhile those who engage in them prosper only in peacetime Both of these assumptions are asquestionable as the expectation that non-commercial occupations will die out After all even inSpinozarsquos day colonialism and the struggle for colonies between imperialist states led to warsbetween the great powers including the United Provinces not to mention the military and otherforms of violence involved in subjugating the colonies The East India Company was not exactlya force for peace What seems to be at work here instead is a failure of social imaginationthough one we may find understandable given the fact that the capitalist economy was still at anearly stage in its development However this may be there is no denying the fact that despite hispowerful arguments in favor of democratic rule and communal property it is still a bourgeoissociety and state that Spinoza envisions

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of what we should not hesitate to call Spinozarsquoscommunism is the critique of private ownership he develops in the Ethics based on his theory ofaffects For him there is a paradox involved in social and political life It stems from the fact thaton the one hand people can survive and develop their capacities only by joining with oneanother in societies and states But on the other hand the necessity of combining with oneanother does not prevent them from seeking their own advantage above that of their fellowsbeing quarrelsome or hateful and erecting obstacles to each otherrsquos happiness Spinoza identifiesthe reason for these deep-rooted problems of social coexistence in Part IV Proposition 35 of theEthics ldquoInsofar as men are assailed by emotions that are passive they can be contrary to oneanotherrdquo Emotions are states of the body characterized by a transition from a lower degree of thepower to exist and act (conatus) to a higher one or conversely from a higher degree to a lowerone The first transition is the affect of joy while the second is that of sadness Passive emotionsare caused by an object external to the body or more precisely external to its essential natureSpinoza conceives of that nature as a specific proportion of motion-and-rest that the parts of thebody exhibit in relation to one another While joy is an increase in our capacity to preserve theproportion of motion-and-rest essential to our body (ie to exist and act as we do) sadness is adecrease in that capacity The political problem created by the passive emotions is that evenwhen they are joyful they are not under the control of the person who experiences themMoreover different people are affected by the same external object in different ways because theparts of their bodies and their proportionate relations of motion-and rest-differ The same objectmay elicit anger in one person and pity in another or love in one and hatred in another and soon And because people differ in their emotional reactions to the same things they also differ inthe judgments they frame on the basis of these reactions What one person praises anotherperson blames what one regards as fearless another believes to be timid etc Finally sincepeople act upon their judgments seeking to foster what they judge to be good and destroy whatthey judge to be bad their differing judgments can result in actions that are in conflict with oneanother In short ldquoinsofar as they are assailed by passive emotions [people] can be contrary toone anotherrdquo

In Proposition 34 Spinoza gives an example of the contrariety caused by the passiveaffects Suppose Peter has sole possession of something Paul loves Deprivation of the loved

object causes sadness in Paul with the idea of Peter as its cause In accordance with Spinozarsquosdefinition of hatred Paul will hate Peter and therefore seek to injure or destroy him in order toremove the cause of his Paulrsquos sadness Spinoza says that this example may seem wrong becausePaul and Peter appear to be contrary to one another because of something they share ndash ie theirlove for the thing Peter possesses But that is not the case Paul has an image of himself aslacking the loved object while Peter has an image of himself as possessing the loved object Sothey in fact differ from one another by virtue of the different images they have rather than bypossessing something in common It is clear from the example that the root of this contrariety ndashie this enmity ndash between Paul and Peter is the fact that the object can be possessed by only oneof them so that what one has the other must lack The difficulty with private property is that it isexclusive to the one who possesses it which means that what I experience as possession othersexperience as deprivation It may seem that there is no problem if other people are indifferent tothe thing I possess However in accordance with Spinozarsquos theory of the imitation of affects themere fact that I love the thing I own other things being equal will cause you to love it as wellMy exclusive possession of the thing will therefore cause sadness in you that takes the form ofhatred or more precisely the kind of hatred called envy which involves pain at the good fortuneof another ldquohuman nature is in general so constituted that men pity the unfortunate and envy thefortunate in the latter case with a hatred proportionate to their love of what they think anotherpossessesrdquo

Common Possession Friendship and Philosophy

In the Ethics Spinoza does not follow his analysis of the antagonisms of private property

by considering the collective possession of material goods (although he does advocateredistribution of wealth to the poor in Part 4 as we have seen) But the theme of commonpossession figures large in the book anyway in his treatment of the intellectual love of God Inorder to understand the connection between common possession and amor Dei intellectualis itwill be necessary to engage in a detailed analysis of Spinozarsquos metaphysics We will begin thattask in earnest in the next chapter At this point we will simply introduce the theme byexamining the relationship between friendship and common possession in the letter to Jelles andsome related writings

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo unlike the similar passages fromActs has its provenance among philosophers Spinoza mistakenly attributes it to Thales but itoccurs in Platorsquos Phaedrus and Laws and is present though not in so many words in thediscussion in the Republic of common ownership of property by the guardian class Thetradition cited by Erasmus that traces the proverb back to Pythagoras is plausible when weconsider the influence the Pythagorean community in Sicily had on Plato in the aftermath ofSocratesrsquo death Erasmus sees the supposed use of a common fund by the Pythagoreans as ananticipation of the similar practice in Acts But Spinozarsquos approach is different What interestshim in the letter is common ownership not as a religious practice but as a matter of thephilosopherrsquos relation to the world Remember the deductive consequences of the proverb sinceall things are in common among friends everything belongs to the wise because the wise arefriends of the gods and all things belong to the gods But what does it mean to say that the wiseare friends of the gods

Although Spinoza uses the word ldquofriendshiprdquo often in his writings he never supplies aformal definition However we can reconstruct the wordrsquos meaning from the contexts in whichhe uses it So for example Proposition 35 of Part III of the Ethics reads

If anyone thinks that there is between the object of his love and another person the sameor a more intimate bond of friendship than there was between them when he alone usedto possess the object loved he will be affected with hatred toward the object loved andwill envy his rival

According to the proposition friendship is an intimate bond between a person and the

object he loves I hate an object of love that I alone once possessed when it wounds my vanity byloving someone else more than me So the object of love must be capable of loving whichmeans that the bond of friendship is a relation of reciprocal love between persons Nowaccording to Spinoza I love something when I have the idea of that thing as the cause of myexperience of joy Joy is an increase in conatus which Spinoza defines as the tendency to persistin being or equivalently the ability to exist and act So friendship is a relation in which Iidentify the other person as the cause of an increase in my conatus and the other personidentifies me as the cause of a similar increase in his or hers Two things each of which causesan increase in the ability to exist and act of the other are said by Spinoza to be in harmony Sincetwo entities in harmony have more combined power than either does singly it is to the advantageof each to be in harmony with the other There is even greater advantage in entering intoharmonious connection with a third individual and the greatest advantage in combining with asmany individuals as possible This is a universal metaphysical principle For example it pertainsjust as much to chemical combination or herding among animals as it does to social relationsbetween people In the case of human relationships it is the fundamental basis of politics orrather one of its two bases the other one being the tendency human beings have to conflict withone another When the state is functioning well it involves not a random collection ofindividuals and certainly not the war of each against all but a group whose members are boundto one another by friendship the human form of harmony Thus for Spinoza friendship is apolitical virtue as it was for Plato and Aristotle

The opposite of friendship is enmity That person is my enemy whom I regard as thecause of my sadness or pain which is the same as saying the cause of a decrease in my abilityto exist and act Like friendship enmity is a reciprocal relationship If I identify you as the causeof my sadness I will seek to injure or eliminate you But that means I will be identified in yourmind as the cause of your sadness Enmity is a relation of reciprocal hatred just as friendship is arelation of reciprocal love Just as there is harmony between friends there is discord betweenenemies The fundamental task of a rational politics is easy to state it is to extend and intensifyfriendship and to reduce and mollify enmity

We have already seen that Spinoza identifies solidarity (generositas) as one of the twoforms of strength of mind (fortitudo) which is the virtue that belongs to the exercise of theintellect Solidarity is the desire to assist others and foster friendship on the basis of reason aloneThe friendship fostered by solidarity is a bond of active love The love of friends for one anotheris active when each person who loves is the adequate cause of his or her love To say that theperson is the adequate cause means that the cause of love is internal to the person who feels it inother words that the love is self-generated Active love differs from passive love in that thecause of passive love is at least partially something that exists outside the person who has theemotion The problem with passive love is that it need not be constant If the bodily dispositionof the person changes in a particular way then the object of erstwhile love will have a differentemotional effect Passive love can change into boredom or indifference or even hatred This isnot possible in the case of active love because it is self-generated Since love involves theexperience of joy no one actively abandons it

There seems to be something odd about the idea of a love between persons that isinternally generated by each of the partners in the relationship Is it not the case that part of theessence of love is the fact that the object of my love is the cause of my love Without denyingthis Spinoza identifies two forms of love that are self-generated in the Ethics One is myintellectual love of God It is indeed true that God is the cause of my love but only insofar as myintellect is part of the infinite intellect of God Thus the object that causes my love - ie God - isinternal to my mind and conversely my mind is internal to it Such reciprocal internality ndash hardas it is to visualize ndash is what Spinoza means by immanence God he tells us is the immanentcause of everything that exists Nothing can exist apart from God while God expresses himselfin all of the things that exist My love of God and Gods love of himself are one and the samebecause Godrsquos intellect is immanent in mine The second form of self-generated love is the

friendship that exists between me and others who love God through the exercise of the intellectThe reason is that the joy I feel in loving God is by the imitation of affects augmented by thejoy you feel in loving God But your love as well as mine is joy caused by the same immanentbeing Another way of saying this is that your intellect and mine are parts (ie finiteexpressions) of the infinite intellect of God Thus the relationship between friends who are boundtogether by the common exercise of the intellect and the love of God that flows from it is basedon an internal bond an internal object and cause of love In this kind of love you and I as itwere discover one another internally You are inside of me and I am inside of you Thus whenyou augment my love and I augment yours it is Gods power as the intellect immanent in us boththat causes the augmentation even though we remain finite individual beings In this state ofaffairs which is admittedly difficult to grasp we can see the rational meaning of the command tolove God by loving the neighbor In intellectual love God not insofar as he is infinite butinsofar as he expresses himself in my finite intellect loves God as he expresses himself in yourfinite intellect

For Spinoza the exercise of the intellect is very different than our ordinary experience ofthe world In the course of ordinary experience we encounter objects in a way that appearshaphazard disordered and incomplete This is so first of all because our encounters are part ofan infinitely complex chain of natural causes and effects of which we know only very limitedparts In addition our experience of objects has as much to do with the condition our bodies arein when we encounter them as it does with the nature of the objects themselves By contrast inexercising the intellect we arrange our ideas in an intelligible pattern that is internal to the mindand entirely different than the images we accumulate through sensory experience The ideas arean expression of our power while the images result from our hapless deliverance to chanceEmotions caused by objects we encounter in the course of ordinary experience are externallydetermined and therefore passive while emotions caused by acts of intellectual comprehensionare internally generated and therefore active That is why love as an active emotion has its originin the exercise of the intellect and the most satisfying form of friendship is based on thereciprocal experience of such love In a letter to Willem van Blyenberg Spinoza provides themost complete description of this kind of friendship to be found in his writings

For my part of all things that are not under my control what I most value is to enterinto a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth For I believe that such a lovingrelationship affords us a serenity surpassing any other boon in the whole wide worldThe love that such men bear to one another grounded as it is in the love that each hasfor knowledge of truth is as unshakable as is the acceptance of truth once it has beenperceived It is moreover the highest source of happiness to be found in things notunder our command for truth more than anything else has the power to effect a closeunion between different sentiments and dispositions

Spinoza says that a friendship based on the love of truth is not under our control But how

can that be if intellectual friendship involves a form of love internally generated by each friendIt would seem that the love we generate through the exercise of the intellect is fully under ourcontrol Spinoza however is referring to the fact that we are able to become friends only withpeople we actually meet which is something that occurs in the course of ordinary haphazarddisordered experience To a large extent our friendships are a matter of chance By way ofillustrating this point it turned out that Spinoza decided his initial judgment of Blyenberg wasmistaken He broke off their correspondence when he realized that the infinite chain of causesand effects had brought his way not a lover of truth but a dogmatic worshipper of the ldquopaperand inkrdquo of the Bible

People create commonwealths because the power of each to exist and act is increased byall others who transfer their rights to the sovereign For reasons we have already considered thepolitical bond is one of friendship ldquoIt is of the first importance to men to establish closerelationships and to bind themselves together with such ties as may most effectively unite theminto one body and as an absolute rule to act in such a way as serves to strengthen friendshiprdquo If

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

good ndash whether or not that is their intention The desire of the members of the council to be seenas seeking the friendship of the masses ensures the rationality of the formerrsquos decisions becauseit causes them to seek the common good even if they do so from fear rather than dedication toreason One might object that appearing to seek the friendship of the masses entails only that thecouncil appear to seek the common good not that it actually does so But it is not possible for thecouncil to neglect the common interest over the long run without dire consequences unless weassume that the masses are so benighted that they are unable to discern the consistent violation oftheir interests The appearance and reality of seeking the friendship of the masses areindistinguishable as proved nearly two hundred years later by a theorem of Abraham LincolnsIt is possible to fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the timebut not all of the people all of the time If that theorem were not true then there would be nolimit to the power of tyrants while Spinoza is fond of quoting Tacitus that tyrannies never lastlong Once again the reason for their inevitable downfall is the indignation they provokethrough the harm they cause to the interests of the multitude

Although Spinoza does not make the point explicitly it is easy to see that a democraticcouncil does not require the same concern with the honorable as an aristocratic one because fearof the masses has no role to play in a democracy Since the common people who are the vastmajority of society are empowered to make decisions they have no need to evoke fear indecision-makers different than themselves in order to protect their own interests Thus in the caseof a democratic council the impossibility of a large number of people agreeing on ldquothe samepiece of follyrdquo is enough to secure political rationality ie the discovery and implementation ofthe common good

An implication of Spinozarsquos emphasis on the affinity between democracy and reason isthat democracy is a kind school for developing rationality The need to make and assess publicarguments about the common good requires clarity of thought and some understanding of theprinciples of logical implication In addition while citizens of a democracy agree to obey the lawor decree established by a vote of the majority they retain their freedom of judgment includingthe right to argue in favor of reversing decisions already made Thus there is no point in ademocracy at which citizens must give up their efforts to influence collective decisions andtherefore no point at which rationality becomes irrelevant However reason is not simply ameans of achieving the common good as an external end It is part of the common good forhuman beings and therefore itself one the ends it seeks to achieve The highest good is theintellectual love of God ndash so Spinoza argues in the Ethics ndash which we cannot attain withoutexercising reason Democracy then turns out to be not only the best way of securing thecommon good of the members of a polity but the best way of advancing the ultimate goodappropriate to human beings in general

Spinozarsquos advocacy of democracy was exceedingly radical at a time when monarchy wasthe political norm in Europe and even the oligarchic regent-dominated Dutch Republic waswidely regarded as an ultra-left anomaly But it sits uncomfortably with another aspect of theTPT namely its apparently low opinion of ldquothe multituderdquo (multitudo) In the Introduction to thebook which was written in Latin Spinoza tells his readers that he would prefer that ldquothecommon peoplerdquo (plebs) not read the work since they are incapable of understanding it andlikely to distort its meaning He pictures its members as entirely driven by their passions andincapable of using reason

I know how deeply rooted in the mind are the prejudices embraced under the guise ofpiety I know too that the masses [vulgo] can no more be freed from their superstitionthan from their fears Finally I know that they are unchanging in their obstinacy thatthey are not guided by reason and that their praise and blame is at the mercy of impulse

But this judgment throws into question the affinity between democracy and reason that

Spinoza affirms in the TPT For in order for such an affinity to exist the common people mustbe able to make decisions on the basis of reason Is the negative picture he paints of the masses

in the Introduction to the TPT simply a rhetorical device meant to appeal to the vanity of hiseducated readership It does not seem to be because a similarly low opinion appears again in theEthics and in some of his letters where there is no need to appeal to anyonersquos vanity Instead offunctioning simply as a rhetorical ploy Spinozarsquos generally negative view of the vast majority ofsociety and the positive view he develops in his advocacy of democracy indicate a tension in hispolitics

In the Ethics and TPT Spinoza uses the words vulgus plebs and multitudointerchangeably When any of the three word appears it is usually accompanied by suchqualifiers as ldquoirrationalrdquo ldquoignorantrdquo ldquouneducatedrdquo ldquosuperstitiousrdquo and ldquogoverned by passionsrdquoStill for Spinoza reason is not the possession of a natural elite Rather it is a universally humancapacity whose occurrence among people in developed form is rare Above all the cultivation ofreason requires free time There are two references to this requirement in the TPT that bear onthe ability of the multitude to develop their rational capacities One passage refers to ldquothecommon peoplerdquo as ldquofor the most part knowing nothing of logical reasoning or without leisurefor itrdquo Another refers to Spinozarsquos method of biblical exegesis noting that ldquoour own methoddemands a knowledge of Hebrew for which study the common people can likewise have noleisurerdquo A third passage which we have already referred to is relevant to the relationshipbetween leisure and the cultivation of reason while not mentioning it directly ldquothe multitude arealways at the same level of miseryrdquo Although Spinoza does not specify what he means by thelast statement it is likely that he is referring at least in part to the misery of onerous labor Thepoverty of the multitude demands that they spend most of their time engaged in hard physicalwork and the resulting absence of leisure prevents them from acquiring knowledge anddeveloping rational skills Lacking developed reason it is easy for them to fall under the sway ofthose who manipulate their fears and hopes for their own personal advantage the priestsministers rabbis and other religious officials In Spinozarsquos view fears and hopes make themultitude credulous and willing to accept superstitious beliefs (in divination the ability ofprayer to change the natural course of events the purchase of indulgences etc) that promisecontrol of an uncertain future For clerics the key to power and money is manipulation of thegreat majority of society through the instrument of superstition masked as religion

While the words plebs vulgus and multitudo do not designate a particular social classthey are not free of class reference either Spinoza uses the word plebs much as it was used in theearly Roman Republic to refer to the free subjects of a state who have no right to participate ingovernment Although plebs designates a political status rather than an economic class Spinozais clear that the group it refers to consists largely in those who work with their hands Forexample in the Political Treatise he identifies artisans as an example of the plebs the onlyexample in any of his writings Undoubtedly he would also have included peasants and wageworkers in that category and probably small retail merchants who were also politicallydisenfranchised Patricians by contrast certainly include nobles but may also include at least thewealthier burghers as was the case in the United Provinces Germany and much of the rest ofEurope The word vulgus as Spinoza uses it refers to the same members of society as the wordplebs but with the specific connotation of a lack of education and culture whose most extremeexpression is the unruly and irrational behavior of mobs In fact depending upon the contextvulgus is sometimes best translated as ldquocrowdrdquo or ldquomobrdquo Multitudo means ldquothe manyrdquo Spinozauses it to designate any group with numerous members including for example the simplebodies that make up a chemical substance In the context of political theory he uses the word torefer to the same people who comprise the plebs or vulgus but with the specific connotation ofbeing the vast majority of society Thus plebs vulgus and multitudo have the same referentalthough their principal connotations differ However in Spinozarsquos usage each word tends tobecome a synecdoche for the combined meaning of all three Thus in general the plebs vulgusor multitudo comprise the vast majority of society comprised largely of those who work withtheir hands are denied political rights except in democracies lack culture and education and aregiven to uncouth irrational or unruly behavior

The tension in Spinozarsquos politics between his critical view of the multitude and hisadvocacy of a democratic state in which it is sovereign can be explained by drawing a distinctionbetween the multitude as it is under the conditions of the actually existing Dutch Republic and

the multitude as it could be were Spinozarsquos reforms to be implemented With an uncontrolledReform Church and a Republic dominated by regents who represent the wealthy burghers themultitude has no chancing of shedding its superstitions or developing its rational capacities TheChurch manipulates their hopes and fears through the instrument of superstition and therepublican oligarchs block their participation in political decision-making which is the only waythey can develop rationality on a significant scale The story would be very different however ifthe state were both democratic and prohibited the Church from involvement in politics Twomajor conditions would then exist for the development of reason on a mass scale

The idea of a democracy raises the problem of how people without significant materialresources are to participate in making decisions when they must spend their lives in toil It mightbe thought that the problem can be solved by a universal franchise enabling all citizens to votefor representatives to a legislative assembly and other state offices But even if measures were inplace to prevent the wealthy minority from exercising unequal influence in elected bodiesrepresentative government is not Spinozarsquos idea of democracy Like Plato and Aristotle when heuses the term ldquodemocracyrdquo he has in mind a state such as the Athenian polis in which all adult(male) citizens were empowered to vote directly on legislation and other public matters Spinozamakes this clear in the unfinished chapter on democracy in the Political Treatise

hellipin this state all who are born of citizen parents or on native soil or have done serviceto the commonwealth or are qualified on any other grounds on which the right ofcitizenship is granted by law all I say can lawfully demand for themselves the right tovote in the supreme council and to undertake offices of state nor can they be refusedexcept for crime or dishonor

At a relatively advanced stage in its development the Athenian polis solved the problem

of the multitudersquos participation in government by paying citizens to attend sessions of theAssembly thereby compensating them for missed days of work If Spinoza was aware of theAthenian solution he gives no indication of it in his writings although it is likely that he wouldhave considered the problem of participation in politics by those without leisure in the part of thePolitical Treatise he left unfinished at his death Following the pattern of the completed chapterson monarchy and aristocracy the unfinished chapters on democracy would undoubtedly havespecified the institutional structures and practices necessary to sustain a democratic state In anyevent without something like the Athenian solution the idea of a democratic republic in theUnited Provinces would have been no more than the sort of utopian dream Spinoza rejects in theIntroduction to the Political Treatise

Returning to the earlier work the program for reforming the Dutch Republic that emergesin the TPT has three planks 1) establish state control over the churches as public institutions 2)guarantee freedom of thought expression and private worship and 3) democratize the oligarchicRepublic Although Spinozarsquos book is a work of philosophy it is equally a political interventionin a concrete historical situation a fact that he indicates in his letter to Jelles by referring to theldquocauserdquo he asks his friend to serve by blocking the Dutch translation of the book But in order toact as a political intervention the book must influence the beliefs and through them the actionsof people That raises the question To whom is the TPT addressed Since the decision to write inLatin effectively prevented the multitude from reading the work (which as we have seen wasSpinozarsquos intention) and on the assumption that not many aristocrats were likely to be swayedby its radical arguments the addressee of the book can only have been the educated section ofthe bourgeoisie Since Spinoza was unlikely to sway many conservative Calvinists with hisrationalist conception of religion there were only two groups within the bourgeoisie ndash at leastsome of whose members were capable of reading Latin ndash that the work could effectively addressThe first consists in republicans including the regents who hesitated to support the kind of stateauthority over religion that Spinoza advocated for ideological or pragmatic reasons The secondconsists in Orangists who were liberals in matters of religion and so in conflict with the ReformChurch As odd as it may seem there were a good number of people who fit into the secondcategory Even many of the Collegiantrsquos were loyal to the House of Orange in spite of theirpronounced religious liberalism

Had the TPTrsquos program been limited to its first two planks ndash state control of the churchesand freedom of thought and expression ndash it would have been politically coherent But where doesthe idea of democratizing the United Provinces fit into this picture Neither bourgeoisrepublicans nor religious liberals were apt to be sympathetic to the idea of a democratic republicthat would place power in the hands of the multitude If Spinoza wanted to make an appeal to therepublican and liberal Orangist sections of the bourgeoisie he ought to have been defending theexisting oligarchic Republic against its conservative Calvinist and monarchist enemies ratherthan elaborating an argument for its democratization There is only one audience who wouldhave been sympathetic to that argument namely the peasants artisans wage-workers and smallmerchants who comprised the multitude But that is precisely the readership Spinoza deniedhimself by writing in Latin

And yet Spinoza understood that the only way the Republic could survive in face of thealliance between the Reform Church and the House of Orange was to shift the allegiance of themultitude by winning its support Thus the contradiction in Spinozarsquos program is not a theoreticalflaw but a reflection of the real contradiction involved in the stadtholderless Republic or if youprefer the instability in the balance of social forces that enabled it to exist The Republic couldsurvive only by means of an impossible alliance between the multitude and the regents IfSpinoza erred it was in believing that it was possible to convince the regents to democratize bythe force of his arguments But this was the same as asking them to commit political suicidesince their power on the urban and national levels depended upon their ability to defend theirmonopoly on state offices The only alternative which Spinoza rejected was a popularrevolution that would create a new and radically democratic republic But that republic wouldshare with the existing one no more than the name like the animal dog and the dog star thatSpinoza refers to in a different context For that reason it would have fallen under his warningthat those who attempt to change the form of the state are likely to see it restored in a morerepressive version (see page 25 below) In short there was no solution to the problem the TPTattempted to solve or at least none within the limits of Spinozarsquos thinking As a political theoryand a theory of biblical hermeneutics the book is a brilliant work that went on to influencephilosophers and ironically theologians for the next three centuries As an intervention in theextraordinarily difficult and complex political situation of the seventeenth-century Netherlands itwas and had to be an utter failure

There are in fact two political programs in the TPT an overt program and a latent oneThe overt program is liberal republican and bourgeois in the sense that its addressee andintended agent of change is the educated bourgeoisie The latent program lies quite a bit furtherto the left It is radically democratic and its only possible agent of change is the multitude Letter44 makes a contribution to the latent program that moves in an even more radical direction

The Communist Idea

In his letter to Jelles Spinoza develops an idea of the highest good for human beings as

an alternative to what he argues is the false conception of Homo Politicus For the author of thatbook wealth and honors comprise the highest good But Spinoza claims in the letter thatcommonwealths devoted to the pursuit of wealth and honors ldquomust necessarily perish and haveperishedrdquo He then writes

How far superior indeed and excellent were the reflections of Thales of Miletus compared with this writer is shown by the following account All things he said are incommon among friends

The fact that this paragraph follows Spinozarsquos critique of Homo Politicus while proposing

an alternative to the apparent position of its author justifies an interpretation that takes it in apolitical sense Spinoza should be read as offering the saying of Thales as an addendum to the

latent program he articulates in the TPT Like democracy common ownership could have onlyone social basis in the Netherlands of the seventeenth century ndash namely the peasants artisanswage-workers and small retail merchants The problem this raises is how to make the transitionfrom a multitude given to irrationality and superstition ndash and therefore under the sway of theReformed Church ndash to one capable of the rationality necessary to create the democraticcommunism (the content of which we have yet to define) that Letter 44 implies when consideredalong with the TPT Spinoza saw no answer to this problem That is why he suppressed his latentproject in favor of the overt one for a liberal republic able to assert its sovereign authority overthe Church It seemed to him that the educated bourgeoisie had political capacities that themultitude lacked

Spinozarsquos judgment on this matter is similar mutatis mutandis to that of FrederickEngels in the Peasant War in Germany For Engels the Peasant War of the sixteenth century wasa heroic but premature revolution Under the leadership of Thomas Muumlntzer the peasantsadopted a program that included the expropriation of ecclesiastic and aristocratic property andthe common ownership of goods But the princes were the only group with the wealth andmilitary resources necessary to benefit from the ensuing turmoil while their rivals for power ndashthe Catholic prelates and lesser nobility ndash were ruined by the confiscation of property andplundering or destruction of fixed wealth by the peasant masses The rising bourgeoisie was ableto frame an independent liberal political program but did not yet have the social weightnecessary to play a leading role in the economy and the state According to Engels the peasantrywas incapable of mastering the new forces of production unleashed by the world market and theonly class that might have played a progressive role alongside the peasants ndash the proletarianwage-working element in the towns ndash was a very small part of laboring population It would takeanother three centuries for the proletariat to develop along with industry to the point where itwould be able to draft a meaningful equivalent of the communist program first framed by thesixteenth-century German peasantry Spinoza certainly had no idea that industrialization and asizeable proletariat were on their way But he shared with Engels a pessimistic assessment of thechances for a successful social transformation led by peasants and their allies Perhaps with thedisastrous defeat of the German peasants in mind (as well as the allegiance of the Dutchmultitude to the Reformed Church) Spinoza judged that relying upon the common people as anagent of social and political change in his own century would have been equally futile

Why then does Spinoza raise the issue of common ownership in Letter 44 The answer isthe same as for why he discusses democracy in the TPT when it makes no contribution to hispolitical intervention but on the contrary damages it We could say that Spinoza is either a badmilitant or a good philosopher The truth is he is both Like Platorsquos attempt to influence thecourse of events in Syracuse or Aristotlersquos decision to tutor Alexander the Great Spinozarsquos faithin the political efficacy of philosophical reasoning was misguided There is ample historicalevidence that the philosopher who attempts to be politically effective as a philosopher is doomedto defeat That is why Marx ceased considering himself a philosopher in 1845 as he indicates inthe eleventh of his Theses on Feuerbach ldquoUntil now philosophers have only attempted tounderstand the world the point however is to change itrdquo The project of changing the world isdifferent than that of understanding it from a purely theoretical perspective Of course it ispossible for philosophers to influence statesmen as Locke influenced the drafters of the USConstitution But Lockersquos influence was effective more than a century after he wrote the SecondTreatise on Civil Government and so can hardly be called a political intervention The attempt tointervene politically in a concrete situation in which multiple forces and complex structures arein play is something very different than the delayed influence on the drafters of a constitutionwho have had an opportunity to ponder at leisure the meaning of a philosopherrsquos work The mostimportant question of politics is not so much ldquoWhat is to be donerdquo as ldquoWho is to do itrdquoSpinoza may have been right that the multitude was not the collective subject to defendrepublican liberty That is why he appealed to the Dutch bourgeoisie through its philosophicallyliterate elements But he was too much the philosopher to suppress his argument that ademocratic republic is the kind of state that best preserves freedom and encourages rationalityand he was willing to make his point even at the cost of alienating the collective agent he wasattempting to influence

The reference to common ownership in Letter 44 would have had an even more negativeeffect on his readers should Spinoza have made it in the TPT In private communication withJelles however he was able to raise the topic without risking further political difficultiesSpinozarsquos reference presumes an intellectual history with roots in both ancient Greek philosophyand early Christianity a history that was renewed practically as well as theoretically in earlymodern Europe In the passage from Letter 44 where he introduces the theme of commonownership he goes on to elaborate the position he attributes to Thales Here is the passage in fullthat we have already quoted partially

How far superior indeed and excellent were the reflections of Thales of Miletuscompared with this writer is shown by the following account All things he said are incommon among friends The wise are the friends of the Gods and all things belong tothe Gods therefore all things belong to the wise In this way the wise man makeshimself the richest by nobly despising riches instead of greedily pursuing them

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo (Amicorum communia omnia) is

the first entry in his book Adages by the late Renaissance humanist and reform-minded Catholicscholar Desiderius Erasmus The Adages were widely available in Spinozarsquos day and it is likelythat both Spinoza and Jelles had read them although the former must have also consultedErasmusrsquo source for the saying ndash Lives of the Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius We will seewhy in a moment Erasmus cites the same deduction from the maxim as Spinoza does in Letter44 except that he attributes it to Socrates rather than Thales

From this proverb Socrates deduced that all things belong to all good men just as theydo to the gods For to the gods he said belong all things good men are friends of thegods and among friends all possessions are in common

The fact that Spinoza refers to wise men while Erasmus refers to good men does not

indicate any real difference between them because both accepted the ancient Greek and biblicalequivalence between human goodness and wisdom The difference in attributing the deductiveconsequences of the proverb to Thales on the one hand and Socrates on the other also does notindicate any substantive disagreement between Spinoza and Erasmus although it does signify adifference in intellectual vocation and emphasis Interestingly however the attribution in bothcases is incorrect Their common source the Lives of the Philosophers places the argument intothe mouth of Diogenes the Cynic rather than Socrates or Thales Thus both Spinoza and Erasmushave had a failure of memory and probably for the same reason The author of Lives makes itclear that although Diogenes the Cynic despised the pursuit of wealth he was not a veryappealing character he was arrogant and could be verbally and physically abusive to those hejudged to be unwise It is understandable then that the figure of Diogenes would drop out of thememory of both Erasmus and Spinoza and be replaced by a philosopher with whom each tosome extent identified Erasmus the Renaissance humanist undoubtedly found Socrates well-suited to stand in for the part of Diogenes the Cynic because Socrates was a moral philosopherand the teacher of Plato whose influence on the Renaissance was profound As an admirer of thenatural sciences and a maker of telescopes Spinoza would have felt the same way about Thaleswho was an astronomer as well as a philosopher

In Letter 44 a story from Lives follows the identification of Thales as the figureresponsible for the drawing the deductive consequences of the proverb In order to demonstratethat his rejection of the pursuit of wealth was not an alibi for poverty Thales made use of hisexpert knowledge of the heavens Foreseeing a bountiful olive crop after the previous harvestrsquosdearth he rented all of the olive presses in Greece cheaply and then hired them out at a highprice to farmers who needed them to press the oil from their olives In this way he amassed agreat deal of wealth within a single year which ldquohe then distributed with a liberality equal to the

shrewdness by which he had acquired itrdquo Spinozarsquos memory of the story must have acted as abridge for the mistaken identification

The similarity between the ancient Greek proverb and the passages from Acts about thecommunal practices of the early Church with respect to property must have been evident to thebiblical scholar Spinoza Rendered into Latin by Erasmus the proverb ldquoAll things are incommon among friendsrdquo is amicorum communia omnia In Acts 244 ndash ldquoAll that believed weretogether and had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquohad all things in commonrdquo appears in theLatin Vulgate as habebant omnia communia In Acts 432 ndash ldquoNo one claimed that any of theirpossessions was their own but they had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquothey had all thingsin commonrdquo appears in the Vulgate as erant illis omnia communia The equivalence between thecommunia omnia of the proverb and the omnia communia of the two verses from Acts wouldhave been perfectly clear to Spinoza on linguistic grounds alone

In Adages Erasmus is more explicit than Spinoza in connecting the proverb with theverses from Acts He discusses the proverb in its appearance in book 5 of the Laws where Platoappeals to it in order to demonstrate that the best condition of society consists in the communityof possessions Erasmus writes

But it is extraordinary how Christians dislike this common ownership of Platorsquos how infact they throw stones at it although nothing comes closer to the mind of Christ

Further on Erasmus identifies the inventor of the proverb as Pythagoras who he saysestablished a community in which life and property were shared

hellipwhich is the very thing Christ wants to happen among Christians For all those whowere admitted by Pythagoras into that well-known band who followed his instructionswould give to the common fund whatever money and family property they possessed

Even apart from Erasmus the similarity between the Greek philosophersrsquo proverb and the

New Testament passages would have been evident to the Mennonite Jelles from MennoSimonrsquos discussion of the communal practice described in Acts (more on this below) Jelleswould also have found the parallel especially appealing because it makes the principle ofcommon ownership part of that rational philosophical version of Christianity that he and theother Waterlander Mennonites and Collegiants were seeking to establish

Although Erasmus was an advocate of religious reform he never joined the ProtestantReformation remaining a loyal Catholic until his death It is ironic then that during hislifetime the only vigorous champions of the common ownership he espoused were members ofthe most radical wing of the Reformation ironic but completely intelligible since the radicalsrsquoproject was to restore the Church to its original apostolic condition before its accommodationwith worldly power and wealth under Constantine

The Latin phrase designating Anabaptist communism in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies is Omnia sunt communia (for example it appears in this form in the confession theauthorities extracted from Thomas Muumlntzer under torture) It translates into English as ldquoAllthings are commonrdquo which is the present tense version of the phrase in Acts 432 ldquoall thingswere commonrdquo (ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά) to the members of the Church in Jerusalem Theparallel formulation in Acts 244 is slightly different although the distinction is lost in the LatinVulgate It reads that the members of the apostolic Church ldquohad all things in commonrdquo (εἶχονἅπαντα κοινὰ) In the second formulation εἶχον (had) seems to suggest a specific mode ofpossession or even an established quasi-legal form of property But it would be a mistake tointerpret it this way In both verses the anonymous author of Acts is articulating a generalprinciple rather than specifying a form of its implementation As we shall see the concreteapplication of the principle in the first century Church involved not a mode of possession orform of property but rather a practice of redistribution

Within the Anabaptist movement there was a broad range of beliefs and practices thatinvolved specific applications of the principle Omnia sunt communia We need to recognizetheir breadth in order to grasp just how subtle and variegated Anabaptist communism could beFor this purpose it is important to distinguish between communism as 1) a principle ofredistribution 2) a form of joint or communal property 3) a mode of the organization of workand 4) a kind of mutual aid In general all Anabaptist applications of Omnia sunt communia areintended to realize in different ways a communal and spiritual life in which all things arecommon We could say if we like that each of the four categories serves as a means for realizingthe end designated by that principle as long as we keep in mind that in this case the meanscannot be discarded once the end has been achieved Communism as a principle of redistributiona form of communal property a mode of the organization of work a kind of mutual aid ndash orsome combination of these ndash are the concrete ways in which communism as a mode ofcommunal and spiritual life is realized In this case the means are internal to the end That isbecause there can be no fellowship no community of the spirit unless those participating sharesomething ie have it in common Greek recognizes this internal relationship between acommon life and something shared in the word translated into English as fellowship κοινωνίαthe root of which is κοινός which means ldquocommonrdquo Its antonym ἴδιος means ldquobelonging toonerdquo It is the word κοινός that appears in the passages from Acts that refer to the practice ofsharing material wealth

244 ldquoAll who believed were together and had all things in common (Πάντες δὲ οἱπιστεύοντες ἦσαν ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό καὶ εἶχον ἅπαντα κοινὰ)

432 ldquoThe multitude of believers were one in heart and soul (Τοῦ δὲ πλήθους τῶνπιστευσάντων ἦν καρδία καὶ ψυχὴ microία) and no one claimed anything as his ownpossession but to them all things were in common (καὶ οὐδὲ εἷς τι τῶν ὑπαρχόντωναὐτῷ ἔλεγεν ἴδιον εἶναι ἀλλrsquo ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά)

Both verses affirm an internal relationship between living a common life and things

being in common or people having things in common But this is true of any collectiveendeavor A chess club for example is only possible if the members have a common interest inplaying chess But the verses from Acts mean to assert more than this They affirm the intensityand universality of the common life experienced in the early Church (being ldquoone in heart andsoulrdquo) They indicate this by referring to the fact that in the Church in Jerusalem all things areheld in common (ἅπαντα κοινά) Although ldquoall thingsrdquo (ἅπαντα) is not limited to materialpossessions the succeeding verses in chapters 2 and 4 of Acts indicate the depth of thecommitment the early Christians had to sharing a common life by referring to the practice inwhich they enacted it

245 And they sold their possessions and goods and divided them among everyoneaccording to need (καὶ τὰ κτήmicroατα καὶ τὰς ὑπάρξεις ἐπίπρασκον καὶ διεmicroέριζον αὐτὰπᾶσιν καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

434 There was no one among them in need as many as owned land or houses soldthem and brought the values of what was sold (οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐνδεής τις ἦν ἐν αὐτοῖς ὅσοιγὰρ κτήτορες χωρίων ἢ οἰκιῶν ὑπῆρχον πωλοῦντες ἔφερον τὰς τιmicroὰς τῶνπιπρασκοmicroένων) 435 and laid them at the feet of the apostles and distribution wasmade to each in accordance with need (καὶ ἐτίθουν παρὰ τοὺς πόδας τῶν ἀποστόλωνδιεδίδετο δὲ ἑκάστῳ καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

The needs of others are what break the bonds of individual ownership allowing the

transition from the private (ἴδιος) to the common (κοινά) Acts refers to making material goods

common rather than for example communicating private knowledge publicly presumablybecause of the difficulty people experience parting with private property and the correlativesignificance of the act of doing so For material possessions are the means by which they satisfytheir basic needs ndash for food shelter clothing and so on ndash and when possible their desire forluxuries The act of handing over possessions has two consequences The first is that thedistinction between rich and poor wealthy and needy owner and propertyless is abolished andthe members of the community come to stand on level ground The second consequence involvesa more fundamental risk on the part of property-owners By handing over their property theymake a leap of faith that the community will henceforth satisfy their needs as well through thesame practice of redistribution When applied in this fashion the general principle of being incommon or having in common results in an example of the first category of communism asspecified above ie communism as a principle of redistribution

Redistribution of property by the apostles creates occasions for active sharing asexpressions of the new form of common life 246 says that the members of the Church inJerusalem ldquoalso broke bread in each otherrsquos homes and took their meals in exaltation andsimplicity of heartrdquo (κλῶντές τε κατrsquo ο ἴκον ἄρτον microετελάmicroβανον τροφῆς ἐν ἀγαλλιάσει καὶἀφελότητι καρδίας) The value of sharing meals lies not merely in the fact that everyone is fedbut also in the experience of exaltation or ecstatic delight (ἀγαλλιάσεις) and sincerity orsimplicity of heart (ἀφελότητι καρδίας) The experience in common of exaltation and sincerity isat least as important as the act of satisfying needs although the two can be distinguished onlynotionally

The experience has its meaning in relation to the power (δυνάmicroις) that brings together themembers of the new community and inspires them to share their property The gathering of JewsGreeks and those from other nations (the circumcised and the uncircumcised as Paul says)occurs in the period following Pentecost when the Holy Spirit is supposed to have descended incloven tongues of flame upon the twelve apostles endowing them with the ability to speak inevery language Pentecost in turn follows by several weeks the resurrection of Christ and hisbodily ascension into heaven The gift of being able to speak in every language permits theapostles to convey their message to all nations That message ndash confirmed by ldquosigns andwondersrdquo ndash is testimony of their own first-hand witness to the Resurrection It is accompanied bythe baptism of the new members of the Church which repeats the Pentecostal experience byfilling them with the grace and power of the Holy Spirit

433 ldquoAnd with great power the apostles were giving witness to the resurrection of theLord Jesus and abundant grace was upon them all (καὶ δυνάmicroει microεγάλῃ ἀπεδίδουν τὸmicroαρτύριον οἱ ἀπόστολοι τοῦ Κυρίου Ἰησοῦ τῆς ἀναστάσεως χάρις τε microεγάλη ἦν ἐπὶπάντας αὐτούς)

The ecstatic delight and simplicity of heart that the members of the Church in Jerusalem

experience by sharing a common life is their enjoyment of this ldquoabundant gracerdquo (χάρις τεmicroεγάλη) The new community is built upon faith in the apostlesrsquo testimony that Jesus triumphedover death and that his victory promises an eternal life to all who believe That is the gift of theHoly Spirit Yet the ldquospiritualrdquo (πνευmicroατικός) content of early Christian experience does not denyits simultaneously material character For the significance of the Resurrection and the Ascensioninto Heaven is precisely that they concern the physical body of Christ When he appears toThomas who doubts that he has returned Jesus invites his disciple to place his hands into thewounds received from the Crucifixion The point is to show not only that the man standing infront of Thomas is not an imposter but also that the risen Christ is no disembodied ghost Andwhen the apostles witness the Ascension what they see is the physical body of Jesus rising toheaven There is little suggestion of soul-body dualism in Acts The spirit (πνεῦmicroα) infuses andtransfigures the body it does not exist apart from it In this respect it is similar to the life-givingbreath to which the word πνεῦmicroα originally referred Dualism is the result of a Platonizinginterpretation of Christianity that comes later The bodily character of the Resurrection extends tothe promise of eternal life for believers as well The promise is not that their souls will exist apart

from their bodies but that their bodies will rise up from the grave like that of their Savior Giventhis early Christian materialism it is not surprising that commonality of material goods wouldserve as a fundamental expression of the new life of the believers

As we already know the project of the sixteenth-century Anabaptists was to restore theChurch to its original apostolic condition by undoing the corruption they believed had set inwhen it made its peace with worldly wealth and power under Constantine Given the nature ofthe Anabaptist project it would seem that making material things common as described in Actswould follow as a matter of course However there is a long tradition ndash one that began aroundthe middle of the sixteenth century ndash of denying that Anabaptism has anything to do withcommunism regarding it as an accusation brought against the Anabaptists by their enemies It isunderstandable that this should be so The Anabaptists were the victims of a ldquored scarerdquo thatgripped the ruling classes of Europe in the aftermath of the Peasant War and the Muumlnstercommune It is impossible to explain the horrendous tortures forced relocations andinnumerable executions Anabaptists faced on the basis of heretical belief alone Nothing of aremotely similar scale was visited upon other schismatics The fact that the Anabaptistschallenged prevailing property relations is what made them victims of near-genocide It was amatter of survival then to create some distance between themselves and the charge ofadvocating common ownership of goods that came from Luther Zwingli and those whoextracted the confession from Thomas Muumlntzer that he held to the principle of Omnia communiasunt Recent scholarship however has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that having thingsin common was indeed a basic and widespread principle of Anabaptism at its origin just as it hasdemonstrated the influence veterans of the Peasant War had among the early Anabaptists

The dominant form of communist practice in early Anabaptism was appropriatelymodeled on the description of redistribution in Acts In Switzerland where the movementoriginated converts were often asked or required to make contributions to a ldquocommon purserdquoafter receiving adult baptism Some especially pious initiates went so far as to sell their land andhouses for that purpose in accordance with the biblical precedent When necessary officialsdistributed the contents of the purse to members of the community who were in need

Both proponents and enemies of Anabaptist communism often confused the redistributionof wealth with joint or communal property However except for the taking of meals in commonthere is no indication in Acts that redistribution collectivized ownership of wealth in this fashionbut only that it transferred wealth from the better-off members of the community to the worse-off Nevertheless some Anabaptists took joint or communal property as a paradigm for newproperty relations For example the visionary writing of the Nuremberg printer Hans Hergotwho was executed for rebellion in 1527 includes the following passage

And everything that grows on the land belongs to the church and the people who livethere Everything is bestowed for common use so that the people will eat from one potdrink from one vesselhellip And all things will be used in common so that no one is betteroff than another

The ldquowar communismrdquo of the city of Muumlnster involved an ad hoc form of communal propertythrough the edict that the doors to all homes be left open and the owners take in anyone whowished to reside with them But the most significant successful and long-lasting attempt toimplement communal property was that of the Hutterites

The Hutterites took their name from the charismatic hat-maker and Anabaptist leaderJacob Hutter However at their origins they were influenced by the revolutionary bookbinderHans Hut Hut shared Thomas Muumlntzerrsquos sanguinary apocalyptic view of social change andadvocated community ownership of goods in accordance with his own understanding of ActsHe survived the battle of Frankenhausen in which the peasant rebels were finally defeated butwas tortured and executed a few years later In the aftermath and under the influence of JacobHutter the Hutterites adopted pacifism and a strategy of creating autonomous communities Inorder escape persecution thousands of the brethren emigrated from Switzerland and Germany to

the more tolerant Moravia where they created hundreds of Bruderhofs farms and vineyards inwhich land houses farm implements produce and even objects of personal use were ownedcollectively The center of Bruderhof life was a large communal house in which craft productionoccurred on the ground floor and couples lived in small apartments on the upper levels The menengaged in farm labor and craftwork while the women were limited to traditional domesticduties in spite of the fact that children were raised communally apart from their parents TheBruderhofs enjoyed great economic success for a number of reasons People worked hard andconsumed little resulting in a surplus that could be used to purchase additional land seed andtools The size of the communities and of their agricultural production also enabled them to sellcheaply and to pay for supplies at generous prices both of which made the communitieseconomic assets to the areas in which they were located The Hutterites also organized both farmlabor and craft production cooperatively including the education boys were given in thenecessary skills They were therefore practitioners of the second and third forms of communismwe have identified namely communal ownership and cooperative organization of work Whenthey were ultimately forced out of Moravia by the triumph of Catholic forces in the Thirty YearsWar the Hutterites migrated eastward many finally relocating to Canada and the United Stateswhere the Bruderhofs continue to exist to this day

Communism as a kind of mutual aid was the contribution of the other major form ofAnabaptism that of the Mennonites With great political intelligence and skill Menno Simonswas able to reformulate the meaning of Omnia communia sunt in such a way as to avoidthreatening the property interests of nobles and clerics He did this in his book A Humble andChristian Justification and Replication First he denied that Mennonites were advocates ofcommunal property

This accusation is false and without all truth We do not teach and practice communityof goods but we teach and testify the Word of the Lord that all true believers in Christare of one body (1 Corinthians 1213) partakers of one bread (1 Corinthians 1017)have one God and one Lord (Ephesians 4)

In his assertion that the believers are of one body and partakers of one bread Simons is affirmingwhat we have called the general principle of communism while denying that Mennonitesembrace it in the specific form of communal property But he goes further by denying thatMennonites advocate a contemporary version of the apostolic redistribution of wealth

For although we know that the apostolic church had this practice in the beginning ascan be seen in the Acts of the Apostles nevertheless we note from their epistles that itdisappeared in their time and was no longer practiced

Instead of communal property or centralized redistribution of wealth the Mennonites derivefrom the general principle of Christian communism an alternative practice

Seeing then that they are one as said it is Christian and reasonable that they also havedivine love among them and that one member cares for another for both the Scripturesand nature teach this They show mercy and love as much as is in them They do notsuffer a beggar among them They have pity on the wants of the saints They receive thewretched They take strangers into their houses They comfort the sad They lend to theneedy They clothe the naked They share their bread with the hungry They do not turntheir face from the poorhellip

In the subsequent history of Mennonism the practice Simons describes came to be calledldquomutual aidrdquo Note that it is different from charitable giving and this in two ways First thereferences to receiving the wretched taking in strangers sharing bread and so on indicate a farmore personal even intimate form of involvement than simple charitable donation Second

there is the suggestion of reciprocity or mutuality (ldquoone member cares for anotherrdquo) that tends todeny the difference in status between the charitable giver and the recipient of charity Thepractice Simons describes is similar to what some anthropologists have called ldquogeneralizedreciprocityrdquo in which my obligation to give to you when you are in need corresponds to yourobligation to give to me when I am in need In a sense this is a form of redistribution inaccordance with need but it is enacted directly between individual members of the communityrather than administered centrally through a common purse

In line with his political purpose Simons is careful to distinguish between mutual aid andthe expropriation of private property

This is the kind of brotherhood we teach and not that some should take over andpossess the land soil and properties of others as we are falsely maligned accused andlied about by many

In this way he detaches the Mennonite version of communism from any revolutionary intentionThat was the prerequisite for communal survival during the long counter-revolution thatfollowed the Peasant War Still Simons never abandons the general principle Omnia communiasunt nor does he even really reject the practice of the early Church

Since we do not find it a permanent practice with the apostles we have not taught orpracticed community of goods but we urge earnestly and zealously to practice liberalgiving love and mercy as the apostolic writings teach and testify abundantly Andeven if we had taught and practiced community of goods as we are falsely accused ofdoing we would still not be doing otherwise than the holy apostles full of the HolySpirit themselves did in the former church at Jerusalem in the beginning of the holyChristian Church although they stopped the practice as has been said

Like the Hutterites Mennonite communities prospered once they managed to survive the

bloody period of reaction In Holland the Mennonite population consisted largely in successfulmerchants along with a number of lawyers doctors and other professionals Most of thepeasant artisan and laborer families who had started as Mennonites in the sixteenth century hadlong since converted to the Reform Church which is one reason Spinoza faced the problem ofpolitical agency in the TPT Although the idea of mutual aid persisted among the DutchMennonites it took the form predominantly of organized international philanthropy in which thecommunity made contributions not only to Mennonites abroad but to other populations in needThere was no escaping the fact however that in this philanthropic form mutual aid becamehardly distinguishable from conventional charity

Jarig Jelles was born into the Dutch Mennonite community around a century afterSimmons wrote his book when this process of slippage was well underway But there is littledoubt that Jelles knew the Mennonite teaching on mutual aid and its origin in the generalprinciple of Christian communism Even if Jelles never read Erasmusrsquo Adages Spinozarsquosreference to the supposed communism of Thales was likely to resonate with him on the basis ofhis own religious tradition

We cannot be certain how much Spinoza knew in detail about the communist practices ofthe Anabaptists but it is probably not a coincidence that he recommends three of the four atvarious places in his writings In Part 4 of the Ethics ldquoOf Human Bondage or the Strength of theEmotionsrdquo he identifies the chief virtue of the intellect as ldquostrength of the mindrdquo (fortitudo)According to him it takes two forms one directed to the self and one directed to others He callsthe inwardly directed form ldquocouragerdquo defining it as ldquothe desire whereby every individualendeavors to preserve his own being according to the dictates of reason alonerdquo The outwardlydirected form is generositas which Shirley translates as ldquonobilityrdquo though ldquosolidarityrdquo is closerto what Spinoza is getting at He defines it as ldquothe desire whereby every individual according to

the dictates of reason alone endeavors to assist others and make friends of themrdquo When twopeople in contact with one another possess the virtue of generositas they will clearly exhibit itreciprocally in the form of mutual aid the fourth communist practice

In Part 4 of the Ethics Spinoza also formulates a version of the first communist practicethat of the redistribution of wealth in accordance with need

Again men are won over by generosity especially those who do not have thewherewithal to produce what is necessary to support life Yet it is far beyond the powerand resources of a private person to come to the assistance of everyone in need For thewealth of a private person is quite unequal to such a demand It is also a practicalimpossibility for one man to establish friendship with all Therefore the care of the poordevolves upon society as a whole and looks only to the common good

The fact that society as a whole has responsibility for meeting the needs of the poor makes thepractice Spinoza recommends in this passage a version of the centralized redistribution of wealthdescribed in the Acts of the Apostles and institutionalized in Anabaptist form as the ldquocommonpurserdquo More than that the fact that society as a whole must take on this responsibility ratherthan a church or other sub-community makes Spinoza an early advocate of what will becomethree centuries later the European welfare state In our own period as the welfare state is beingdismantled it is easy to see that what neoliberals object to concerning it is precisely its implicitcommunism ie its practice of distribution in accordance with need

Spinoza advocates a third communist practice in his unfinished final work the PoliticalTreatise The context is his discussion of a maximally democratic version of monarchy in whichthe entire citizen body is armed and the king forbidden from making any decision contrary to thewill of a massive council of ordinary citizens In such a state

The fields and the soil and if possible the houses as well should be public property thatis should belong to the sovereign by whom they should be let at an annual rent tocitizens whether townsmen or country-dwellers Apart from this all citizens should befree or exempt from any form of taxation in time of peace Of this rent part should beallocated to the defense works of the commonwealth part to the kings domestic needsFor in time of peace it is still necessary to fortify cities as for war and to have in a stateof readiness ships and other armaments

Ownership of land and buildings by the sovereign is a form of communal property first becausethe citizens of the commonwealth delegate to him or them the property they hold in commonand second because that delegation occurs with the understanding that the sovereign will use theproperty in service of the common good

Spinoza supplies an argument based on more than simple utility for the practice ofholding land and buildings in common

hellip in a state of Nature the one thing a man cannot appropriate to himself and make hisown is land and whatever is so fixed to the land that he cannot conceal it anywhere orcarry it away where he pleases Thus the land and whatever is fixed to it in the way wehave described is especially the public property of the commonwealth that is of allthose who by their united strength can claim it or of him to whom all have delegated thepower to claim it

To state the argument differently since rights are the same as powers no individual has a naturalright to appropriate privately the land or any of its fixed structures because none has the powernecessary to do so The only response an individual can make to incursions by a more powerfulperson or group of people is flight in which he must leave the land and its buildings behind It is

only by entering into a community in which the strength of each is combined for the purpose ofdefense that people can effectively possess fixed property but they do so as a members of thecommunity rather than as an separate individuals According to Spinozarsquos theory of rights onlythe community has the right to own the land and its structures because only the community hasthe required power

The communal ownership of land houses and other buildings is a version of the secondcommunist practice on our list of which Hutterite joint ownership is the most developedhistorical example When adopted by a polity rather than a small community though thepractice has an added advantage Under those circumstances communal possession of fixedproperty eliminates the need for taxes except in time of war What takes their place is ageneration of revenue pegged to wealth since the members of society who are able to rent themost expensive and largest amounts of communal property will obviously pay the most in rentIn this way the form of communal ownership of land and buildings that Spinoza recommendsalso acts as a mechanism for the redistribution of wealth

The only communist practice of the Anabaptists that does not find an equivalent inSpinozarsquos writings is that of the cooperative organization of work The absence is related toSpinozarsquos inability to resolve the problem of political agency in the TPT An attempt to mobilizethe multitude on behalf of democratic social change would need to address the organization ofwork in such a way as to alleviate the burden of toil Reducing the number of hours spent inonerous labor is the only way to provide the multitude with the free time necessary to participatein institutionalized democratic politics Along with the redistribution of wealth and thedevelopment of communal property the cooperative reorganization of work would need to beincorporated as a plank in the latent political program that makes its first democratic appearancein the TPT and is extended in a communist direction in the passages from the Ethics and thePolitical Treatise that we have just examined But that would constitute an explicit anddangerous appeal to the multitude as the agent of political and social transformation an appealthat Spinoza consistently rejects It would involve nothing less than the revival of therevolutionary energies of the Peasant War on a new seventeenth-century foundation

In spite of his radicalism Spinoza doubted that revolution was capable of reconstructingsociety and the state in the way revolutionaries wanted In Chapter 18 of the TPT he takes aposition that is at least on the surface opposed to revolution or any attempt to change the formof the state fundamentally The context is a discussion of the transition from the early Hebrewcommonwealth in which the people held sovereignty to the rule of kings Spinoza tells us thatthe first period saw only a single civil war and concluded with a compassion for the vanquishedthat resulted in lasting peace By contrast the period of kings was marred by multiple warswaged only for the glory of the rulers and involved the massacre of hundreds of thousandsDuring the first period few prophets arose to rebuke the Jews while a great many emergedduring the time of the monarchies From this example Spinoza reasons that it is fatal for peopleaccustomed to popular sovereignty and governed by settled laws to adopt a new monarchicalform of government On the one hand they will be unable to tolerate the arbitrary exercise ofpower by a single individual while on the other the new monarch will be compelled to abolishthe existing laws because they did not originate by his own authority But it is just as dangerousaccording to Spinoza for the subjects of a monarch to attempt his replacement with popular ruleThis is because a popular revolution must advance to the point where it annihilates the king thekingrsquos family and the friends of the king in order to prevent the restoration of royal power But inthe process the revolutionary authority must assume a power even more draconian then thatpreviously exercised by the king In addition having committed regicide the new popularauthority faces the danger that it will fall victim to its own precedent For this reason as well andin the interest of survival it must wield power more repressively than the deposed sovereignSpinoza illustrates his point with reference to the English revolution which eliminated themonarch Charles I only to replace him with the Lord Protector Cromwell who was monarch inall but name and more repressive than Charles

Spinozarsquos point seems unassailable especially since the pattern he describes in the caseof the English Revolution repeated itself over the course of the next three centuries in the French

and Russian Revolutions It is at least arguable that Napoleon if not Robespierre was a newLouis XVI and Stalin a new Tsar even if this understates the more fundamental social changesthat resulted form the two revolutions Still Spinoza does not absolutely proscribe therevolutionary overthrow of a tyrannical government but says instead that there is a great dangerin making the attempt Besides his analysis of the conditions necessary for retaining sovereigntydoes not leave the decision about whether to engage in revolution up to militants He argues thatno state can survive that creates mass indignation in its people and this is precisely theunavoidable result of tyrannical government Spinozarsquos real purpose in Chapter 18 is to opposethe Orangist-Calvinist project of replacing the Dutch Republic with a monarchy ldquoAs for theEstates of Hollandrdquo he writes ldquoas far as we know they never had kings but counts to whom theright of sovereignty was never transferredrdquo His point is that the Dutch War of Independenceagainst Spain was justified because it restored the sovereignty of the people against the attemptby the Spanish ldquocountrdquo (King Philip II) to abolish it However any attempt to replace theRepublic with a monarchy would change the form of the state disastrously by divesting thepeople of their former rights

When Spinoza wrote his treatise the only revolutionary forces that existed were on theRight The danger he warns about in Chapter 18 of the TPT did indeed come to pass only oneyear after his letter to Jelles In 1672 a Calvinist-Orangist mob hacked Johan De Witt and hisbrother Cornelius to death at a time when Holland was invaded by the French army Streetorators stirred up the mob by claiming that the invasion was the result of the brothersrsquo treason Inthe aftermath of the murders William III prince of Orange was elevated to the position ofstadtholder of Holland Although William went on to become King of England he stopped shortof claiming a Dutch throne However in actuality he substituted his own power for much of thatwhich had belonged to the Estates General while the Reformed Church gained considerableinfluence in Dutch government According to a story made famous by Spinozarsquos earliestbiographer Johannes Colerus when the De Witt brothers were murdered Spinozarsquos landlordthwarted his attempt to go the site of the assassinations where the bodies of the brothers werestill on gruesome display in order to plant a sign reading Ultimi Barbarorum (the ultimatebarbarians) In this way the landlord undoubtedly saved the philosopherrsquos life It was the onlytime we know of when the mature Spinoza gave in to his passive affects in a significant way

There is a passage in Chapter 18 of the TPT that uncannily anticipates the murders

Tyranny is most violent where individual beliefs which are unalienable rights areregarded as criminal Indeed in such circumstances the anger of the common people[plebis] is usually the greatest tyrant of allhellip the vilest hypocrites urged on by that samefury which they call zeal for Gods law have everywhere persecuted men whoseblameless character and distinguished qualities have excited the hostility of the commonpeople [plebi] publicly denouncing their beliefs and inflaming the savage multitudersquos[multitudinem] anger against them

Spinoza was the first political philosopher who grappled with the problem of a mass-

based politics of the Right The problem would occur again with the fascist movements of the1920s and 1930s and with the return of the rightwing religious fundamentalisms of our own dayndash Jewish Christian Muslim and Hindu It is not surprising that he failed to solve the problemdefinitively since it continues to remain unsolved The remarkable thing about Spinoza thoughis not that he was skeptical about the liberatory possibilities of revolution by the masses but thathe defended the idea of a popular democracy nonetheless And this he continued to do even inthe aftermath of the De Witt murders In his work on the Political Treatise in the final year of hislife Spinoza developed a powerful critique of the elitist claim that the multitude are incapable ofgoverning

Yet perhaps our [democratic] suggestions will be received with ridicule by those whorestrict to the common people the faults that are inherent in all mankind saying There

is no moderation in the mob they terrorize unless they are frightened and Thecommon people is either a humble servant or an arrogant master there is no truth orjudgment in itrdquo and the like But all men share in one and the same nature it is powerand culture that mislead us with the result that when two men do the same thing weoften say that it is permissible for the one to do it and not the other not because of anydifference in the thing done but in the doer hellipThen again There is no moderation inthe mob they terrorize unless they are frightened For freedom and slavery do not gowell together Finally that there is no truth or judgment in the common people is notsurprising since the important affairs of state are conducted without their knowledgeand from the little that cannot be concealed they can only make conjecturehellip Howeveras we have said all men have the same nature ndash all grow haughty with rule terrorizeunless they are frightened ndash and everywhere truth becomes a casualty through hostilityor servility especially when despotic power is in the hands of one or a few who in trialspay attention not to justice or truth but to the extent of a persons wealth

Surprisingly Spinoza develops this democratic argument while discussing the institutions

appropriate to a monarchy But the key point he makes in the discussion is that a condition ofeffective monarchical rule is expansion of the democratic element within the state in the form ofa sizeable legislative council whose members are drawn from the general population of citizensover the age of fifty On Spinozarsquos view the mistake those who oppose democracy make isassuming that the faults exhibited by the common people ndash such as poor judgment arroganceand hostility ndash belong only to them while they are in fact typical of human beings Actually it iselitist politics that magnifies these all-too-human faults by restricting political power to a limitednumber of people while democratic politics minimizes them through the principle of majorityrule among numerous decision-makers The reason as we already know is that passions pullpeople in different directions making it nearly impossible for the members of a large council toagree on a common position unless they make decisions based not on passion but an idea of thecommon good On Spinozarsquos view it is when government is in the hands of a single person oronly a few people that the dangers the critics of democracy attribute to the common people are infact the greatest

Spinoza also argues against the claim that the common people are not qualified to makepolitical decisions because they lack the necessary education or degree of intellect There is noone he says who has been engaged in an occupation until the age of fifty who lacksunderstanding of his sphere of work ldquoevery man is reasonably competent and sagacious inmatters in which he has been long and attentively engagedrdquo So each is qualified at least to giveadvice in the kingrsquos council concerning his own business especially if given the time necessaryto reflect on the matter under discussion

Most of all the plebs are the group best suited to serving on the council because theirinterest is that of society as a whole ldquoHence it follows that counselors must necessarily beappointed whose private fortune and advantage depend on the general welfare and the peace ofallrdquo For example Spinoza emphasizes the idea that the common people have the highest stake inavoiding war or concluding an existing war with a settlement that brings lasting peace Thereason is they are ones who bear the heaviest burdens of war Unlike the wealthy well-bornmembers of society it is the common person whose occupation is most likely to be interrupted itis his taxes that are raised to onerous levels and it is his son who dies Thus the common interestof society in peace is best served not by a wealthy or educated elite but rather by those whohave the most to lose from war

At the end of the long paragraph defending popular power quoted above Spinozaconnects the question of who holds power within the state to that of who owns property Truthand justice he says are casualties in states where power is held by one person or a handful ofpeople who conduct courtroom trials that favor the rich The implication is that elitist politicalpower and ownership of wealth are intrinsically connected One of the reasons Spinozarecommends public ownership of land and buildings in a monarchy is to prevent the rise of aclass of wealthy landowners with interests different than those of the rest of society Under the

conditions of common ownership ldquothe greatest part of the council will generally have one andthe same attitude of mind towards their common interests and peaceful activitieshelliprdquo And yethaving gone this far he has trouble imagining a state where fixed property is owned collectivelyin which the actually existing multitude holds power The peasants artisans and urban poor whoconstitute the common people of the United Provinces drop out of the picture in the democratic-communist monarchy he describes and nearly everyone makes his living by selling merchandiseor lending money to countrymen ldquoall will have to make a living by engaging in trade or bylending money to their fellow citizensrdquo He seems to assume that the collectivization of land andfixed property would eliminate the occupations of peasant and artisan leaving trade and loaningat interest the only remaining possibilities of work But that of course is not true The fact thatpeople would have to rent farm land would not prevent them from farming any more than theneed to rent workshops in the cities and towns would prevent artisans from plying their tradesBut Spinoza finds the idea of a commonwealth based on commercial enterprise politicallyappealing This is because he regards commercial occupations as contributing to harmony andpeace since he claims they establish connections between people that further the interests of allwhile those who engage in them prosper only in peacetime Both of these assumptions are asquestionable as the expectation that non-commercial occupations will die out After all even inSpinozarsquos day colonialism and the struggle for colonies between imperialist states led to warsbetween the great powers including the United Provinces not to mention the military and otherforms of violence involved in subjugating the colonies The East India Company was not exactlya force for peace What seems to be at work here instead is a failure of social imaginationthough one we may find understandable given the fact that the capitalist economy was still at anearly stage in its development However this may be there is no denying the fact that despite hispowerful arguments in favor of democratic rule and communal property it is still a bourgeoissociety and state that Spinoza envisions

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of what we should not hesitate to call Spinozarsquoscommunism is the critique of private ownership he develops in the Ethics based on his theory ofaffects For him there is a paradox involved in social and political life It stems from the fact thaton the one hand people can survive and develop their capacities only by joining with oneanother in societies and states But on the other hand the necessity of combining with oneanother does not prevent them from seeking their own advantage above that of their fellowsbeing quarrelsome or hateful and erecting obstacles to each otherrsquos happiness Spinoza identifiesthe reason for these deep-rooted problems of social coexistence in Part IV Proposition 35 of theEthics ldquoInsofar as men are assailed by emotions that are passive they can be contrary to oneanotherrdquo Emotions are states of the body characterized by a transition from a lower degree of thepower to exist and act (conatus) to a higher one or conversely from a higher degree to a lowerone The first transition is the affect of joy while the second is that of sadness Passive emotionsare caused by an object external to the body or more precisely external to its essential natureSpinoza conceives of that nature as a specific proportion of motion-and-rest that the parts of thebody exhibit in relation to one another While joy is an increase in our capacity to preserve theproportion of motion-and-rest essential to our body (ie to exist and act as we do) sadness is adecrease in that capacity The political problem created by the passive emotions is that evenwhen they are joyful they are not under the control of the person who experiences themMoreover different people are affected by the same external object in different ways because theparts of their bodies and their proportionate relations of motion-and rest-differ The same objectmay elicit anger in one person and pity in another or love in one and hatred in another and soon And because people differ in their emotional reactions to the same things they also differ inthe judgments they frame on the basis of these reactions What one person praises anotherperson blames what one regards as fearless another believes to be timid etc Finally sincepeople act upon their judgments seeking to foster what they judge to be good and destroy whatthey judge to be bad their differing judgments can result in actions that are in conflict with oneanother In short ldquoinsofar as they are assailed by passive emotions [people] can be contrary toone anotherrdquo

In Proposition 34 Spinoza gives an example of the contrariety caused by the passiveaffects Suppose Peter has sole possession of something Paul loves Deprivation of the loved

object causes sadness in Paul with the idea of Peter as its cause In accordance with Spinozarsquosdefinition of hatred Paul will hate Peter and therefore seek to injure or destroy him in order toremove the cause of his Paulrsquos sadness Spinoza says that this example may seem wrong becausePaul and Peter appear to be contrary to one another because of something they share ndash ie theirlove for the thing Peter possesses But that is not the case Paul has an image of himself aslacking the loved object while Peter has an image of himself as possessing the loved object Sothey in fact differ from one another by virtue of the different images they have rather than bypossessing something in common It is clear from the example that the root of this contrariety ndashie this enmity ndash between Paul and Peter is the fact that the object can be possessed by only oneof them so that what one has the other must lack The difficulty with private property is that it isexclusive to the one who possesses it which means that what I experience as possession othersexperience as deprivation It may seem that there is no problem if other people are indifferent tothe thing I possess However in accordance with Spinozarsquos theory of the imitation of affects themere fact that I love the thing I own other things being equal will cause you to love it as wellMy exclusive possession of the thing will therefore cause sadness in you that takes the form ofhatred or more precisely the kind of hatred called envy which involves pain at the good fortuneof another ldquohuman nature is in general so constituted that men pity the unfortunate and envy thefortunate in the latter case with a hatred proportionate to their love of what they think anotherpossessesrdquo

Common Possession Friendship and Philosophy

In the Ethics Spinoza does not follow his analysis of the antagonisms of private property

by considering the collective possession of material goods (although he does advocateredistribution of wealth to the poor in Part 4 as we have seen) But the theme of commonpossession figures large in the book anyway in his treatment of the intellectual love of God Inorder to understand the connection between common possession and amor Dei intellectualis itwill be necessary to engage in a detailed analysis of Spinozarsquos metaphysics We will begin thattask in earnest in the next chapter At this point we will simply introduce the theme byexamining the relationship between friendship and common possession in the letter to Jelles andsome related writings

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo unlike the similar passages fromActs has its provenance among philosophers Spinoza mistakenly attributes it to Thales but itoccurs in Platorsquos Phaedrus and Laws and is present though not in so many words in thediscussion in the Republic of common ownership of property by the guardian class Thetradition cited by Erasmus that traces the proverb back to Pythagoras is plausible when weconsider the influence the Pythagorean community in Sicily had on Plato in the aftermath ofSocratesrsquo death Erasmus sees the supposed use of a common fund by the Pythagoreans as ananticipation of the similar practice in Acts But Spinozarsquos approach is different What interestshim in the letter is common ownership not as a religious practice but as a matter of thephilosopherrsquos relation to the world Remember the deductive consequences of the proverb sinceall things are in common among friends everything belongs to the wise because the wise arefriends of the gods and all things belong to the gods But what does it mean to say that the wiseare friends of the gods

Although Spinoza uses the word ldquofriendshiprdquo often in his writings he never supplies aformal definition However we can reconstruct the wordrsquos meaning from the contexts in whichhe uses it So for example Proposition 35 of Part III of the Ethics reads

If anyone thinks that there is between the object of his love and another person the sameor a more intimate bond of friendship than there was between them when he alone usedto possess the object loved he will be affected with hatred toward the object loved andwill envy his rival

According to the proposition friendship is an intimate bond between a person and the

object he loves I hate an object of love that I alone once possessed when it wounds my vanity byloving someone else more than me So the object of love must be capable of loving whichmeans that the bond of friendship is a relation of reciprocal love between persons Nowaccording to Spinoza I love something when I have the idea of that thing as the cause of myexperience of joy Joy is an increase in conatus which Spinoza defines as the tendency to persistin being or equivalently the ability to exist and act So friendship is a relation in which Iidentify the other person as the cause of an increase in my conatus and the other personidentifies me as the cause of a similar increase in his or hers Two things each of which causesan increase in the ability to exist and act of the other are said by Spinoza to be in harmony Sincetwo entities in harmony have more combined power than either does singly it is to the advantageof each to be in harmony with the other There is even greater advantage in entering intoharmonious connection with a third individual and the greatest advantage in combining with asmany individuals as possible This is a universal metaphysical principle For example it pertainsjust as much to chemical combination or herding among animals as it does to social relationsbetween people In the case of human relationships it is the fundamental basis of politics orrather one of its two bases the other one being the tendency human beings have to conflict withone another When the state is functioning well it involves not a random collection ofindividuals and certainly not the war of each against all but a group whose members are boundto one another by friendship the human form of harmony Thus for Spinoza friendship is apolitical virtue as it was for Plato and Aristotle

The opposite of friendship is enmity That person is my enemy whom I regard as thecause of my sadness or pain which is the same as saying the cause of a decrease in my abilityto exist and act Like friendship enmity is a reciprocal relationship If I identify you as the causeof my sadness I will seek to injure or eliminate you But that means I will be identified in yourmind as the cause of your sadness Enmity is a relation of reciprocal hatred just as friendship is arelation of reciprocal love Just as there is harmony between friends there is discord betweenenemies The fundamental task of a rational politics is easy to state it is to extend and intensifyfriendship and to reduce and mollify enmity

We have already seen that Spinoza identifies solidarity (generositas) as one of the twoforms of strength of mind (fortitudo) which is the virtue that belongs to the exercise of theintellect Solidarity is the desire to assist others and foster friendship on the basis of reason aloneThe friendship fostered by solidarity is a bond of active love The love of friends for one anotheris active when each person who loves is the adequate cause of his or her love To say that theperson is the adequate cause means that the cause of love is internal to the person who feels it inother words that the love is self-generated Active love differs from passive love in that thecause of passive love is at least partially something that exists outside the person who has theemotion The problem with passive love is that it need not be constant If the bodily dispositionof the person changes in a particular way then the object of erstwhile love will have a differentemotional effect Passive love can change into boredom or indifference or even hatred This isnot possible in the case of active love because it is self-generated Since love involves theexperience of joy no one actively abandons it

There seems to be something odd about the idea of a love between persons that isinternally generated by each of the partners in the relationship Is it not the case that part of theessence of love is the fact that the object of my love is the cause of my love Without denyingthis Spinoza identifies two forms of love that are self-generated in the Ethics One is myintellectual love of God It is indeed true that God is the cause of my love but only insofar as myintellect is part of the infinite intellect of God Thus the object that causes my love - ie God - isinternal to my mind and conversely my mind is internal to it Such reciprocal internality ndash hardas it is to visualize ndash is what Spinoza means by immanence God he tells us is the immanentcause of everything that exists Nothing can exist apart from God while God expresses himselfin all of the things that exist My love of God and Gods love of himself are one and the samebecause Godrsquos intellect is immanent in mine The second form of self-generated love is the

friendship that exists between me and others who love God through the exercise of the intellectThe reason is that the joy I feel in loving God is by the imitation of affects augmented by thejoy you feel in loving God But your love as well as mine is joy caused by the same immanentbeing Another way of saying this is that your intellect and mine are parts (ie finiteexpressions) of the infinite intellect of God Thus the relationship between friends who are boundtogether by the common exercise of the intellect and the love of God that flows from it is basedon an internal bond an internal object and cause of love In this kind of love you and I as itwere discover one another internally You are inside of me and I am inside of you Thus whenyou augment my love and I augment yours it is Gods power as the intellect immanent in us boththat causes the augmentation even though we remain finite individual beings In this state ofaffairs which is admittedly difficult to grasp we can see the rational meaning of the command tolove God by loving the neighbor In intellectual love God not insofar as he is infinite butinsofar as he expresses himself in my finite intellect loves God as he expresses himself in yourfinite intellect

For Spinoza the exercise of the intellect is very different than our ordinary experience ofthe world In the course of ordinary experience we encounter objects in a way that appearshaphazard disordered and incomplete This is so first of all because our encounters are part ofan infinitely complex chain of natural causes and effects of which we know only very limitedparts In addition our experience of objects has as much to do with the condition our bodies arein when we encounter them as it does with the nature of the objects themselves By contrast inexercising the intellect we arrange our ideas in an intelligible pattern that is internal to the mindand entirely different than the images we accumulate through sensory experience The ideas arean expression of our power while the images result from our hapless deliverance to chanceEmotions caused by objects we encounter in the course of ordinary experience are externallydetermined and therefore passive while emotions caused by acts of intellectual comprehensionare internally generated and therefore active That is why love as an active emotion has its originin the exercise of the intellect and the most satisfying form of friendship is based on thereciprocal experience of such love In a letter to Willem van Blyenberg Spinoza provides themost complete description of this kind of friendship to be found in his writings

For my part of all things that are not under my control what I most value is to enterinto a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth For I believe that such a lovingrelationship affords us a serenity surpassing any other boon in the whole wide worldThe love that such men bear to one another grounded as it is in the love that each hasfor knowledge of truth is as unshakable as is the acceptance of truth once it has beenperceived It is moreover the highest source of happiness to be found in things notunder our command for truth more than anything else has the power to effect a closeunion between different sentiments and dispositions

Spinoza says that a friendship based on the love of truth is not under our control But how

can that be if intellectual friendship involves a form of love internally generated by each friendIt would seem that the love we generate through the exercise of the intellect is fully under ourcontrol Spinoza however is referring to the fact that we are able to become friends only withpeople we actually meet which is something that occurs in the course of ordinary haphazarddisordered experience To a large extent our friendships are a matter of chance By way ofillustrating this point it turned out that Spinoza decided his initial judgment of Blyenberg wasmistaken He broke off their correspondence when he realized that the infinite chain of causesand effects had brought his way not a lover of truth but a dogmatic worshipper of the ldquopaperand inkrdquo of the Bible

People create commonwealths because the power of each to exist and act is increased byall others who transfer their rights to the sovereign For reasons we have already considered thepolitical bond is one of friendship ldquoIt is of the first importance to men to establish closerelationships and to bind themselves together with such ties as may most effectively unite theminto one body and as an absolute rule to act in such a way as serves to strengthen friendshiprdquo If

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

in the Introduction to the TPT simply a rhetorical device meant to appeal to the vanity of hiseducated readership It does not seem to be because a similarly low opinion appears again in theEthics and in some of his letters where there is no need to appeal to anyonersquos vanity Instead offunctioning simply as a rhetorical ploy Spinozarsquos generally negative view of the vast majority ofsociety and the positive view he develops in his advocacy of democracy indicate a tension in hispolitics

In the Ethics and TPT Spinoza uses the words vulgus plebs and multitudointerchangeably When any of the three word appears it is usually accompanied by suchqualifiers as ldquoirrationalrdquo ldquoignorantrdquo ldquouneducatedrdquo ldquosuperstitiousrdquo and ldquogoverned by passionsrdquoStill for Spinoza reason is not the possession of a natural elite Rather it is a universally humancapacity whose occurrence among people in developed form is rare Above all the cultivation ofreason requires free time There are two references to this requirement in the TPT that bear onthe ability of the multitude to develop their rational capacities One passage refers to ldquothecommon peoplerdquo as ldquofor the most part knowing nothing of logical reasoning or without leisurefor itrdquo Another refers to Spinozarsquos method of biblical exegesis noting that ldquoour own methoddemands a knowledge of Hebrew for which study the common people can likewise have noleisurerdquo A third passage which we have already referred to is relevant to the relationshipbetween leisure and the cultivation of reason while not mentioning it directly ldquothe multitude arealways at the same level of miseryrdquo Although Spinoza does not specify what he means by thelast statement it is likely that he is referring at least in part to the misery of onerous labor Thepoverty of the multitude demands that they spend most of their time engaged in hard physicalwork and the resulting absence of leisure prevents them from acquiring knowledge anddeveloping rational skills Lacking developed reason it is easy for them to fall under the sway ofthose who manipulate their fears and hopes for their own personal advantage the priestsministers rabbis and other religious officials In Spinozarsquos view fears and hopes make themultitude credulous and willing to accept superstitious beliefs (in divination the ability ofprayer to change the natural course of events the purchase of indulgences etc) that promisecontrol of an uncertain future For clerics the key to power and money is manipulation of thegreat majority of society through the instrument of superstition masked as religion

While the words plebs vulgus and multitudo do not designate a particular social classthey are not free of class reference either Spinoza uses the word plebs much as it was used in theearly Roman Republic to refer to the free subjects of a state who have no right to participate ingovernment Although plebs designates a political status rather than an economic class Spinozais clear that the group it refers to consists largely in those who work with their hands Forexample in the Political Treatise he identifies artisans as an example of the plebs the onlyexample in any of his writings Undoubtedly he would also have included peasants and wageworkers in that category and probably small retail merchants who were also politicallydisenfranchised Patricians by contrast certainly include nobles but may also include at least thewealthier burghers as was the case in the United Provinces Germany and much of the rest ofEurope The word vulgus as Spinoza uses it refers to the same members of society as the wordplebs but with the specific connotation of a lack of education and culture whose most extremeexpression is the unruly and irrational behavior of mobs In fact depending upon the contextvulgus is sometimes best translated as ldquocrowdrdquo or ldquomobrdquo Multitudo means ldquothe manyrdquo Spinozauses it to designate any group with numerous members including for example the simplebodies that make up a chemical substance In the context of political theory he uses the word torefer to the same people who comprise the plebs or vulgus but with the specific connotation ofbeing the vast majority of society Thus plebs vulgus and multitudo have the same referentalthough their principal connotations differ However in Spinozarsquos usage each word tends tobecome a synecdoche for the combined meaning of all three Thus in general the plebs vulgusor multitudo comprise the vast majority of society comprised largely of those who work withtheir hands are denied political rights except in democracies lack culture and education and aregiven to uncouth irrational or unruly behavior

The tension in Spinozarsquos politics between his critical view of the multitude and hisadvocacy of a democratic state in which it is sovereign can be explained by drawing a distinctionbetween the multitude as it is under the conditions of the actually existing Dutch Republic and

the multitude as it could be were Spinozarsquos reforms to be implemented With an uncontrolledReform Church and a Republic dominated by regents who represent the wealthy burghers themultitude has no chancing of shedding its superstitions or developing its rational capacities TheChurch manipulates their hopes and fears through the instrument of superstition and therepublican oligarchs block their participation in political decision-making which is the only waythey can develop rationality on a significant scale The story would be very different however ifthe state were both democratic and prohibited the Church from involvement in politics Twomajor conditions would then exist for the development of reason on a mass scale

The idea of a democracy raises the problem of how people without significant materialresources are to participate in making decisions when they must spend their lives in toil It mightbe thought that the problem can be solved by a universal franchise enabling all citizens to votefor representatives to a legislative assembly and other state offices But even if measures were inplace to prevent the wealthy minority from exercising unequal influence in elected bodiesrepresentative government is not Spinozarsquos idea of democracy Like Plato and Aristotle when heuses the term ldquodemocracyrdquo he has in mind a state such as the Athenian polis in which all adult(male) citizens were empowered to vote directly on legislation and other public matters Spinozamakes this clear in the unfinished chapter on democracy in the Political Treatise

hellipin this state all who are born of citizen parents or on native soil or have done serviceto the commonwealth or are qualified on any other grounds on which the right ofcitizenship is granted by law all I say can lawfully demand for themselves the right tovote in the supreme council and to undertake offices of state nor can they be refusedexcept for crime or dishonor

At a relatively advanced stage in its development the Athenian polis solved the problem

of the multitudersquos participation in government by paying citizens to attend sessions of theAssembly thereby compensating them for missed days of work If Spinoza was aware of theAthenian solution he gives no indication of it in his writings although it is likely that he wouldhave considered the problem of participation in politics by those without leisure in the part of thePolitical Treatise he left unfinished at his death Following the pattern of the completed chapterson monarchy and aristocracy the unfinished chapters on democracy would undoubtedly havespecified the institutional structures and practices necessary to sustain a democratic state In anyevent without something like the Athenian solution the idea of a democratic republic in theUnited Provinces would have been no more than the sort of utopian dream Spinoza rejects in theIntroduction to the Political Treatise

Returning to the earlier work the program for reforming the Dutch Republic that emergesin the TPT has three planks 1) establish state control over the churches as public institutions 2)guarantee freedom of thought expression and private worship and 3) democratize the oligarchicRepublic Although Spinozarsquos book is a work of philosophy it is equally a political interventionin a concrete historical situation a fact that he indicates in his letter to Jelles by referring to theldquocauserdquo he asks his friend to serve by blocking the Dutch translation of the book But in order toact as a political intervention the book must influence the beliefs and through them the actionsof people That raises the question To whom is the TPT addressed Since the decision to write inLatin effectively prevented the multitude from reading the work (which as we have seen wasSpinozarsquos intention) and on the assumption that not many aristocrats were likely to be swayedby its radical arguments the addressee of the book can only have been the educated section ofthe bourgeoisie Since Spinoza was unlikely to sway many conservative Calvinists with hisrationalist conception of religion there were only two groups within the bourgeoisie ndash at leastsome of whose members were capable of reading Latin ndash that the work could effectively addressThe first consists in republicans including the regents who hesitated to support the kind of stateauthority over religion that Spinoza advocated for ideological or pragmatic reasons The secondconsists in Orangists who were liberals in matters of religion and so in conflict with the ReformChurch As odd as it may seem there were a good number of people who fit into the secondcategory Even many of the Collegiantrsquos were loyal to the House of Orange in spite of theirpronounced religious liberalism

Had the TPTrsquos program been limited to its first two planks ndash state control of the churchesand freedom of thought and expression ndash it would have been politically coherent But where doesthe idea of democratizing the United Provinces fit into this picture Neither bourgeoisrepublicans nor religious liberals were apt to be sympathetic to the idea of a democratic republicthat would place power in the hands of the multitude If Spinoza wanted to make an appeal to therepublican and liberal Orangist sections of the bourgeoisie he ought to have been defending theexisting oligarchic Republic against its conservative Calvinist and monarchist enemies ratherthan elaborating an argument for its democratization There is only one audience who wouldhave been sympathetic to that argument namely the peasants artisans wage-workers and smallmerchants who comprised the multitude But that is precisely the readership Spinoza deniedhimself by writing in Latin

And yet Spinoza understood that the only way the Republic could survive in face of thealliance between the Reform Church and the House of Orange was to shift the allegiance of themultitude by winning its support Thus the contradiction in Spinozarsquos program is not a theoreticalflaw but a reflection of the real contradiction involved in the stadtholderless Republic or if youprefer the instability in the balance of social forces that enabled it to exist The Republic couldsurvive only by means of an impossible alliance between the multitude and the regents IfSpinoza erred it was in believing that it was possible to convince the regents to democratize bythe force of his arguments But this was the same as asking them to commit political suicidesince their power on the urban and national levels depended upon their ability to defend theirmonopoly on state offices The only alternative which Spinoza rejected was a popularrevolution that would create a new and radically democratic republic But that republic wouldshare with the existing one no more than the name like the animal dog and the dog star thatSpinoza refers to in a different context For that reason it would have fallen under his warningthat those who attempt to change the form of the state are likely to see it restored in a morerepressive version (see page 25 below) In short there was no solution to the problem the TPTattempted to solve or at least none within the limits of Spinozarsquos thinking As a political theoryand a theory of biblical hermeneutics the book is a brilliant work that went on to influencephilosophers and ironically theologians for the next three centuries As an intervention in theextraordinarily difficult and complex political situation of the seventeenth-century Netherlands itwas and had to be an utter failure

There are in fact two political programs in the TPT an overt program and a latent oneThe overt program is liberal republican and bourgeois in the sense that its addressee andintended agent of change is the educated bourgeoisie The latent program lies quite a bit furtherto the left It is radically democratic and its only possible agent of change is the multitude Letter44 makes a contribution to the latent program that moves in an even more radical direction

The Communist Idea

In his letter to Jelles Spinoza develops an idea of the highest good for human beings as

an alternative to what he argues is the false conception of Homo Politicus For the author of thatbook wealth and honors comprise the highest good But Spinoza claims in the letter thatcommonwealths devoted to the pursuit of wealth and honors ldquomust necessarily perish and haveperishedrdquo He then writes

How far superior indeed and excellent were the reflections of Thales of Miletus compared with this writer is shown by the following account All things he said are incommon among friends

The fact that this paragraph follows Spinozarsquos critique of Homo Politicus while proposing

an alternative to the apparent position of its author justifies an interpretation that takes it in apolitical sense Spinoza should be read as offering the saying of Thales as an addendum to the

latent program he articulates in the TPT Like democracy common ownership could have onlyone social basis in the Netherlands of the seventeenth century ndash namely the peasants artisanswage-workers and small retail merchants The problem this raises is how to make the transitionfrom a multitude given to irrationality and superstition ndash and therefore under the sway of theReformed Church ndash to one capable of the rationality necessary to create the democraticcommunism (the content of which we have yet to define) that Letter 44 implies when consideredalong with the TPT Spinoza saw no answer to this problem That is why he suppressed his latentproject in favor of the overt one for a liberal republic able to assert its sovereign authority overthe Church It seemed to him that the educated bourgeoisie had political capacities that themultitude lacked

Spinozarsquos judgment on this matter is similar mutatis mutandis to that of FrederickEngels in the Peasant War in Germany For Engels the Peasant War of the sixteenth century wasa heroic but premature revolution Under the leadership of Thomas Muumlntzer the peasantsadopted a program that included the expropriation of ecclesiastic and aristocratic property andthe common ownership of goods But the princes were the only group with the wealth andmilitary resources necessary to benefit from the ensuing turmoil while their rivals for power ndashthe Catholic prelates and lesser nobility ndash were ruined by the confiscation of property andplundering or destruction of fixed wealth by the peasant masses The rising bourgeoisie was ableto frame an independent liberal political program but did not yet have the social weightnecessary to play a leading role in the economy and the state According to Engels the peasantrywas incapable of mastering the new forces of production unleashed by the world market and theonly class that might have played a progressive role alongside the peasants ndash the proletarianwage-working element in the towns ndash was a very small part of laboring population It would takeanother three centuries for the proletariat to develop along with industry to the point where itwould be able to draft a meaningful equivalent of the communist program first framed by thesixteenth-century German peasantry Spinoza certainly had no idea that industrialization and asizeable proletariat were on their way But he shared with Engels a pessimistic assessment of thechances for a successful social transformation led by peasants and their allies Perhaps with thedisastrous defeat of the German peasants in mind (as well as the allegiance of the Dutchmultitude to the Reformed Church) Spinoza judged that relying upon the common people as anagent of social and political change in his own century would have been equally futile

Why then does Spinoza raise the issue of common ownership in Letter 44 The answer isthe same as for why he discusses democracy in the TPT when it makes no contribution to hispolitical intervention but on the contrary damages it We could say that Spinoza is either a badmilitant or a good philosopher The truth is he is both Like Platorsquos attempt to influence thecourse of events in Syracuse or Aristotlersquos decision to tutor Alexander the Great Spinozarsquos faithin the political efficacy of philosophical reasoning was misguided There is ample historicalevidence that the philosopher who attempts to be politically effective as a philosopher is doomedto defeat That is why Marx ceased considering himself a philosopher in 1845 as he indicates inthe eleventh of his Theses on Feuerbach ldquoUntil now philosophers have only attempted tounderstand the world the point however is to change itrdquo The project of changing the world isdifferent than that of understanding it from a purely theoretical perspective Of course it ispossible for philosophers to influence statesmen as Locke influenced the drafters of the USConstitution But Lockersquos influence was effective more than a century after he wrote the SecondTreatise on Civil Government and so can hardly be called a political intervention The attempt tointervene politically in a concrete situation in which multiple forces and complex structures arein play is something very different than the delayed influence on the drafters of a constitutionwho have had an opportunity to ponder at leisure the meaning of a philosopherrsquos work The mostimportant question of politics is not so much ldquoWhat is to be donerdquo as ldquoWho is to do itrdquoSpinoza may have been right that the multitude was not the collective subject to defendrepublican liberty That is why he appealed to the Dutch bourgeoisie through its philosophicallyliterate elements But he was too much the philosopher to suppress his argument that ademocratic republic is the kind of state that best preserves freedom and encourages rationalityand he was willing to make his point even at the cost of alienating the collective agent he wasattempting to influence

The reference to common ownership in Letter 44 would have had an even more negativeeffect on his readers should Spinoza have made it in the TPT In private communication withJelles however he was able to raise the topic without risking further political difficultiesSpinozarsquos reference presumes an intellectual history with roots in both ancient Greek philosophyand early Christianity a history that was renewed practically as well as theoretically in earlymodern Europe In the passage from Letter 44 where he introduces the theme of commonownership he goes on to elaborate the position he attributes to Thales Here is the passage in fullthat we have already quoted partially

How far superior indeed and excellent were the reflections of Thales of Miletuscompared with this writer is shown by the following account All things he said are incommon among friends The wise are the friends of the Gods and all things belong tothe Gods therefore all things belong to the wise In this way the wise man makeshimself the richest by nobly despising riches instead of greedily pursuing them

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo (Amicorum communia omnia) is

the first entry in his book Adages by the late Renaissance humanist and reform-minded Catholicscholar Desiderius Erasmus The Adages were widely available in Spinozarsquos day and it is likelythat both Spinoza and Jelles had read them although the former must have also consultedErasmusrsquo source for the saying ndash Lives of the Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius We will seewhy in a moment Erasmus cites the same deduction from the maxim as Spinoza does in Letter44 except that he attributes it to Socrates rather than Thales

From this proverb Socrates deduced that all things belong to all good men just as theydo to the gods For to the gods he said belong all things good men are friends of thegods and among friends all possessions are in common

The fact that Spinoza refers to wise men while Erasmus refers to good men does not

indicate any real difference between them because both accepted the ancient Greek and biblicalequivalence between human goodness and wisdom The difference in attributing the deductiveconsequences of the proverb to Thales on the one hand and Socrates on the other also does notindicate any substantive disagreement between Spinoza and Erasmus although it does signify adifference in intellectual vocation and emphasis Interestingly however the attribution in bothcases is incorrect Their common source the Lives of the Philosophers places the argument intothe mouth of Diogenes the Cynic rather than Socrates or Thales Thus both Spinoza and Erasmushave had a failure of memory and probably for the same reason The author of Lives makes itclear that although Diogenes the Cynic despised the pursuit of wealth he was not a veryappealing character he was arrogant and could be verbally and physically abusive to those hejudged to be unwise It is understandable then that the figure of Diogenes would drop out of thememory of both Erasmus and Spinoza and be replaced by a philosopher with whom each tosome extent identified Erasmus the Renaissance humanist undoubtedly found Socrates well-suited to stand in for the part of Diogenes the Cynic because Socrates was a moral philosopherand the teacher of Plato whose influence on the Renaissance was profound As an admirer of thenatural sciences and a maker of telescopes Spinoza would have felt the same way about Thaleswho was an astronomer as well as a philosopher

In Letter 44 a story from Lives follows the identification of Thales as the figureresponsible for the drawing the deductive consequences of the proverb In order to demonstratethat his rejection of the pursuit of wealth was not an alibi for poverty Thales made use of hisexpert knowledge of the heavens Foreseeing a bountiful olive crop after the previous harvestrsquosdearth he rented all of the olive presses in Greece cheaply and then hired them out at a highprice to farmers who needed them to press the oil from their olives In this way he amassed agreat deal of wealth within a single year which ldquohe then distributed with a liberality equal to the

shrewdness by which he had acquired itrdquo Spinozarsquos memory of the story must have acted as abridge for the mistaken identification

The similarity between the ancient Greek proverb and the passages from Acts about thecommunal practices of the early Church with respect to property must have been evident to thebiblical scholar Spinoza Rendered into Latin by Erasmus the proverb ldquoAll things are incommon among friendsrdquo is amicorum communia omnia In Acts 244 ndash ldquoAll that believed weretogether and had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquohad all things in commonrdquo appears in theLatin Vulgate as habebant omnia communia In Acts 432 ndash ldquoNo one claimed that any of theirpossessions was their own but they had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquothey had all thingsin commonrdquo appears in the Vulgate as erant illis omnia communia The equivalence between thecommunia omnia of the proverb and the omnia communia of the two verses from Acts wouldhave been perfectly clear to Spinoza on linguistic grounds alone

In Adages Erasmus is more explicit than Spinoza in connecting the proverb with theverses from Acts He discusses the proverb in its appearance in book 5 of the Laws where Platoappeals to it in order to demonstrate that the best condition of society consists in the communityof possessions Erasmus writes

But it is extraordinary how Christians dislike this common ownership of Platorsquos how infact they throw stones at it although nothing comes closer to the mind of Christ

Further on Erasmus identifies the inventor of the proverb as Pythagoras who he saysestablished a community in which life and property were shared

hellipwhich is the very thing Christ wants to happen among Christians For all those whowere admitted by Pythagoras into that well-known band who followed his instructionswould give to the common fund whatever money and family property they possessed

Even apart from Erasmus the similarity between the Greek philosophersrsquo proverb and the

New Testament passages would have been evident to the Mennonite Jelles from MennoSimonrsquos discussion of the communal practice described in Acts (more on this below) Jelleswould also have found the parallel especially appealing because it makes the principle ofcommon ownership part of that rational philosophical version of Christianity that he and theother Waterlander Mennonites and Collegiants were seeking to establish

Although Erasmus was an advocate of religious reform he never joined the ProtestantReformation remaining a loyal Catholic until his death It is ironic then that during hislifetime the only vigorous champions of the common ownership he espoused were members ofthe most radical wing of the Reformation ironic but completely intelligible since the radicalsrsquoproject was to restore the Church to its original apostolic condition before its accommodationwith worldly power and wealth under Constantine

The Latin phrase designating Anabaptist communism in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies is Omnia sunt communia (for example it appears in this form in the confession theauthorities extracted from Thomas Muumlntzer under torture) It translates into English as ldquoAllthings are commonrdquo which is the present tense version of the phrase in Acts 432 ldquoall thingswere commonrdquo (ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά) to the members of the Church in Jerusalem Theparallel formulation in Acts 244 is slightly different although the distinction is lost in the LatinVulgate It reads that the members of the apostolic Church ldquohad all things in commonrdquo (εἶχονἅπαντα κοινὰ) In the second formulation εἶχον (had) seems to suggest a specific mode ofpossession or even an established quasi-legal form of property But it would be a mistake tointerpret it this way In both verses the anonymous author of Acts is articulating a generalprinciple rather than specifying a form of its implementation As we shall see the concreteapplication of the principle in the first century Church involved not a mode of possession orform of property but rather a practice of redistribution

Within the Anabaptist movement there was a broad range of beliefs and practices thatinvolved specific applications of the principle Omnia sunt communia We need to recognizetheir breadth in order to grasp just how subtle and variegated Anabaptist communism could beFor this purpose it is important to distinguish between communism as 1) a principle ofredistribution 2) a form of joint or communal property 3) a mode of the organization of workand 4) a kind of mutual aid In general all Anabaptist applications of Omnia sunt communia areintended to realize in different ways a communal and spiritual life in which all things arecommon We could say if we like that each of the four categories serves as a means for realizingthe end designated by that principle as long as we keep in mind that in this case the meanscannot be discarded once the end has been achieved Communism as a principle of redistributiona form of communal property a mode of the organization of work a kind of mutual aid ndash orsome combination of these ndash are the concrete ways in which communism as a mode ofcommunal and spiritual life is realized In this case the means are internal to the end That isbecause there can be no fellowship no community of the spirit unless those participating sharesomething ie have it in common Greek recognizes this internal relationship between acommon life and something shared in the word translated into English as fellowship κοινωνίαthe root of which is κοινός which means ldquocommonrdquo Its antonym ἴδιος means ldquobelonging toonerdquo It is the word κοινός that appears in the passages from Acts that refer to the practice ofsharing material wealth

244 ldquoAll who believed were together and had all things in common (Πάντες δὲ οἱπιστεύοντες ἦσαν ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό καὶ εἶχον ἅπαντα κοινὰ)

432 ldquoThe multitude of believers were one in heart and soul (Τοῦ δὲ πλήθους τῶνπιστευσάντων ἦν καρδία καὶ ψυχὴ microία) and no one claimed anything as his ownpossession but to them all things were in common (καὶ οὐδὲ εἷς τι τῶν ὑπαρχόντωναὐτῷ ἔλεγεν ἴδιον εἶναι ἀλλrsquo ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά)

Both verses affirm an internal relationship between living a common life and things

being in common or people having things in common But this is true of any collectiveendeavor A chess club for example is only possible if the members have a common interest inplaying chess But the verses from Acts mean to assert more than this They affirm the intensityand universality of the common life experienced in the early Church (being ldquoone in heart andsoulrdquo) They indicate this by referring to the fact that in the Church in Jerusalem all things areheld in common (ἅπαντα κοινά) Although ldquoall thingsrdquo (ἅπαντα) is not limited to materialpossessions the succeeding verses in chapters 2 and 4 of Acts indicate the depth of thecommitment the early Christians had to sharing a common life by referring to the practice inwhich they enacted it

245 And they sold their possessions and goods and divided them among everyoneaccording to need (καὶ τὰ κτήmicroατα καὶ τὰς ὑπάρξεις ἐπίπρασκον καὶ διεmicroέριζον αὐτὰπᾶσιν καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

434 There was no one among them in need as many as owned land or houses soldthem and brought the values of what was sold (οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐνδεής τις ἦν ἐν αὐτοῖς ὅσοιγὰρ κτήτορες χωρίων ἢ οἰκιῶν ὑπῆρχον πωλοῦντες ἔφερον τὰς τιmicroὰς τῶνπιπρασκοmicroένων) 435 and laid them at the feet of the apostles and distribution wasmade to each in accordance with need (καὶ ἐτίθουν παρὰ τοὺς πόδας τῶν ἀποστόλωνδιεδίδετο δὲ ἑκάστῳ καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

The needs of others are what break the bonds of individual ownership allowing the

transition from the private (ἴδιος) to the common (κοινά) Acts refers to making material goods

common rather than for example communicating private knowledge publicly presumablybecause of the difficulty people experience parting with private property and the correlativesignificance of the act of doing so For material possessions are the means by which they satisfytheir basic needs ndash for food shelter clothing and so on ndash and when possible their desire forluxuries The act of handing over possessions has two consequences The first is that thedistinction between rich and poor wealthy and needy owner and propertyless is abolished andthe members of the community come to stand on level ground The second consequence involvesa more fundamental risk on the part of property-owners By handing over their property theymake a leap of faith that the community will henceforth satisfy their needs as well through thesame practice of redistribution When applied in this fashion the general principle of being incommon or having in common results in an example of the first category of communism asspecified above ie communism as a principle of redistribution

Redistribution of property by the apostles creates occasions for active sharing asexpressions of the new form of common life 246 says that the members of the Church inJerusalem ldquoalso broke bread in each otherrsquos homes and took their meals in exaltation andsimplicity of heartrdquo (κλῶντές τε κατrsquo ο ἴκον ἄρτον microετελάmicroβανον τροφῆς ἐν ἀγαλλιάσει καὶἀφελότητι καρδίας) The value of sharing meals lies not merely in the fact that everyone is fedbut also in the experience of exaltation or ecstatic delight (ἀγαλλιάσεις) and sincerity orsimplicity of heart (ἀφελότητι καρδίας) The experience in common of exaltation and sincerity isat least as important as the act of satisfying needs although the two can be distinguished onlynotionally

The experience has its meaning in relation to the power (δυνάmicroις) that brings together themembers of the new community and inspires them to share their property The gathering of JewsGreeks and those from other nations (the circumcised and the uncircumcised as Paul says)occurs in the period following Pentecost when the Holy Spirit is supposed to have descended incloven tongues of flame upon the twelve apostles endowing them with the ability to speak inevery language Pentecost in turn follows by several weeks the resurrection of Christ and hisbodily ascension into heaven The gift of being able to speak in every language permits theapostles to convey their message to all nations That message ndash confirmed by ldquosigns andwondersrdquo ndash is testimony of their own first-hand witness to the Resurrection It is accompanied bythe baptism of the new members of the Church which repeats the Pentecostal experience byfilling them with the grace and power of the Holy Spirit

433 ldquoAnd with great power the apostles were giving witness to the resurrection of theLord Jesus and abundant grace was upon them all (καὶ δυνάmicroει microεγάλῃ ἀπεδίδουν τὸmicroαρτύριον οἱ ἀπόστολοι τοῦ Κυρίου Ἰησοῦ τῆς ἀναστάσεως χάρις τε microεγάλη ἦν ἐπὶπάντας αὐτούς)

The ecstatic delight and simplicity of heart that the members of the Church in Jerusalem

experience by sharing a common life is their enjoyment of this ldquoabundant gracerdquo (χάρις τεmicroεγάλη) The new community is built upon faith in the apostlesrsquo testimony that Jesus triumphedover death and that his victory promises an eternal life to all who believe That is the gift of theHoly Spirit Yet the ldquospiritualrdquo (πνευmicroατικός) content of early Christian experience does not denyits simultaneously material character For the significance of the Resurrection and the Ascensioninto Heaven is precisely that they concern the physical body of Christ When he appears toThomas who doubts that he has returned Jesus invites his disciple to place his hands into thewounds received from the Crucifixion The point is to show not only that the man standing infront of Thomas is not an imposter but also that the risen Christ is no disembodied ghost Andwhen the apostles witness the Ascension what they see is the physical body of Jesus rising toheaven There is little suggestion of soul-body dualism in Acts The spirit (πνεῦmicroα) infuses andtransfigures the body it does not exist apart from it In this respect it is similar to the life-givingbreath to which the word πνεῦmicroα originally referred Dualism is the result of a Platonizinginterpretation of Christianity that comes later The bodily character of the Resurrection extends tothe promise of eternal life for believers as well The promise is not that their souls will exist apart

from their bodies but that their bodies will rise up from the grave like that of their Savior Giventhis early Christian materialism it is not surprising that commonality of material goods wouldserve as a fundamental expression of the new life of the believers

As we already know the project of the sixteenth-century Anabaptists was to restore theChurch to its original apostolic condition by undoing the corruption they believed had set inwhen it made its peace with worldly wealth and power under Constantine Given the nature ofthe Anabaptist project it would seem that making material things common as described in Actswould follow as a matter of course However there is a long tradition ndash one that began aroundthe middle of the sixteenth century ndash of denying that Anabaptism has anything to do withcommunism regarding it as an accusation brought against the Anabaptists by their enemies It isunderstandable that this should be so The Anabaptists were the victims of a ldquored scarerdquo thatgripped the ruling classes of Europe in the aftermath of the Peasant War and the Muumlnstercommune It is impossible to explain the horrendous tortures forced relocations andinnumerable executions Anabaptists faced on the basis of heretical belief alone Nothing of aremotely similar scale was visited upon other schismatics The fact that the Anabaptistschallenged prevailing property relations is what made them victims of near-genocide It was amatter of survival then to create some distance between themselves and the charge ofadvocating common ownership of goods that came from Luther Zwingli and those whoextracted the confession from Thomas Muumlntzer that he held to the principle of Omnia communiasunt Recent scholarship however has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that having thingsin common was indeed a basic and widespread principle of Anabaptism at its origin just as it hasdemonstrated the influence veterans of the Peasant War had among the early Anabaptists

The dominant form of communist practice in early Anabaptism was appropriatelymodeled on the description of redistribution in Acts In Switzerland where the movementoriginated converts were often asked or required to make contributions to a ldquocommon purserdquoafter receiving adult baptism Some especially pious initiates went so far as to sell their land andhouses for that purpose in accordance with the biblical precedent When necessary officialsdistributed the contents of the purse to members of the community who were in need

Both proponents and enemies of Anabaptist communism often confused the redistributionof wealth with joint or communal property However except for the taking of meals in commonthere is no indication in Acts that redistribution collectivized ownership of wealth in this fashionbut only that it transferred wealth from the better-off members of the community to the worse-off Nevertheless some Anabaptists took joint or communal property as a paradigm for newproperty relations For example the visionary writing of the Nuremberg printer Hans Hergotwho was executed for rebellion in 1527 includes the following passage

And everything that grows on the land belongs to the church and the people who livethere Everything is bestowed for common use so that the people will eat from one potdrink from one vesselhellip And all things will be used in common so that no one is betteroff than another

The ldquowar communismrdquo of the city of Muumlnster involved an ad hoc form of communal propertythrough the edict that the doors to all homes be left open and the owners take in anyone whowished to reside with them But the most significant successful and long-lasting attempt toimplement communal property was that of the Hutterites

The Hutterites took their name from the charismatic hat-maker and Anabaptist leaderJacob Hutter However at their origins they were influenced by the revolutionary bookbinderHans Hut Hut shared Thomas Muumlntzerrsquos sanguinary apocalyptic view of social change andadvocated community ownership of goods in accordance with his own understanding of ActsHe survived the battle of Frankenhausen in which the peasant rebels were finally defeated butwas tortured and executed a few years later In the aftermath and under the influence of JacobHutter the Hutterites adopted pacifism and a strategy of creating autonomous communities Inorder escape persecution thousands of the brethren emigrated from Switzerland and Germany to

the more tolerant Moravia where they created hundreds of Bruderhofs farms and vineyards inwhich land houses farm implements produce and even objects of personal use were ownedcollectively The center of Bruderhof life was a large communal house in which craft productionoccurred on the ground floor and couples lived in small apartments on the upper levels The menengaged in farm labor and craftwork while the women were limited to traditional domesticduties in spite of the fact that children were raised communally apart from their parents TheBruderhofs enjoyed great economic success for a number of reasons People worked hard andconsumed little resulting in a surplus that could be used to purchase additional land seed andtools The size of the communities and of their agricultural production also enabled them to sellcheaply and to pay for supplies at generous prices both of which made the communitieseconomic assets to the areas in which they were located The Hutterites also organized both farmlabor and craft production cooperatively including the education boys were given in thenecessary skills They were therefore practitioners of the second and third forms of communismwe have identified namely communal ownership and cooperative organization of work Whenthey were ultimately forced out of Moravia by the triumph of Catholic forces in the Thirty YearsWar the Hutterites migrated eastward many finally relocating to Canada and the United Stateswhere the Bruderhofs continue to exist to this day

Communism as a kind of mutual aid was the contribution of the other major form ofAnabaptism that of the Mennonites With great political intelligence and skill Menno Simonswas able to reformulate the meaning of Omnia communia sunt in such a way as to avoidthreatening the property interests of nobles and clerics He did this in his book A Humble andChristian Justification and Replication First he denied that Mennonites were advocates ofcommunal property

This accusation is false and without all truth We do not teach and practice communityof goods but we teach and testify the Word of the Lord that all true believers in Christare of one body (1 Corinthians 1213) partakers of one bread (1 Corinthians 1017)have one God and one Lord (Ephesians 4)

In his assertion that the believers are of one body and partakers of one bread Simons is affirmingwhat we have called the general principle of communism while denying that Mennonitesembrace it in the specific form of communal property But he goes further by denying thatMennonites advocate a contemporary version of the apostolic redistribution of wealth

For although we know that the apostolic church had this practice in the beginning ascan be seen in the Acts of the Apostles nevertheless we note from their epistles that itdisappeared in their time and was no longer practiced

Instead of communal property or centralized redistribution of wealth the Mennonites derivefrom the general principle of Christian communism an alternative practice

Seeing then that they are one as said it is Christian and reasonable that they also havedivine love among them and that one member cares for another for both the Scripturesand nature teach this They show mercy and love as much as is in them They do notsuffer a beggar among them They have pity on the wants of the saints They receive thewretched They take strangers into their houses They comfort the sad They lend to theneedy They clothe the naked They share their bread with the hungry They do not turntheir face from the poorhellip

In the subsequent history of Mennonism the practice Simons describes came to be calledldquomutual aidrdquo Note that it is different from charitable giving and this in two ways First thereferences to receiving the wretched taking in strangers sharing bread and so on indicate a farmore personal even intimate form of involvement than simple charitable donation Second

there is the suggestion of reciprocity or mutuality (ldquoone member cares for anotherrdquo) that tends todeny the difference in status between the charitable giver and the recipient of charity Thepractice Simons describes is similar to what some anthropologists have called ldquogeneralizedreciprocityrdquo in which my obligation to give to you when you are in need corresponds to yourobligation to give to me when I am in need In a sense this is a form of redistribution inaccordance with need but it is enacted directly between individual members of the communityrather than administered centrally through a common purse

In line with his political purpose Simons is careful to distinguish between mutual aid andthe expropriation of private property

This is the kind of brotherhood we teach and not that some should take over andpossess the land soil and properties of others as we are falsely maligned accused andlied about by many

In this way he detaches the Mennonite version of communism from any revolutionary intentionThat was the prerequisite for communal survival during the long counter-revolution thatfollowed the Peasant War Still Simons never abandons the general principle Omnia communiasunt nor does he even really reject the practice of the early Church

Since we do not find it a permanent practice with the apostles we have not taught orpracticed community of goods but we urge earnestly and zealously to practice liberalgiving love and mercy as the apostolic writings teach and testify abundantly Andeven if we had taught and practiced community of goods as we are falsely accused ofdoing we would still not be doing otherwise than the holy apostles full of the HolySpirit themselves did in the former church at Jerusalem in the beginning of the holyChristian Church although they stopped the practice as has been said

Like the Hutterites Mennonite communities prospered once they managed to survive the

bloody period of reaction In Holland the Mennonite population consisted largely in successfulmerchants along with a number of lawyers doctors and other professionals Most of thepeasant artisan and laborer families who had started as Mennonites in the sixteenth century hadlong since converted to the Reform Church which is one reason Spinoza faced the problem ofpolitical agency in the TPT Although the idea of mutual aid persisted among the DutchMennonites it took the form predominantly of organized international philanthropy in which thecommunity made contributions not only to Mennonites abroad but to other populations in needThere was no escaping the fact however that in this philanthropic form mutual aid becamehardly distinguishable from conventional charity

Jarig Jelles was born into the Dutch Mennonite community around a century afterSimmons wrote his book when this process of slippage was well underway But there is littledoubt that Jelles knew the Mennonite teaching on mutual aid and its origin in the generalprinciple of Christian communism Even if Jelles never read Erasmusrsquo Adages Spinozarsquosreference to the supposed communism of Thales was likely to resonate with him on the basis ofhis own religious tradition

We cannot be certain how much Spinoza knew in detail about the communist practices ofthe Anabaptists but it is probably not a coincidence that he recommends three of the four atvarious places in his writings In Part 4 of the Ethics ldquoOf Human Bondage or the Strength of theEmotionsrdquo he identifies the chief virtue of the intellect as ldquostrength of the mindrdquo (fortitudo)According to him it takes two forms one directed to the self and one directed to others He callsthe inwardly directed form ldquocouragerdquo defining it as ldquothe desire whereby every individualendeavors to preserve his own being according to the dictates of reason alonerdquo The outwardlydirected form is generositas which Shirley translates as ldquonobilityrdquo though ldquosolidarityrdquo is closerto what Spinoza is getting at He defines it as ldquothe desire whereby every individual according to

the dictates of reason alone endeavors to assist others and make friends of themrdquo When twopeople in contact with one another possess the virtue of generositas they will clearly exhibit itreciprocally in the form of mutual aid the fourth communist practice

In Part 4 of the Ethics Spinoza also formulates a version of the first communist practicethat of the redistribution of wealth in accordance with need

Again men are won over by generosity especially those who do not have thewherewithal to produce what is necessary to support life Yet it is far beyond the powerand resources of a private person to come to the assistance of everyone in need For thewealth of a private person is quite unequal to such a demand It is also a practicalimpossibility for one man to establish friendship with all Therefore the care of the poordevolves upon society as a whole and looks only to the common good

The fact that society as a whole has responsibility for meeting the needs of the poor makes thepractice Spinoza recommends in this passage a version of the centralized redistribution of wealthdescribed in the Acts of the Apostles and institutionalized in Anabaptist form as the ldquocommonpurserdquo More than that the fact that society as a whole must take on this responsibility ratherthan a church or other sub-community makes Spinoza an early advocate of what will becomethree centuries later the European welfare state In our own period as the welfare state is beingdismantled it is easy to see that what neoliberals object to concerning it is precisely its implicitcommunism ie its practice of distribution in accordance with need

Spinoza advocates a third communist practice in his unfinished final work the PoliticalTreatise The context is his discussion of a maximally democratic version of monarchy in whichthe entire citizen body is armed and the king forbidden from making any decision contrary to thewill of a massive council of ordinary citizens In such a state

The fields and the soil and if possible the houses as well should be public property thatis should belong to the sovereign by whom they should be let at an annual rent tocitizens whether townsmen or country-dwellers Apart from this all citizens should befree or exempt from any form of taxation in time of peace Of this rent part should beallocated to the defense works of the commonwealth part to the kings domestic needsFor in time of peace it is still necessary to fortify cities as for war and to have in a stateof readiness ships and other armaments

Ownership of land and buildings by the sovereign is a form of communal property first becausethe citizens of the commonwealth delegate to him or them the property they hold in commonand second because that delegation occurs with the understanding that the sovereign will use theproperty in service of the common good

Spinoza supplies an argument based on more than simple utility for the practice ofholding land and buildings in common

hellip in a state of Nature the one thing a man cannot appropriate to himself and make hisown is land and whatever is so fixed to the land that he cannot conceal it anywhere orcarry it away where he pleases Thus the land and whatever is fixed to it in the way wehave described is especially the public property of the commonwealth that is of allthose who by their united strength can claim it or of him to whom all have delegated thepower to claim it

To state the argument differently since rights are the same as powers no individual has a naturalright to appropriate privately the land or any of its fixed structures because none has the powernecessary to do so The only response an individual can make to incursions by a more powerfulperson or group of people is flight in which he must leave the land and its buildings behind It is

only by entering into a community in which the strength of each is combined for the purpose ofdefense that people can effectively possess fixed property but they do so as a members of thecommunity rather than as an separate individuals According to Spinozarsquos theory of rights onlythe community has the right to own the land and its structures because only the community hasthe required power

The communal ownership of land houses and other buildings is a version of the secondcommunist practice on our list of which Hutterite joint ownership is the most developedhistorical example When adopted by a polity rather than a small community though thepractice has an added advantage Under those circumstances communal possession of fixedproperty eliminates the need for taxes except in time of war What takes their place is ageneration of revenue pegged to wealth since the members of society who are able to rent themost expensive and largest amounts of communal property will obviously pay the most in rentIn this way the form of communal ownership of land and buildings that Spinoza recommendsalso acts as a mechanism for the redistribution of wealth

The only communist practice of the Anabaptists that does not find an equivalent inSpinozarsquos writings is that of the cooperative organization of work The absence is related toSpinozarsquos inability to resolve the problem of political agency in the TPT An attempt to mobilizethe multitude on behalf of democratic social change would need to address the organization ofwork in such a way as to alleviate the burden of toil Reducing the number of hours spent inonerous labor is the only way to provide the multitude with the free time necessary to participatein institutionalized democratic politics Along with the redistribution of wealth and thedevelopment of communal property the cooperative reorganization of work would need to beincorporated as a plank in the latent political program that makes its first democratic appearancein the TPT and is extended in a communist direction in the passages from the Ethics and thePolitical Treatise that we have just examined But that would constitute an explicit anddangerous appeal to the multitude as the agent of political and social transformation an appealthat Spinoza consistently rejects It would involve nothing less than the revival of therevolutionary energies of the Peasant War on a new seventeenth-century foundation

In spite of his radicalism Spinoza doubted that revolution was capable of reconstructingsociety and the state in the way revolutionaries wanted In Chapter 18 of the TPT he takes aposition that is at least on the surface opposed to revolution or any attempt to change the formof the state fundamentally The context is a discussion of the transition from the early Hebrewcommonwealth in which the people held sovereignty to the rule of kings Spinoza tells us thatthe first period saw only a single civil war and concluded with a compassion for the vanquishedthat resulted in lasting peace By contrast the period of kings was marred by multiple warswaged only for the glory of the rulers and involved the massacre of hundreds of thousandsDuring the first period few prophets arose to rebuke the Jews while a great many emergedduring the time of the monarchies From this example Spinoza reasons that it is fatal for peopleaccustomed to popular sovereignty and governed by settled laws to adopt a new monarchicalform of government On the one hand they will be unable to tolerate the arbitrary exercise ofpower by a single individual while on the other the new monarch will be compelled to abolishthe existing laws because they did not originate by his own authority But it is just as dangerousaccording to Spinoza for the subjects of a monarch to attempt his replacement with popular ruleThis is because a popular revolution must advance to the point where it annihilates the king thekingrsquos family and the friends of the king in order to prevent the restoration of royal power But inthe process the revolutionary authority must assume a power even more draconian then thatpreviously exercised by the king In addition having committed regicide the new popularauthority faces the danger that it will fall victim to its own precedent For this reason as well andin the interest of survival it must wield power more repressively than the deposed sovereignSpinoza illustrates his point with reference to the English revolution which eliminated themonarch Charles I only to replace him with the Lord Protector Cromwell who was monarch inall but name and more repressive than Charles

Spinozarsquos point seems unassailable especially since the pattern he describes in the caseof the English Revolution repeated itself over the course of the next three centuries in the French

and Russian Revolutions It is at least arguable that Napoleon if not Robespierre was a newLouis XVI and Stalin a new Tsar even if this understates the more fundamental social changesthat resulted form the two revolutions Still Spinoza does not absolutely proscribe therevolutionary overthrow of a tyrannical government but says instead that there is a great dangerin making the attempt Besides his analysis of the conditions necessary for retaining sovereigntydoes not leave the decision about whether to engage in revolution up to militants He argues thatno state can survive that creates mass indignation in its people and this is precisely theunavoidable result of tyrannical government Spinozarsquos real purpose in Chapter 18 is to opposethe Orangist-Calvinist project of replacing the Dutch Republic with a monarchy ldquoAs for theEstates of Hollandrdquo he writes ldquoas far as we know they never had kings but counts to whom theright of sovereignty was never transferredrdquo His point is that the Dutch War of Independenceagainst Spain was justified because it restored the sovereignty of the people against the attemptby the Spanish ldquocountrdquo (King Philip II) to abolish it However any attempt to replace theRepublic with a monarchy would change the form of the state disastrously by divesting thepeople of their former rights

When Spinoza wrote his treatise the only revolutionary forces that existed were on theRight The danger he warns about in Chapter 18 of the TPT did indeed come to pass only oneyear after his letter to Jelles In 1672 a Calvinist-Orangist mob hacked Johan De Witt and hisbrother Cornelius to death at a time when Holland was invaded by the French army Streetorators stirred up the mob by claiming that the invasion was the result of the brothersrsquo treason Inthe aftermath of the murders William III prince of Orange was elevated to the position ofstadtholder of Holland Although William went on to become King of England he stopped shortof claiming a Dutch throne However in actuality he substituted his own power for much of thatwhich had belonged to the Estates General while the Reformed Church gained considerableinfluence in Dutch government According to a story made famous by Spinozarsquos earliestbiographer Johannes Colerus when the De Witt brothers were murdered Spinozarsquos landlordthwarted his attempt to go the site of the assassinations where the bodies of the brothers werestill on gruesome display in order to plant a sign reading Ultimi Barbarorum (the ultimatebarbarians) In this way the landlord undoubtedly saved the philosopherrsquos life It was the onlytime we know of when the mature Spinoza gave in to his passive affects in a significant way

There is a passage in Chapter 18 of the TPT that uncannily anticipates the murders

Tyranny is most violent where individual beliefs which are unalienable rights areregarded as criminal Indeed in such circumstances the anger of the common people[plebis] is usually the greatest tyrant of allhellip the vilest hypocrites urged on by that samefury which they call zeal for Gods law have everywhere persecuted men whoseblameless character and distinguished qualities have excited the hostility of the commonpeople [plebi] publicly denouncing their beliefs and inflaming the savage multitudersquos[multitudinem] anger against them

Spinoza was the first political philosopher who grappled with the problem of a mass-

based politics of the Right The problem would occur again with the fascist movements of the1920s and 1930s and with the return of the rightwing religious fundamentalisms of our own dayndash Jewish Christian Muslim and Hindu It is not surprising that he failed to solve the problemdefinitively since it continues to remain unsolved The remarkable thing about Spinoza thoughis not that he was skeptical about the liberatory possibilities of revolution by the masses but thathe defended the idea of a popular democracy nonetheless And this he continued to do even inthe aftermath of the De Witt murders In his work on the Political Treatise in the final year of hislife Spinoza developed a powerful critique of the elitist claim that the multitude are incapable ofgoverning

Yet perhaps our [democratic] suggestions will be received with ridicule by those whorestrict to the common people the faults that are inherent in all mankind saying There

is no moderation in the mob they terrorize unless they are frightened and Thecommon people is either a humble servant or an arrogant master there is no truth orjudgment in itrdquo and the like But all men share in one and the same nature it is powerand culture that mislead us with the result that when two men do the same thing weoften say that it is permissible for the one to do it and not the other not because of anydifference in the thing done but in the doer hellipThen again There is no moderation inthe mob they terrorize unless they are frightened For freedom and slavery do not gowell together Finally that there is no truth or judgment in the common people is notsurprising since the important affairs of state are conducted without their knowledgeand from the little that cannot be concealed they can only make conjecturehellip Howeveras we have said all men have the same nature ndash all grow haughty with rule terrorizeunless they are frightened ndash and everywhere truth becomes a casualty through hostilityor servility especially when despotic power is in the hands of one or a few who in trialspay attention not to justice or truth but to the extent of a persons wealth

Surprisingly Spinoza develops this democratic argument while discussing the institutions

appropriate to a monarchy But the key point he makes in the discussion is that a condition ofeffective monarchical rule is expansion of the democratic element within the state in the form ofa sizeable legislative council whose members are drawn from the general population of citizensover the age of fifty On Spinozarsquos view the mistake those who oppose democracy make isassuming that the faults exhibited by the common people ndash such as poor judgment arroganceand hostility ndash belong only to them while they are in fact typical of human beings Actually it iselitist politics that magnifies these all-too-human faults by restricting political power to a limitednumber of people while democratic politics minimizes them through the principle of majorityrule among numerous decision-makers The reason as we already know is that passions pullpeople in different directions making it nearly impossible for the members of a large council toagree on a common position unless they make decisions based not on passion but an idea of thecommon good On Spinozarsquos view it is when government is in the hands of a single person oronly a few people that the dangers the critics of democracy attribute to the common people are infact the greatest

Spinoza also argues against the claim that the common people are not qualified to makepolitical decisions because they lack the necessary education or degree of intellect There is noone he says who has been engaged in an occupation until the age of fifty who lacksunderstanding of his sphere of work ldquoevery man is reasonably competent and sagacious inmatters in which he has been long and attentively engagedrdquo So each is qualified at least to giveadvice in the kingrsquos council concerning his own business especially if given the time necessaryto reflect on the matter under discussion

Most of all the plebs are the group best suited to serving on the council because theirinterest is that of society as a whole ldquoHence it follows that counselors must necessarily beappointed whose private fortune and advantage depend on the general welfare and the peace ofallrdquo For example Spinoza emphasizes the idea that the common people have the highest stake inavoiding war or concluding an existing war with a settlement that brings lasting peace Thereason is they are ones who bear the heaviest burdens of war Unlike the wealthy well-bornmembers of society it is the common person whose occupation is most likely to be interrupted itis his taxes that are raised to onerous levels and it is his son who dies Thus the common interestof society in peace is best served not by a wealthy or educated elite but rather by those whohave the most to lose from war

At the end of the long paragraph defending popular power quoted above Spinozaconnects the question of who holds power within the state to that of who owns property Truthand justice he says are casualties in states where power is held by one person or a handful ofpeople who conduct courtroom trials that favor the rich The implication is that elitist politicalpower and ownership of wealth are intrinsically connected One of the reasons Spinozarecommends public ownership of land and buildings in a monarchy is to prevent the rise of aclass of wealthy landowners with interests different than those of the rest of society Under the

conditions of common ownership ldquothe greatest part of the council will generally have one andthe same attitude of mind towards their common interests and peaceful activitieshelliprdquo And yethaving gone this far he has trouble imagining a state where fixed property is owned collectivelyin which the actually existing multitude holds power The peasants artisans and urban poor whoconstitute the common people of the United Provinces drop out of the picture in the democratic-communist monarchy he describes and nearly everyone makes his living by selling merchandiseor lending money to countrymen ldquoall will have to make a living by engaging in trade or bylending money to their fellow citizensrdquo He seems to assume that the collectivization of land andfixed property would eliminate the occupations of peasant and artisan leaving trade and loaningat interest the only remaining possibilities of work But that of course is not true The fact thatpeople would have to rent farm land would not prevent them from farming any more than theneed to rent workshops in the cities and towns would prevent artisans from plying their tradesBut Spinoza finds the idea of a commonwealth based on commercial enterprise politicallyappealing This is because he regards commercial occupations as contributing to harmony andpeace since he claims they establish connections between people that further the interests of allwhile those who engage in them prosper only in peacetime Both of these assumptions are asquestionable as the expectation that non-commercial occupations will die out After all even inSpinozarsquos day colonialism and the struggle for colonies between imperialist states led to warsbetween the great powers including the United Provinces not to mention the military and otherforms of violence involved in subjugating the colonies The East India Company was not exactlya force for peace What seems to be at work here instead is a failure of social imaginationthough one we may find understandable given the fact that the capitalist economy was still at anearly stage in its development However this may be there is no denying the fact that despite hispowerful arguments in favor of democratic rule and communal property it is still a bourgeoissociety and state that Spinoza envisions

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of what we should not hesitate to call Spinozarsquoscommunism is the critique of private ownership he develops in the Ethics based on his theory ofaffects For him there is a paradox involved in social and political life It stems from the fact thaton the one hand people can survive and develop their capacities only by joining with oneanother in societies and states But on the other hand the necessity of combining with oneanother does not prevent them from seeking their own advantage above that of their fellowsbeing quarrelsome or hateful and erecting obstacles to each otherrsquos happiness Spinoza identifiesthe reason for these deep-rooted problems of social coexistence in Part IV Proposition 35 of theEthics ldquoInsofar as men are assailed by emotions that are passive they can be contrary to oneanotherrdquo Emotions are states of the body characterized by a transition from a lower degree of thepower to exist and act (conatus) to a higher one or conversely from a higher degree to a lowerone The first transition is the affect of joy while the second is that of sadness Passive emotionsare caused by an object external to the body or more precisely external to its essential natureSpinoza conceives of that nature as a specific proportion of motion-and-rest that the parts of thebody exhibit in relation to one another While joy is an increase in our capacity to preserve theproportion of motion-and-rest essential to our body (ie to exist and act as we do) sadness is adecrease in that capacity The political problem created by the passive emotions is that evenwhen they are joyful they are not under the control of the person who experiences themMoreover different people are affected by the same external object in different ways because theparts of their bodies and their proportionate relations of motion-and rest-differ The same objectmay elicit anger in one person and pity in another or love in one and hatred in another and soon And because people differ in their emotional reactions to the same things they also differ inthe judgments they frame on the basis of these reactions What one person praises anotherperson blames what one regards as fearless another believes to be timid etc Finally sincepeople act upon their judgments seeking to foster what they judge to be good and destroy whatthey judge to be bad their differing judgments can result in actions that are in conflict with oneanother In short ldquoinsofar as they are assailed by passive emotions [people] can be contrary toone anotherrdquo

In Proposition 34 Spinoza gives an example of the contrariety caused by the passiveaffects Suppose Peter has sole possession of something Paul loves Deprivation of the loved

object causes sadness in Paul with the idea of Peter as its cause In accordance with Spinozarsquosdefinition of hatred Paul will hate Peter and therefore seek to injure or destroy him in order toremove the cause of his Paulrsquos sadness Spinoza says that this example may seem wrong becausePaul and Peter appear to be contrary to one another because of something they share ndash ie theirlove for the thing Peter possesses But that is not the case Paul has an image of himself aslacking the loved object while Peter has an image of himself as possessing the loved object Sothey in fact differ from one another by virtue of the different images they have rather than bypossessing something in common It is clear from the example that the root of this contrariety ndashie this enmity ndash between Paul and Peter is the fact that the object can be possessed by only oneof them so that what one has the other must lack The difficulty with private property is that it isexclusive to the one who possesses it which means that what I experience as possession othersexperience as deprivation It may seem that there is no problem if other people are indifferent tothe thing I possess However in accordance with Spinozarsquos theory of the imitation of affects themere fact that I love the thing I own other things being equal will cause you to love it as wellMy exclusive possession of the thing will therefore cause sadness in you that takes the form ofhatred or more precisely the kind of hatred called envy which involves pain at the good fortuneof another ldquohuman nature is in general so constituted that men pity the unfortunate and envy thefortunate in the latter case with a hatred proportionate to their love of what they think anotherpossessesrdquo

Common Possession Friendship and Philosophy

In the Ethics Spinoza does not follow his analysis of the antagonisms of private property

by considering the collective possession of material goods (although he does advocateredistribution of wealth to the poor in Part 4 as we have seen) But the theme of commonpossession figures large in the book anyway in his treatment of the intellectual love of God Inorder to understand the connection between common possession and amor Dei intellectualis itwill be necessary to engage in a detailed analysis of Spinozarsquos metaphysics We will begin thattask in earnest in the next chapter At this point we will simply introduce the theme byexamining the relationship between friendship and common possession in the letter to Jelles andsome related writings

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo unlike the similar passages fromActs has its provenance among philosophers Spinoza mistakenly attributes it to Thales but itoccurs in Platorsquos Phaedrus and Laws and is present though not in so many words in thediscussion in the Republic of common ownership of property by the guardian class Thetradition cited by Erasmus that traces the proverb back to Pythagoras is plausible when weconsider the influence the Pythagorean community in Sicily had on Plato in the aftermath ofSocratesrsquo death Erasmus sees the supposed use of a common fund by the Pythagoreans as ananticipation of the similar practice in Acts But Spinozarsquos approach is different What interestshim in the letter is common ownership not as a religious practice but as a matter of thephilosopherrsquos relation to the world Remember the deductive consequences of the proverb sinceall things are in common among friends everything belongs to the wise because the wise arefriends of the gods and all things belong to the gods But what does it mean to say that the wiseare friends of the gods

Although Spinoza uses the word ldquofriendshiprdquo often in his writings he never supplies aformal definition However we can reconstruct the wordrsquos meaning from the contexts in whichhe uses it So for example Proposition 35 of Part III of the Ethics reads

If anyone thinks that there is between the object of his love and another person the sameor a more intimate bond of friendship than there was between them when he alone usedto possess the object loved he will be affected with hatred toward the object loved andwill envy his rival

According to the proposition friendship is an intimate bond between a person and the

object he loves I hate an object of love that I alone once possessed when it wounds my vanity byloving someone else more than me So the object of love must be capable of loving whichmeans that the bond of friendship is a relation of reciprocal love between persons Nowaccording to Spinoza I love something when I have the idea of that thing as the cause of myexperience of joy Joy is an increase in conatus which Spinoza defines as the tendency to persistin being or equivalently the ability to exist and act So friendship is a relation in which Iidentify the other person as the cause of an increase in my conatus and the other personidentifies me as the cause of a similar increase in his or hers Two things each of which causesan increase in the ability to exist and act of the other are said by Spinoza to be in harmony Sincetwo entities in harmony have more combined power than either does singly it is to the advantageof each to be in harmony with the other There is even greater advantage in entering intoharmonious connection with a third individual and the greatest advantage in combining with asmany individuals as possible This is a universal metaphysical principle For example it pertainsjust as much to chemical combination or herding among animals as it does to social relationsbetween people In the case of human relationships it is the fundamental basis of politics orrather one of its two bases the other one being the tendency human beings have to conflict withone another When the state is functioning well it involves not a random collection ofindividuals and certainly not the war of each against all but a group whose members are boundto one another by friendship the human form of harmony Thus for Spinoza friendship is apolitical virtue as it was for Plato and Aristotle

The opposite of friendship is enmity That person is my enemy whom I regard as thecause of my sadness or pain which is the same as saying the cause of a decrease in my abilityto exist and act Like friendship enmity is a reciprocal relationship If I identify you as the causeof my sadness I will seek to injure or eliminate you But that means I will be identified in yourmind as the cause of your sadness Enmity is a relation of reciprocal hatred just as friendship is arelation of reciprocal love Just as there is harmony between friends there is discord betweenenemies The fundamental task of a rational politics is easy to state it is to extend and intensifyfriendship and to reduce and mollify enmity

We have already seen that Spinoza identifies solidarity (generositas) as one of the twoforms of strength of mind (fortitudo) which is the virtue that belongs to the exercise of theintellect Solidarity is the desire to assist others and foster friendship on the basis of reason aloneThe friendship fostered by solidarity is a bond of active love The love of friends for one anotheris active when each person who loves is the adequate cause of his or her love To say that theperson is the adequate cause means that the cause of love is internal to the person who feels it inother words that the love is self-generated Active love differs from passive love in that thecause of passive love is at least partially something that exists outside the person who has theemotion The problem with passive love is that it need not be constant If the bodily dispositionof the person changes in a particular way then the object of erstwhile love will have a differentemotional effect Passive love can change into boredom or indifference or even hatred This isnot possible in the case of active love because it is self-generated Since love involves theexperience of joy no one actively abandons it

There seems to be something odd about the idea of a love between persons that isinternally generated by each of the partners in the relationship Is it not the case that part of theessence of love is the fact that the object of my love is the cause of my love Without denyingthis Spinoza identifies two forms of love that are self-generated in the Ethics One is myintellectual love of God It is indeed true that God is the cause of my love but only insofar as myintellect is part of the infinite intellect of God Thus the object that causes my love - ie God - isinternal to my mind and conversely my mind is internal to it Such reciprocal internality ndash hardas it is to visualize ndash is what Spinoza means by immanence God he tells us is the immanentcause of everything that exists Nothing can exist apart from God while God expresses himselfin all of the things that exist My love of God and Gods love of himself are one and the samebecause Godrsquos intellect is immanent in mine The second form of self-generated love is the

friendship that exists between me and others who love God through the exercise of the intellectThe reason is that the joy I feel in loving God is by the imitation of affects augmented by thejoy you feel in loving God But your love as well as mine is joy caused by the same immanentbeing Another way of saying this is that your intellect and mine are parts (ie finiteexpressions) of the infinite intellect of God Thus the relationship between friends who are boundtogether by the common exercise of the intellect and the love of God that flows from it is basedon an internal bond an internal object and cause of love In this kind of love you and I as itwere discover one another internally You are inside of me and I am inside of you Thus whenyou augment my love and I augment yours it is Gods power as the intellect immanent in us boththat causes the augmentation even though we remain finite individual beings In this state ofaffairs which is admittedly difficult to grasp we can see the rational meaning of the command tolove God by loving the neighbor In intellectual love God not insofar as he is infinite butinsofar as he expresses himself in my finite intellect loves God as he expresses himself in yourfinite intellect

For Spinoza the exercise of the intellect is very different than our ordinary experience ofthe world In the course of ordinary experience we encounter objects in a way that appearshaphazard disordered and incomplete This is so first of all because our encounters are part ofan infinitely complex chain of natural causes and effects of which we know only very limitedparts In addition our experience of objects has as much to do with the condition our bodies arein when we encounter them as it does with the nature of the objects themselves By contrast inexercising the intellect we arrange our ideas in an intelligible pattern that is internal to the mindand entirely different than the images we accumulate through sensory experience The ideas arean expression of our power while the images result from our hapless deliverance to chanceEmotions caused by objects we encounter in the course of ordinary experience are externallydetermined and therefore passive while emotions caused by acts of intellectual comprehensionare internally generated and therefore active That is why love as an active emotion has its originin the exercise of the intellect and the most satisfying form of friendship is based on thereciprocal experience of such love In a letter to Willem van Blyenberg Spinoza provides themost complete description of this kind of friendship to be found in his writings

For my part of all things that are not under my control what I most value is to enterinto a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth For I believe that such a lovingrelationship affords us a serenity surpassing any other boon in the whole wide worldThe love that such men bear to one another grounded as it is in the love that each hasfor knowledge of truth is as unshakable as is the acceptance of truth once it has beenperceived It is moreover the highest source of happiness to be found in things notunder our command for truth more than anything else has the power to effect a closeunion between different sentiments and dispositions

Spinoza says that a friendship based on the love of truth is not under our control But how

can that be if intellectual friendship involves a form of love internally generated by each friendIt would seem that the love we generate through the exercise of the intellect is fully under ourcontrol Spinoza however is referring to the fact that we are able to become friends only withpeople we actually meet which is something that occurs in the course of ordinary haphazarddisordered experience To a large extent our friendships are a matter of chance By way ofillustrating this point it turned out that Spinoza decided his initial judgment of Blyenberg wasmistaken He broke off their correspondence when he realized that the infinite chain of causesand effects had brought his way not a lover of truth but a dogmatic worshipper of the ldquopaperand inkrdquo of the Bible

People create commonwealths because the power of each to exist and act is increased byall others who transfer their rights to the sovereign For reasons we have already considered thepolitical bond is one of friendship ldquoIt is of the first importance to men to establish closerelationships and to bind themselves together with such ties as may most effectively unite theminto one body and as an absolute rule to act in such a way as serves to strengthen friendshiprdquo If

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

the multitude as it could be were Spinozarsquos reforms to be implemented With an uncontrolledReform Church and a Republic dominated by regents who represent the wealthy burghers themultitude has no chancing of shedding its superstitions or developing its rational capacities TheChurch manipulates their hopes and fears through the instrument of superstition and therepublican oligarchs block their participation in political decision-making which is the only waythey can develop rationality on a significant scale The story would be very different however ifthe state were both democratic and prohibited the Church from involvement in politics Twomajor conditions would then exist for the development of reason on a mass scale

The idea of a democracy raises the problem of how people without significant materialresources are to participate in making decisions when they must spend their lives in toil It mightbe thought that the problem can be solved by a universal franchise enabling all citizens to votefor representatives to a legislative assembly and other state offices But even if measures were inplace to prevent the wealthy minority from exercising unequal influence in elected bodiesrepresentative government is not Spinozarsquos idea of democracy Like Plato and Aristotle when heuses the term ldquodemocracyrdquo he has in mind a state such as the Athenian polis in which all adult(male) citizens were empowered to vote directly on legislation and other public matters Spinozamakes this clear in the unfinished chapter on democracy in the Political Treatise

hellipin this state all who are born of citizen parents or on native soil or have done serviceto the commonwealth or are qualified on any other grounds on which the right ofcitizenship is granted by law all I say can lawfully demand for themselves the right tovote in the supreme council and to undertake offices of state nor can they be refusedexcept for crime or dishonor

At a relatively advanced stage in its development the Athenian polis solved the problem

of the multitudersquos participation in government by paying citizens to attend sessions of theAssembly thereby compensating them for missed days of work If Spinoza was aware of theAthenian solution he gives no indication of it in his writings although it is likely that he wouldhave considered the problem of participation in politics by those without leisure in the part of thePolitical Treatise he left unfinished at his death Following the pattern of the completed chapterson monarchy and aristocracy the unfinished chapters on democracy would undoubtedly havespecified the institutional structures and practices necessary to sustain a democratic state In anyevent without something like the Athenian solution the idea of a democratic republic in theUnited Provinces would have been no more than the sort of utopian dream Spinoza rejects in theIntroduction to the Political Treatise

Returning to the earlier work the program for reforming the Dutch Republic that emergesin the TPT has three planks 1) establish state control over the churches as public institutions 2)guarantee freedom of thought expression and private worship and 3) democratize the oligarchicRepublic Although Spinozarsquos book is a work of philosophy it is equally a political interventionin a concrete historical situation a fact that he indicates in his letter to Jelles by referring to theldquocauserdquo he asks his friend to serve by blocking the Dutch translation of the book But in order toact as a political intervention the book must influence the beliefs and through them the actionsof people That raises the question To whom is the TPT addressed Since the decision to write inLatin effectively prevented the multitude from reading the work (which as we have seen wasSpinozarsquos intention) and on the assumption that not many aristocrats were likely to be swayedby its radical arguments the addressee of the book can only have been the educated section ofthe bourgeoisie Since Spinoza was unlikely to sway many conservative Calvinists with hisrationalist conception of religion there were only two groups within the bourgeoisie ndash at leastsome of whose members were capable of reading Latin ndash that the work could effectively addressThe first consists in republicans including the regents who hesitated to support the kind of stateauthority over religion that Spinoza advocated for ideological or pragmatic reasons The secondconsists in Orangists who were liberals in matters of religion and so in conflict with the ReformChurch As odd as it may seem there were a good number of people who fit into the secondcategory Even many of the Collegiantrsquos were loyal to the House of Orange in spite of theirpronounced religious liberalism

Had the TPTrsquos program been limited to its first two planks ndash state control of the churchesand freedom of thought and expression ndash it would have been politically coherent But where doesthe idea of democratizing the United Provinces fit into this picture Neither bourgeoisrepublicans nor religious liberals were apt to be sympathetic to the idea of a democratic republicthat would place power in the hands of the multitude If Spinoza wanted to make an appeal to therepublican and liberal Orangist sections of the bourgeoisie he ought to have been defending theexisting oligarchic Republic against its conservative Calvinist and monarchist enemies ratherthan elaborating an argument for its democratization There is only one audience who wouldhave been sympathetic to that argument namely the peasants artisans wage-workers and smallmerchants who comprised the multitude But that is precisely the readership Spinoza deniedhimself by writing in Latin

And yet Spinoza understood that the only way the Republic could survive in face of thealliance between the Reform Church and the House of Orange was to shift the allegiance of themultitude by winning its support Thus the contradiction in Spinozarsquos program is not a theoreticalflaw but a reflection of the real contradiction involved in the stadtholderless Republic or if youprefer the instability in the balance of social forces that enabled it to exist The Republic couldsurvive only by means of an impossible alliance between the multitude and the regents IfSpinoza erred it was in believing that it was possible to convince the regents to democratize bythe force of his arguments But this was the same as asking them to commit political suicidesince their power on the urban and national levels depended upon their ability to defend theirmonopoly on state offices The only alternative which Spinoza rejected was a popularrevolution that would create a new and radically democratic republic But that republic wouldshare with the existing one no more than the name like the animal dog and the dog star thatSpinoza refers to in a different context For that reason it would have fallen under his warningthat those who attempt to change the form of the state are likely to see it restored in a morerepressive version (see page 25 below) In short there was no solution to the problem the TPTattempted to solve or at least none within the limits of Spinozarsquos thinking As a political theoryand a theory of biblical hermeneutics the book is a brilliant work that went on to influencephilosophers and ironically theologians for the next three centuries As an intervention in theextraordinarily difficult and complex political situation of the seventeenth-century Netherlands itwas and had to be an utter failure

There are in fact two political programs in the TPT an overt program and a latent oneThe overt program is liberal republican and bourgeois in the sense that its addressee andintended agent of change is the educated bourgeoisie The latent program lies quite a bit furtherto the left It is radically democratic and its only possible agent of change is the multitude Letter44 makes a contribution to the latent program that moves in an even more radical direction

The Communist Idea

In his letter to Jelles Spinoza develops an idea of the highest good for human beings as

an alternative to what he argues is the false conception of Homo Politicus For the author of thatbook wealth and honors comprise the highest good But Spinoza claims in the letter thatcommonwealths devoted to the pursuit of wealth and honors ldquomust necessarily perish and haveperishedrdquo He then writes

How far superior indeed and excellent were the reflections of Thales of Miletus compared with this writer is shown by the following account All things he said are incommon among friends

The fact that this paragraph follows Spinozarsquos critique of Homo Politicus while proposing

an alternative to the apparent position of its author justifies an interpretation that takes it in apolitical sense Spinoza should be read as offering the saying of Thales as an addendum to the

latent program he articulates in the TPT Like democracy common ownership could have onlyone social basis in the Netherlands of the seventeenth century ndash namely the peasants artisanswage-workers and small retail merchants The problem this raises is how to make the transitionfrom a multitude given to irrationality and superstition ndash and therefore under the sway of theReformed Church ndash to one capable of the rationality necessary to create the democraticcommunism (the content of which we have yet to define) that Letter 44 implies when consideredalong with the TPT Spinoza saw no answer to this problem That is why he suppressed his latentproject in favor of the overt one for a liberal republic able to assert its sovereign authority overthe Church It seemed to him that the educated bourgeoisie had political capacities that themultitude lacked

Spinozarsquos judgment on this matter is similar mutatis mutandis to that of FrederickEngels in the Peasant War in Germany For Engels the Peasant War of the sixteenth century wasa heroic but premature revolution Under the leadership of Thomas Muumlntzer the peasantsadopted a program that included the expropriation of ecclesiastic and aristocratic property andthe common ownership of goods But the princes were the only group with the wealth andmilitary resources necessary to benefit from the ensuing turmoil while their rivals for power ndashthe Catholic prelates and lesser nobility ndash were ruined by the confiscation of property andplundering or destruction of fixed wealth by the peasant masses The rising bourgeoisie was ableto frame an independent liberal political program but did not yet have the social weightnecessary to play a leading role in the economy and the state According to Engels the peasantrywas incapable of mastering the new forces of production unleashed by the world market and theonly class that might have played a progressive role alongside the peasants ndash the proletarianwage-working element in the towns ndash was a very small part of laboring population It would takeanother three centuries for the proletariat to develop along with industry to the point where itwould be able to draft a meaningful equivalent of the communist program first framed by thesixteenth-century German peasantry Spinoza certainly had no idea that industrialization and asizeable proletariat were on their way But he shared with Engels a pessimistic assessment of thechances for a successful social transformation led by peasants and their allies Perhaps with thedisastrous defeat of the German peasants in mind (as well as the allegiance of the Dutchmultitude to the Reformed Church) Spinoza judged that relying upon the common people as anagent of social and political change in his own century would have been equally futile

Why then does Spinoza raise the issue of common ownership in Letter 44 The answer isthe same as for why he discusses democracy in the TPT when it makes no contribution to hispolitical intervention but on the contrary damages it We could say that Spinoza is either a badmilitant or a good philosopher The truth is he is both Like Platorsquos attempt to influence thecourse of events in Syracuse or Aristotlersquos decision to tutor Alexander the Great Spinozarsquos faithin the political efficacy of philosophical reasoning was misguided There is ample historicalevidence that the philosopher who attempts to be politically effective as a philosopher is doomedto defeat That is why Marx ceased considering himself a philosopher in 1845 as he indicates inthe eleventh of his Theses on Feuerbach ldquoUntil now philosophers have only attempted tounderstand the world the point however is to change itrdquo The project of changing the world isdifferent than that of understanding it from a purely theoretical perspective Of course it ispossible for philosophers to influence statesmen as Locke influenced the drafters of the USConstitution But Lockersquos influence was effective more than a century after he wrote the SecondTreatise on Civil Government and so can hardly be called a political intervention The attempt tointervene politically in a concrete situation in which multiple forces and complex structures arein play is something very different than the delayed influence on the drafters of a constitutionwho have had an opportunity to ponder at leisure the meaning of a philosopherrsquos work The mostimportant question of politics is not so much ldquoWhat is to be donerdquo as ldquoWho is to do itrdquoSpinoza may have been right that the multitude was not the collective subject to defendrepublican liberty That is why he appealed to the Dutch bourgeoisie through its philosophicallyliterate elements But he was too much the philosopher to suppress his argument that ademocratic republic is the kind of state that best preserves freedom and encourages rationalityand he was willing to make his point even at the cost of alienating the collective agent he wasattempting to influence

The reference to common ownership in Letter 44 would have had an even more negativeeffect on his readers should Spinoza have made it in the TPT In private communication withJelles however he was able to raise the topic without risking further political difficultiesSpinozarsquos reference presumes an intellectual history with roots in both ancient Greek philosophyand early Christianity a history that was renewed practically as well as theoretically in earlymodern Europe In the passage from Letter 44 where he introduces the theme of commonownership he goes on to elaborate the position he attributes to Thales Here is the passage in fullthat we have already quoted partially

How far superior indeed and excellent were the reflections of Thales of Miletuscompared with this writer is shown by the following account All things he said are incommon among friends The wise are the friends of the Gods and all things belong tothe Gods therefore all things belong to the wise In this way the wise man makeshimself the richest by nobly despising riches instead of greedily pursuing them

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo (Amicorum communia omnia) is

the first entry in his book Adages by the late Renaissance humanist and reform-minded Catholicscholar Desiderius Erasmus The Adages were widely available in Spinozarsquos day and it is likelythat both Spinoza and Jelles had read them although the former must have also consultedErasmusrsquo source for the saying ndash Lives of the Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius We will seewhy in a moment Erasmus cites the same deduction from the maxim as Spinoza does in Letter44 except that he attributes it to Socrates rather than Thales

From this proverb Socrates deduced that all things belong to all good men just as theydo to the gods For to the gods he said belong all things good men are friends of thegods and among friends all possessions are in common

The fact that Spinoza refers to wise men while Erasmus refers to good men does not

indicate any real difference between them because both accepted the ancient Greek and biblicalequivalence between human goodness and wisdom The difference in attributing the deductiveconsequences of the proverb to Thales on the one hand and Socrates on the other also does notindicate any substantive disagreement between Spinoza and Erasmus although it does signify adifference in intellectual vocation and emphasis Interestingly however the attribution in bothcases is incorrect Their common source the Lives of the Philosophers places the argument intothe mouth of Diogenes the Cynic rather than Socrates or Thales Thus both Spinoza and Erasmushave had a failure of memory and probably for the same reason The author of Lives makes itclear that although Diogenes the Cynic despised the pursuit of wealth he was not a veryappealing character he was arrogant and could be verbally and physically abusive to those hejudged to be unwise It is understandable then that the figure of Diogenes would drop out of thememory of both Erasmus and Spinoza and be replaced by a philosopher with whom each tosome extent identified Erasmus the Renaissance humanist undoubtedly found Socrates well-suited to stand in for the part of Diogenes the Cynic because Socrates was a moral philosopherand the teacher of Plato whose influence on the Renaissance was profound As an admirer of thenatural sciences and a maker of telescopes Spinoza would have felt the same way about Thaleswho was an astronomer as well as a philosopher

In Letter 44 a story from Lives follows the identification of Thales as the figureresponsible for the drawing the deductive consequences of the proverb In order to demonstratethat his rejection of the pursuit of wealth was not an alibi for poverty Thales made use of hisexpert knowledge of the heavens Foreseeing a bountiful olive crop after the previous harvestrsquosdearth he rented all of the olive presses in Greece cheaply and then hired them out at a highprice to farmers who needed them to press the oil from their olives In this way he amassed agreat deal of wealth within a single year which ldquohe then distributed with a liberality equal to the

shrewdness by which he had acquired itrdquo Spinozarsquos memory of the story must have acted as abridge for the mistaken identification

The similarity between the ancient Greek proverb and the passages from Acts about thecommunal practices of the early Church with respect to property must have been evident to thebiblical scholar Spinoza Rendered into Latin by Erasmus the proverb ldquoAll things are incommon among friendsrdquo is amicorum communia omnia In Acts 244 ndash ldquoAll that believed weretogether and had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquohad all things in commonrdquo appears in theLatin Vulgate as habebant omnia communia In Acts 432 ndash ldquoNo one claimed that any of theirpossessions was their own but they had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquothey had all thingsin commonrdquo appears in the Vulgate as erant illis omnia communia The equivalence between thecommunia omnia of the proverb and the omnia communia of the two verses from Acts wouldhave been perfectly clear to Spinoza on linguistic grounds alone

In Adages Erasmus is more explicit than Spinoza in connecting the proverb with theverses from Acts He discusses the proverb in its appearance in book 5 of the Laws where Platoappeals to it in order to demonstrate that the best condition of society consists in the communityof possessions Erasmus writes

But it is extraordinary how Christians dislike this common ownership of Platorsquos how infact they throw stones at it although nothing comes closer to the mind of Christ

Further on Erasmus identifies the inventor of the proverb as Pythagoras who he saysestablished a community in which life and property were shared

hellipwhich is the very thing Christ wants to happen among Christians For all those whowere admitted by Pythagoras into that well-known band who followed his instructionswould give to the common fund whatever money and family property they possessed

Even apart from Erasmus the similarity between the Greek philosophersrsquo proverb and the

New Testament passages would have been evident to the Mennonite Jelles from MennoSimonrsquos discussion of the communal practice described in Acts (more on this below) Jelleswould also have found the parallel especially appealing because it makes the principle ofcommon ownership part of that rational philosophical version of Christianity that he and theother Waterlander Mennonites and Collegiants were seeking to establish

Although Erasmus was an advocate of religious reform he never joined the ProtestantReformation remaining a loyal Catholic until his death It is ironic then that during hislifetime the only vigorous champions of the common ownership he espoused were members ofthe most radical wing of the Reformation ironic but completely intelligible since the radicalsrsquoproject was to restore the Church to its original apostolic condition before its accommodationwith worldly power and wealth under Constantine

The Latin phrase designating Anabaptist communism in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies is Omnia sunt communia (for example it appears in this form in the confession theauthorities extracted from Thomas Muumlntzer under torture) It translates into English as ldquoAllthings are commonrdquo which is the present tense version of the phrase in Acts 432 ldquoall thingswere commonrdquo (ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά) to the members of the Church in Jerusalem Theparallel formulation in Acts 244 is slightly different although the distinction is lost in the LatinVulgate It reads that the members of the apostolic Church ldquohad all things in commonrdquo (εἶχονἅπαντα κοινὰ) In the second formulation εἶχον (had) seems to suggest a specific mode ofpossession or even an established quasi-legal form of property But it would be a mistake tointerpret it this way In both verses the anonymous author of Acts is articulating a generalprinciple rather than specifying a form of its implementation As we shall see the concreteapplication of the principle in the first century Church involved not a mode of possession orform of property but rather a practice of redistribution

Within the Anabaptist movement there was a broad range of beliefs and practices thatinvolved specific applications of the principle Omnia sunt communia We need to recognizetheir breadth in order to grasp just how subtle and variegated Anabaptist communism could beFor this purpose it is important to distinguish between communism as 1) a principle ofredistribution 2) a form of joint or communal property 3) a mode of the organization of workand 4) a kind of mutual aid In general all Anabaptist applications of Omnia sunt communia areintended to realize in different ways a communal and spiritual life in which all things arecommon We could say if we like that each of the four categories serves as a means for realizingthe end designated by that principle as long as we keep in mind that in this case the meanscannot be discarded once the end has been achieved Communism as a principle of redistributiona form of communal property a mode of the organization of work a kind of mutual aid ndash orsome combination of these ndash are the concrete ways in which communism as a mode ofcommunal and spiritual life is realized In this case the means are internal to the end That isbecause there can be no fellowship no community of the spirit unless those participating sharesomething ie have it in common Greek recognizes this internal relationship between acommon life and something shared in the word translated into English as fellowship κοινωνίαthe root of which is κοινός which means ldquocommonrdquo Its antonym ἴδιος means ldquobelonging toonerdquo It is the word κοινός that appears in the passages from Acts that refer to the practice ofsharing material wealth

244 ldquoAll who believed were together and had all things in common (Πάντες δὲ οἱπιστεύοντες ἦσαν ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό καὶ εἶχον ἅπαντα κοινὰ)

432 ldquoThe multitude of believers were one in heart and soul (Τοῦ δὲ πλήθους τῶνπιστευσάντων ἦν καρδία καὶ ψυχὴ microία) and no one claimed anything as his ownpossession but to them all things were in common (καὶ οὐδὲ εἷς τι τῶν ὑπαρχόντωναὐτῷ ἔλεγεν ἴδιον εἶναι ἀλλrsquo ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά)

Both verses affirm an internal relationship between living a common life and things

being in common or people having things in common But this is true of any collectiveendeavor A chess club for example is only possible if the members have a common interest inplaying chess But the verses from Acts mean to assert more than this They affirm the intensityand universality of the common life experienced in the early Church (being ldquoone in heart andsoulrdquo) They indicate this by referring to the fact that in the Church in Jerusalem all things areheld in common (ἅπαντα κοινά) Although ldquoall thingsrdquo (ἅπαντα) is not limited to materialpossessions the succeeding verses in chapters 2 and 4 of Acts indicate the depth of thecommitment the early Christians had to sharing a common life by referring to the practice inwhich they enacted it

245 And they sold their possessions and goods and divided them among everyoneaccording to need (καὶ τὰ κτήmicroατα καὶ τὰς ὑπάρξεις ἐπίπρασκον καὶ διεmicroέριζον αὐτὰπᾶσιν καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

434 There was no one among them in need as many as owned land or houses soldthem and brought the values of what was sold (οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐνδεής τις ἦν ἐν αὐτοῖς ὅσοιγὰρ κτήτορες χωρίων ἢ οἰκιῶν ὑπῆρχον πωλοῦντες ἔφερον τὰς τιmicroὰς τῶνπιπρασκοmicroένων) 435 and laid them at the feet of the apostles and distribution wasmade to each in accordance with need (καὶ ἐτίθουν παρὰ τοὺς πόδας τῶν ἀποστόλωνδιεδίδετο δὲ ἑκάστῳ καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

The needs of others are what break the bonds of individual ownership allowing the

transition from the private (ἴδιος) to the common (κοινά) Acts refers to making material goods

common rather than for example communicating private knowledge publicly presumablybecause of the difficulty people experience parting with private property and the correlativesignificance of the act of doing so For material possessions are the means by which they satisfytheir basic needs ndash for food shelter clothing and so on ndash and when possible their desire forluxuries The act of handing over possessions has two consequences The first is that thedistinction between rich and poor wealthy and needy owner and propertyless is abolished andthe members of the community come to stand on level ground The second consequence involvesa more fundamental risk on the part of property-owners By handing over their property theymake a leap of faith that the community will henceforth satisfy their needs as well through thesame practice of redistribution When applied in this fashion the general principle of being incommon or having in common results in an example of the first category of communism asspecified above ie communism as a principle of redistribution

Redistribution of property by the apostles creates occasions for active sharing asexpressions of the new form of common life 246 says that the members of the Church inJerusalem ldquoalso broke bread in each otherrsquos homes and took their meals in exaltation andsimplicity of heartrdquo (κλῶντές τε κατrsquo ο ἴκον ἄρτον microετελάmicroβανον τροφῆς ἐν ἀγαλλιάσει καὶἀφελότητι καρδίας) The value of sharing meals lies not merely in the fact that everyone is fedbut also in the experience of exaltation or ecstatic delight (ἀγαλλιάσεις) and sincerity orsimplicity of heart (ἀφελότητι καρδίας) The experience in common of exaltation and sincerity isat least as important as the act of satisfying needs although the two can be distinguished onlynotionally

The experience has its meaning in relation to the power (δυνάmicroις) that brings together themembers of the new community and inspires them to share their property The gathering of JewsGreeks and those from other nations (the circumcised and the uncircumcised as Paul says)occurs in the period following Pentecost when the Holy Spirit is supposed to have descended incloven tongues of flame upon the twelve apostles endowing them with the ability to speak inevery language Pentecost in turn follows by several weeks the resurrection of Christ and hisbodily ascension into heaven The gift of being able to speak in every language permits theapostles to convey their message to all nations That message ndash confirmed by ldquosigns andwondersrdquo ndash is testimony of their own first-hand witness to the Resurrection It is accompanied bythe baptism of the new members of the Church which repeats the Pentecostal experience byfilling them with the grace and power of the Holy Spirit

433 ldquoAnd with great power the apostles were giving witness to the resurrection of theLord Jesus and abundant grace was upon them all (καὶ δυνάmicroει microεγάλῃ ἀπεδίδουν τὸmicroαρτύριον οἱ ἀπόστολοι τοῦ Κυρίου Ἰησοῦ τῆς ἀναστάσεως χάρις τε microεγάλη ἦν ἐπὶπάντας αὐτούς)

The ecstatic delight and simplicity of heart that the members of the Church in Jerusalem

experience by sharing a common life is their enjoyment of this ldquoabundant gracerdquo (χάρις τεmicroεγάλη) The new community is built upon faith in the apostlesrsquo testimony that Jesus triumphedover death and that his victory promises an eternal life to all who believe That is the gift of theHoly Spirit Yet the ldquospiritualrdquo (πνευmicroατικός) content of early Christian experience does not denyits simultaneously material character For the significance of the Resurrection and the Ascensioninto Heaven is precisely that they concern the physical body of Christ When he appears toThomas who doubts that he has returned Jesus invites his disciple to place his hands into thewounds received from the Crucifixion The point is to show not only that the man standing infront of Thomas is not an imposter but also that the risen Christ is no disembodied ghost Andwhen the apostles witness the Ascension what they see is the physical body of Jesus rising toheaven There is little suggestion of soul-body dualism in Acts The spirit (πνεῦmicroα) infuses andtransfigures the body it does not exist apart from it In this respect it is similar to the life-givingbreath to which the word πνεῦmicroα originally referred Dualism is the result of a Platonizinginterpretation of Christianity that comes later The bodily character of the Resurrection extends tothe promise of eternal life for believers as well The promise is not that their souls will exist apart

from their bodies but that their bodies will rise up from the grave like that of their Savior Giventhis early Christian materialism it is not surprising that commonality of material goods wouldserve as a fundamental expression of the new life of the believers

As we already know the project of the sixteenth-century Anabaptists was to restore theChurch to its original apostolic condition by undoing the corruption they believed had set inwhen it made its peace with worldly wealth and power under Constantine Given the nature ofthe Anabaptist project it would seem that making material things common as described in Actswould follow as a matter of course However there is a long tradition ndash one that began aroundthe middle of the sixteenth century ndash of denying that Anabaptism has anything to do withcommunism regarding it as an accusation brought against the Anabaptists by their enemies It isunderstandable that this should be so The Anabaptists were the victims of a ldquored scarerdquo thatgripped the ruling classes of Europe in the aftermath of the Peasant War and the Muumlnstercommune It is impossible to explain the horrendous tortures forced relocations andinnumerable executions Anabaptists faced on the basis of heretical belief alone Nothing of aremotely similar scale was visited upon other schismatics The fact that the Anabaptistschallenged prevailing property relations is what made them victims of near-genocide It was amatter of survival then to create some distance between themselves and the charge ofadvocating common ownership of goods that came from Luther Zwingli and those whoextracted the confession from Thomas Muumlntzer that he held to the principle of Omnia communiasunt Recent scholarship however has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that having thingsin common was indeed a basic and widespread principle of Anabaptism at its origin just as it hasdemonstrated the influence veterans of the Peasant War had among the early Anabaptists

The dominant form of communist practice in early Anabaptism was appropriatelymodeled on the description of redistribution in Acts In Switzerland where the movementoriginated converts were often asked or required to make contributions to a ldquocommon purserdquoafter receiving adult baptism Some especially pious initiates went so far as to sell their land andhouses for that purpose in accordance with the biblical precedent When necessary officialsdistributed the contents of the purse to members of the community who were in need

Both proponents and enemies of Anabaptist communism often confused the redistributionof wealth with joint or communal property However except for the taking of meals in commonthere is no indication in Acts that redistribution collectivized ownership of wealth in this fashionbut only that it transferred wealth from the better-off members of the community to the worse-off Nevertheless some Anabaptists took joint or communal property as a paradigm for newproperty relations For example the visionary writing of the Nuremberg printer Hans Hergotwho was executed for rebellion in 1527 includes the following passage

And everything that grows on the land belongs to the church and the people who livethere Everything is bestowed for common use so that the people will eat from one potdrink from one vesselhellip And all things will be used in common so that no one is betteroff than another

The ldquowar communismrdquo of the city of Muumlnster involved an ad hoc form of communal propertythrough the edict that the doors to all homes be left open and the owners take in anyone whowished to reside with them But the most significant successful and long-lasting attempt toimplement communal property was that of the Hutterites

The Hutterites took their name from the charismatic hat-maker and Anabaptist leaderJacob Hutter However at their origins they were influenced by the revolutionary bookbinderHans Hut Hut shared Thomas Muumlntzerrsquos sanguinary apocalyptic view of social change andadvocated community ownership of goods in accordance with his own understanding of ActsHe survived the battle of Frankenhausen in which the peasant rebels were finally defeated butwas tortured and executed a few years later In the aftermath and under the influence of JacobHutter the Hutterites adopted pacifism and a strategy of creating autonomous communities Inorder escape persecution thousands of the brethren emigrated from Switzerland and Germany to

the more tolerant Moravia where they created hundreds of Bruderhofs farms and vineyards inwhich land houses farm implements produce and even objects of personal use were ownedcollectively The center of Bruderhof life was a large communal house in which craft productionoccurred on the ground floor and couples lived in small apartments on the upper levels The menengaged in farm labor and craftwork while the women were limited to traditional domesticduties in spite of the fact that children were raised communally apart from their parents TheBruderhofs enjoyed great economic success for a number of reasons People worked hard andconsumed little resulting in a surplus that could be used to purchase additional land seed andtools The size of the communities and of their agricultural production also enabled them to sellcheaply and to pay for supplies at generous prices both of which made the communitieseconomic assets to the areas in which they were located The Hutterites also organized both farmlabor and craft production cooperatively including the education boys were given in thenecessary skills They were therefore practitioners of the second and third forms of communismwe have identified namely communal ownership and cooperative organization of work Whenthey were ultimately forced out of Moravia by the triumph of Catholic forces in the Thirty YearsWar the Hutterites migrated eastward many finally relocating to Canada and the United Stateswhere the Bruderhofs continue to exist to this day

Communism as a kind of mutual aid was the contribution of the other major form ofAnabaptism that of the Mennonites With great political intelligence and skill Menno Simonswas able to reformulate the meaning of Omnia communia sunt in such a way as to avoidthreatening the property interests of nobles and clerics He did this in his book A Humble andChristian Justification and Replication First he denied that Mennonites were advocates ofcommunal property

This accusation is false and without all truth We do not teach and practice communityof goods but we teach and testify the Word of the Lord that all true believers in Christare of one body (1 Corinthians 1213) partakers of one bread (1 Corinthians 1017)have one God and one Lord (Ephesians 4)

In his assertion that the believers are of one body and partakers of one bread Simons is affirmingwhat we have called the general principle of communism while denying that Mennonitesembrace it in the specific form of communal property But he goes further by denying thatMennonites advocate a contemporary version of the apostolic redistribution of wealth

For although we know that the apostolic church had this practice in the beginning ascan be seen in the Acts of the Apostles nevertheless we note from their epistles that itdisappeared in their time and was no longer practiced

Instead of communal property or centralized redistribution of wealth the Mennonites derivefrom the general principle of Christian communism an alternative practice

Seeing then that they are one as said it is Christian and reasonable that they also havedivine love among them and that one member cares for another for both the Scripturesand nature teach this They show mercy and love as much as is in them They do notsuffer a beggar among them They have pity on the wants of the saints They receive thewretched They take strangers into their houses They comfort the sad They lend to theneedy They clothe the naked They share their bread with the hungry They do not turntheir face from the poorhellip

In the subsequent history of Mennonism the practice Simons describes came to be calledldquomutual aidrdquo Note that it is different from charitable giving and this in two ways First thereferences to receiving the wretched taking in strangers sharing bread and so on indicate a farmore personal even intimate form of involvement than simple charitable donation Second

there is the suggestion of reciprocity or mutuality (ldquoone member cares for anotherrdquo) that tends todeny the difference in status between the charitable giver and the recipient of charity Thepractice Simons describes is similar to what some anthropologists have called ldquogeneralizedreciprocityrdquo in which my obligation to give to you when you are in need corresponds to yourobligation to give to me when I am in need In a sense this is a form of redistribution inaccordance with need but it is enacted directly between individual members of the communityrather than administered centrally through a common purse

In line with his political purpose Simons is careful to distinguish between mutual aid andthe expropriation of private property

This is the kind of brotherhood we teach and not that some should take over andpossess the land soil and properties of others as we are falsely maligned accused andlied about by many

In this way he detaches the Mennonite version of communism from any revolutionary intentionThat was the prerequisite for communal survival during the long counter-revolution thatfollowed the Peasant War Still Simons never abandons the general principle Omnia communiasunt nor does he even really reject the practice of the early Church

Since we do not find it a permanent practice with the apostles we have not taught orpracticed community of goods but we urge earnestly and zealously to practice liberalgiving love and mercy as the apostolic writings teach and testify abundantly Andeven if we had taught and practiced community of goods as we are falsely accused ofdoing we would still not be doing otherwise than the holy apostles full of the HolySpirit themselves did in the former church at Jerusalem in the beginning of the holyChristian Church although they stopped the practice as has been said

Like the Hutterites Mennonite communities prospered once they managed to survive the

bloody period of reaction In Holland the Mennonite population consisted largely in successfulmerchants along with a number of lawyers doctors and other professionals Most of thepeasant artisan and laborer families who had started as Mennonites in the sixteenth century hadlong since converted to the Reform Church which is one reason Spinoza faced the problem ofpolitical agency in the TPT Although the idea of mutual aid persisted among the DutchMennonites it took the form predominantly of organized international philanthropy in which thecommunity made contributions not only to Mennonites abroad but to other populations in needThere was no escaping the fact however that in this philanthropic form mutual aid becamehardly distinguishable from conventional charity

Jarig Jelles was born into the Dutch Mennonite community around a century afterSimmons wrote his book when this process of slippage was well underway But there is littledoubt that Jelles knew the Mennonite teaching on mutual aid and its origin in the generalprinciple of Christian communism Even if Jelles never read Erasmusrsquo Adages Spinozarsquosreference to the supposed communism of Thales was likely to resonate with him on the basis ofhis own religious tradition

We cannot be certain how much Spinoza knew in detail about the communist practices ofthe Anabaptists but it is probably not a coincidence that he recommends three of the four atvarious places in his writings In Part 4 of the Ethics ldquoOf Human Bondage or the Strength of theEmotionsrdquo he identifies the chief virtue of the intellect as ldquostrength of the mindrdquo (fortitudo)According to him it takes two forms one directed to the self and one directed to others He callsthe inwardly directed form ldquocouragerdquo defining it as ldquothe desire whereby every individualendeavors to preserve his own being according to the dictates of reason alonerdquo The outwardlydirected form is generositas which Shirley translates as ldquonobilityrdquo though ldquosolidarityrdquo is closerto what Spinoza is getting at He defines it as ldquothe desire whereby every individual according to

the dictates of reason alone endeavors to assist others and make friends of themrdquo When twopeople in contact with one another possess the virtue of generositas they will clearly exhibit itreciprocally in the form of mutual aid the fourth communist practice

In Part 4 of the Ethics Spinoza also formulates a version of the first communist practicethat of the redistribution of wealth in accordance with need

Again men are won over by generosity especially those who do not have thewherewithal to produce what is necessary to support life Yet it is far beyond the powerand resources of a private person to come to the assistance of everyone in need For thewealth of a private person is quite unequal to such a demand It is also a practicalimpossibility for one man to establish friendship with all Therefore the care of the poordevolves upon society as a whole and looks only to the common good

The fact that society as a whole has responsibility for meeting the needs of the poor makes thepractice Spinoza recommends in this passage a version of the centralized redistribution of wealthdescribed in the Acts of the Apostles and institutionalized in Anabaptist form as the ldquocommonpurserdquo More than that the fact that society as a whole must take on this responsibility ratherthan a church or other sub-community makes Spinoza an early advocate of what will becomethree centuries later the European welfare state In our own period as the welfare state is beingdismantled it is easy to see that what neoliberals object to concerning it is precisely its implicitcommunism ie its practice of distribution in accordance with need

Spinoza advocates a third communist practice in his unfinished final work the PoliticalTreatise The context is his discussion of a maximally democratic version of monarchy in whichthe entire citizen body is armed and the king forbidden from making any decision contrary to thewill of a massive council of ordinary citizens In such a state

The fields and the soil and if possible the houses as well should be public property thatis should belong to the sovereign by whom they should be let at an annual rent tocitizens whether townsmen or country-dwellers Apart from this all citizens should befree or exempt from any form of taxation in time of peace Of this rent part should beallocated to the defense works of the commonwealth part to the kings domestic needsFor in time of peace it is still necessary to fortify cities as for war and to have in a stateof readiness ships and other armaments

Ownership of land and buildings by the sovereign is a form of communal property first becausethe citizens of the commonwealth delegate to him or them the property they hold in commonand second because that delegation occurs with the understanding that the sovereign will use theproperty in service of the common good

Spinoza supplies an argument based on more than simple utility for the practice ofholding land and buildings in common

hellip in a state of Nature the one thing a man cannot appropriate to himself and make hisown is land and whatever is so fixed to the land that he cannot conceal it anywhere orcarry it away where he pleases Thus the land and whatever is fixed to it in the way wehave described is especially the public property of the commonwealth that is of allthose who by their united strength can claim it or of him to whom all have delegated thepower to claim it

To state the argument differently since rights are the same as powers no individual has a naturalright to appropriate privately the land or any of its fixed structures because none has the powernecessary to do so The only response an individual can make to incursions by a more powerfulperson or group of people is flight in which he must leave the land and its buildings behind It is

only by entering into a community in which the strength of each is combined for the purpose ofdefense that people can effectively possess fixed property but they do so as a members of thecommunity rather than as an separate individuals According to Spinozarsquos theory of rights onlythe community has the right to own the land and its structures because only the community hasthe required power

The communal ownership of land houses and other buildings is a version of the secondcommunist practice on our list of which Hutterite joint ownership is the most developedhistorical example When adopted by a polity rather than a small community though thepractice has an added advantage Under those circumstances communal possession of fixedproperty eliminates the need for taxes except in time of war What takes their place is ageneration of revenue pegged to wealth since the members of society who are able to rent themost expensive and largest amounts of communal property will obviously pay the most in rentIn this way the form of communal ownership of land and buildings that Spinoza recommendsalso acts as a mechanism for the redistribution of wealth

The only communist practice of the Anabaptists that does not find an equivalent inSpinozarsquos writings is that of the cooperative organization of work The absence is related toSpinozarsquos inability to resolve the problem of political agency in the TPT An attempt to mobilizethe multitude on behalf of democratic social change would need to address the organization ofwork in such a way as to alleviate the burden of toil Reducing the number of hours spent inonerous labor is the only way to provide the multitude with the free time necessary to participatein institutionalized democratic politics Along with the redistribution of wealth and thedevelopment of communal property the cooperative reorganization of work would need to beincorporated as a plank in the latent political program that makes its first democratic appearancein the TPT and is extended in a communist direction in the passages from the Ethics and thePolitical Treatise that we have just examined But that would constitute an explicit anddangerous appeal to the multitude as the agent of political and social transformation an appealthat Spinoza consistently rejects It would involve nothing less than the revival of therevolutionary energies of the Peasant War on a new seventeenth-century foundation

In spite of his radicalism Spinoza doubted that revolution was capable of reconstructingsociety and the state in the way revolutionaries wanted In Chapter 18 of the TPT he takes aposition that is at least on the surface opposed to revolution or any attempt to change the formof the state fundamentally The context is a discussion of the transition from the early Hebrewcommonwealth in which the people held sovereignty to the rule of kings Spinoza tells us thatthe first period saw only a single civil war and concluded with a compassion for the vanquishedthat resulted in lasting peace By contrast the period of kings was marred by multiple warswaged only for the glory of the rulers and involved the massacre of hundreds of thousandsDuring the first period few prophets arose to rebuke the Jews while a great many emergedduring the time of the monarchies From this example Spinoza reasons that it is fatal for peopleaccustomed to popular sovereignty and governed by settled laws to adopt a new monarchicalform of government On the one hand they will be unable to tolerate the arbitrary exercise ofpower by a single individual while on the other the new monarch will be compelled to abolishthe existing laws because they did not originate by his own authority But it is just as dangerousaccording to Spinoza for the subjects of a monarch to attempt his replacement with popular ruleThis is because a popular revolution must advance to the point where it annihilates the king thekingrsquos family and the friends of the king in order to prevent the restoration of royal power But inthe process the revolutionary authority must assume a power even more draconian then thatpreviously exercised by the king In addition having committed regicide the new popularauthority faces the danger that it will fall victim to its own precedent For this reason as well andin the interest of survival it must wield power more repressively than the deposed sovereignSpinoza illustrates his point with reference to the English revolution which eliminated themonarch Charles I only to replace him with the Lord Protector Cromwell who was monarch inall but name and more repressive than Charles

Spinozarsquos point seems unassailable especially since the pattern he describes in the caseof the English Revolution repeated itself over the course of the next three centuries in the French

and Russian Revolutions It is at least arguable that Napoleon if not Robespierre was a newLouis XVI and Stalin a new Tsar even if this understates the more fundamental social changesthat resulted form the two revolutions Still Spinoza does not absolutely proscribe therevolutionary overthrow of a tyrannical government but says instead that there is a great dangerin making the attempt Besides his analysis of the conditions necessary for retaining sovereigntydoes not leave the decision about whether to engage in revolution up to militants He argues thatno state can survive that creates mass indignation in its people and this is precisely theunavoidable result of tyrannical government Spinozarsquos real purpose in Chapter 18 is to opposethe Orangist-Calvinist project of replacing the Dutch Republic with a monarchy ldquoAs for theEstates of Hollandrdquo he writes ldquoas far as we know they never had kings but counts to whom theright of sovereignty was never transferredrdquo His point is that the Dutch War of Independenceagainst Spain was justified because it restored the sovereignty of the people against the attemptby the Spanish ldquocountrdquo (King Philip II) to abolish it However any attempt to replace theRepublic with a monarchy would change the form of the state disastrously by divesting thepeople of their former rights

When Spinoza wrote his treatise the only revolutionary forces that existed were on theRight The danger he warns about in Chapter 18 of the TPT did indeed come to pass only oneyear after his letter to Jelles In 1672 a Calvinist-Orangist mob hacked Johan De Witt and hisbrother Cornelius to death at a time when Holland was invaded by the French army Streetorators stirred up the mob by claiming that the invasion was the result of the brothersrsquo treason Inthe aftermath of the murders William III prince of Orange was elevated to the position ofstadtholder of Holland Although William went on to become King of England he stopped shortof claiming a Dutch throne However in actuality he substituted his own power for much of thatwhich had belonged to the Estates General while the Reformed Church gained considerableinfluence in Dutch government According to a story made famous by Spinozarsquos earliestbiographer Johannes Colerus when the De Witt brothers were murdered Spinozarsquos landlordthwarted his attempt to go the site of the assassinations where the bodies of the brothers werestill on gruesome display in order to plant a sign reading Ultimi Barbarorum (the ultimatebarbarians) In this way the landlord undoubtedly saved the philosopherrsquos life It was the onlytime we know of when the mature Spinoza gave in to his passive affects in a significant way

There is a passage in Chapter 18 of the TPT that uncannily anticipates the murders

Tyranny is most violent where individual beliefs which are unalienable rights areregarded as criminal Indeed in such circumstances the anger of the common people[plebis] is usually the greatest tyrant of allhellip the vilest hypocrites urged on by that samefury which they call zeal for Gods law have everywhere persecuted men whoseblameless character and distinguished qualities have excited the hostility of the commonpeople [plebi] publicly denouncing their beliefs and inflaming the savage multitudersquos[multitudinem] anger against them

Spinoza was the first political philosopher who grappled with the problem of a mass-

based politics of the Right The problem would occur again with the fascist movements of the1920s and 1930s and with the return of the rightwing religious fundamentalisms of our own dayndash Jewish Christian Muslim and Hindu It is not surprising that he failed to solve the problemdefinitively since it continues to remain unsolved The remarkable thing about Spinoza thoughis not that he was skeptical about the liberatory possibilities of revolution by the masses but thathe defended the idea of a popular democracy nonetheless And this he continued to do even inthe aftermath of the De Witt murders In his work on the Political Treatise in the final year of hislife Spinoza developed a powerful critique of the elitist claim that the multitude are incapable ofgoverning

Yet perhaps our [democratic] suggestions will be received with ridicule by those whorestrict to the common people the faults that are inherent in all mankind saying There

is no moderation in the mob they terrorize unless they are frightened and Thecommon people is either a humble servant or an arrogant master there is no truth orjudgment in itrdquo and the like But all men share in one and the same nature it is powerand culture that mislead us with the result that when two men do the same thing weoften say that it is permissible for the one to do it and not the other not because of anydifference in the thing done but in the doer hellipThen again There is no moderation inthe mob they terrorize unless they are frightened For freedom and slavery do not gowell together Finally that there is no truth or judgment in the common people is notsurprising since the important affairs of state are conducted without their knowledgeand from the little that cannot be concealed they can only make conjecturehellip Howeveras we have said all men have the same nature ndash all grow haughty with rule terrorizeunless they are frightened ndash and everywhere truth becomes a casualty through hostilityor servility especially when despotic power is in the hands of one or a few who in trialspay attention not to justice or truth but to the extent of a persons wealth

Surprisingly Spinoza develops this democratic argument while discussing the institutions

appropriate to a monarchy But the key point he makes in the discussion is that a condition ofeffective monarchical rule is expansion of the democratic element within the state in the form ofa sizeable legislative council whose members are drawn from the general population of citizensover the age of fifty On Spinozarsquos view the mistake those who oppose democracy make isassuming that the faults exhibited by the common people ndash such as poor judgment arroganceand hostility ndash belong only to them while they are in fact typical of human beings Actually it iselitist politics that magnifies these all-too-human faults by restricting political power to a limitednumber of people while democratic politics minimizes them through the principle of majorityrule among numerous decision-makers The reason as we already know is that passions pullpeople in different directions making it nearly impossible for the members of a large council toagree on a common position unless they make decisions based not on passion but an idea of thecommon good On Spinozarsquos view it is when government is in the hands of a single person oronly a few people that the dangers the critics of democracy attribute to the common people are infact the greatest

Spinoza also argues against the claim that the common people are not qualified to makepolitical decisions because they lack the necessary education or degree of intellect There is noone he says who has been engaged in an occupation until the age of fifty who lacksunderstanding of his sphere of work ldquoevery man is reasonably competent and sagacious inmatters in which he has been long and attentively engagedrdquo So each is qualified at least to giveadvice in the kingrsquos council concerning his own business especially if given the time necessaryto reflect on the matter under discussion

Most of all the plebs are the group best suited to serving on the council because theirinterest is that of society as a whole ldquoHence it follows that counselors must necessarily beappointed whose private fortune and advantage depend on the general welfare and the peace ofallrdquo For example Spinoza emphasizes the idea that the common people have the highest stake inavoiding war or concluding an existing war with a settlement that brings lasting peace Thereason is they are ones who bear the heaviest burdens of war Unlike the wealthy well-bornmembers of society it is the common person whose occupation is most likely to be interrupted itis his taxes that are raised to onerous levels and it is his son who dies Thus the common interestof society in peace is best served not by a wealthy or educated elite but rather by those whohave the most to lose from war

At the end of the long paragraph defending popular power quoted above Spinozaconnects the question of who holds power within the state to that of who owns property Truthand justice he says are casualties in states where power is held by one person or a handful ofpeople who conduct courtroom trials that favor the rich The implication is that elitist politicalpower and ownership of wealth are intrinsically connected One of the reasons Spinozarecommends public ownership of land and buildings in a monarchy is to prevent the rise of aclass of wealthy landowners with interests different than those of the rest of society Under the

conditions of common ownership ldquothe greatest part of the council will generally have one andthe same attitude of mind towards their common interests and peaceful activitieshelliprdquo And yethaving gone this far he has trouble imagining a state where fixed property is owned collectivelyin which the actually existing multitude holds power The peasants artisans and urban poor whoconstitute the common people of the United Provinces drop out of the picture in the democratic-communist monarchy he describes and nearly everyone makes his living by selling merchandiseor lending money to countrymen ldquoall will have to make a living by engaging in trade or bylending money to their fellow citizensrdquo He seems to assume that the collectivization of land andfixed property would eliminate the occupations of peasant and artisan leaving trade and loaningat interest the only remaining possibilities of work But that of course is not true The fact thatpeople would have to rent farm land would not prevent them from farming any more than theneed to rent workshops in the cities and towns would prevent artisans from plying their tradesBut Spinoza finds the idea of a commonwealth based on commercial enterprise politicallyappealing This is because he regards commercial occupations as contributing to harmony andpeace since he claims they establish connections between people that further the interests of allwhile those who engage in them prosper only in peacetime Both of these assumptions are asquestionable as the expectation that non-commercial occupations will die out After all even inSpinozarsquos day colonialism and the struggle for colonies between imperialist states led to warsbetween the great powers including the United Provinces not to mention the military and otherforms of violence involved in subjugating the colonies The East India Company was not exactlya force for peace What seems to be at work here instead is a failure of social imaginationthough one we may find understandable given the fact that the capitalist economy was still at anearly stage in its development However this may be there is no denying the fact that despite hispowerful arguments in favor of democratic rule and communal property it is still a bourgeoissociety and state that Spinoza envisions

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of what we should not hesitate to call Spinozarsquoscommunism is the critique of private ownership he develops in the Ethics based on his theory ofaffects For him there is a paradox involved in social and political life It stems from the fact thaton the one hand people can survive and develop their capacities only by joining with oneanother in societies and states But on the other hand the necessity of combining with oneanother does not prevent them from seeking their own advantage above that of their fellowsbeing quarrelsome or hateful and erecting obstacles to each otherrsquos happiness Spinoza identifiesthe reason for these deep-rooted problems of social coexistence in Part IV Proposition 35 of theEthics ldquoInsofar as men are assailed by emotions that are passive they can be contrary to oneanotherrdquo Emotions are states of the body characterized by a transition from a lower degree of thepower to exist and act (conatus) to a higher one or conversely from a higher degree to a lowerone The first transition is the affect of joy while the second is that of sadness Passive emotionsare caused by an object external to the body or more precisely external to its essential natureSpinoza conceives of that nature as a specific proportion of motion-and-rest that the parts of thebody exhibit in relation to one another While joy is an increase in our capacity to preserve theproportion of motion-and-rest essential to our body (ie to exist and act as we do) sadness is adecrease in that capacity The political problem created by the passive emotions is that evenwhen they are joyful they are not under the control of the person who experiences themMoreover different people are affected by the same external object in different ways because theparts of their bodies and their proportionate relations of motion-and rest-differ The same objectmay elicit anger in one person and pity in another or love in one and hatred in another and soon And because people differ in their emotional reactions to the same things they also differ inthe judgments they frame on the basis of these reactions What one person praises anotherperson blames what one regards as fearless another believes to be timid etc Finally sincepeople act upon their judgments seeking to foster what they judge to be good and destroy whatthey judge to be bad their differing judgments can result in actions that are in conflict with oneanother In short ldquoinsofar as they are assailed by passive emotions [people] can be contrary toone anotherrdquo

In Proposition 34 Spinoza gives an example of the contrariety caused by the passiveaffects Suppose Peter has sole possession of something Paul loves Deprivation of the loved

object causes sadness in Paul with the idea of Peter as its cause In accordance with Spinozarsquosdefinition of hatred Paul will hate Peter and therefore seek to injure or destroy him in order toremove the cause of his Paulrsquos sadness Spinoza says that this example may seem wrong becausePaul and Peter appear to be contrary to one another because of something they share ndash ie theirlove for the thing Peter possesses But that is not the case Paul has an image of himself aslacking the loved object while Peter has an image of himself as possessing the loved object Sothey in fact differ from one another by virtue of the different images they have rather than bypossessing something in common It is clear from the example that the root of this contrariety ndashie this enmity ndash between Paul and Peter is the fact that the object can be possessed by only oneof them so that what one has the other must lack The difficulty with private property is that it isexclusive to the one who possesses it which means that what I experience as possession othersexperience as deprivation It may seem that there is no problem if other people are indifferent tothe thing I possess However in accordance with Spinozarsquos theory of the imitation of affects themere fact that I love the thing I own other things being equal will cause you to love it as wellMy exclusive possession of the thing will therefore cause sadness in you that takes the form ofhatred or more precisely the kind of hatred called envy which involves pain at the good fortuneof another ldquohuman nature is in general so constituted that men pity the unfortunate and envy thefortunate in the latter case with a hatred proportionate to their love of what they think anotherpossessesrdquo

Common Possession Friendship and Philosophy

In the Ethics Spinoza does not follow his analysis of the antagonisms of private property

by considering the collective possession of material goods (although he does advocateredistribution of wealth to the poor in Part 4 as we have seen) But the theme of commonpossession figures large in the book anyway in his treatment of the intellectual love of God Inorder to understand the connection between common possession and amor Dei intellectualis itwill be necessary to engage in a detailed analysis of Spinozarsquos metaphysics We will begin thattask in earnest in the next chapter At this point we will simply introduce the theme byexamining the relationship between friendship and common possession in the letter to Jelles andsome related writings

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo unlike the similar passages fromActs has its provenance among philosophers Spinoza mistakenly attributes it to Thales but itoccurs in Platorsquos Phaedrus and Laws and is present though not in so many words in thediscussion in the Republic of common ownership of property by the guardian class Thetradition cited by Erasmus that traces the proverb back to Pythagoras is plausible when weconsider the influence the Pythagorean community in Sicily had on Plato in the aftermath ofSocratesrsquo death Erasmus sees the supposed use of a common fund by the Pythagoreans as ananticipation of the similar practice in Acts But Spinozarsquos approach is different What interestshim in the letter is common ownership not as a religious practice but as a matter of thephilosopherrsquos relation to the world Remember the deductive consequences of the proverb sinceall things are in common among friends everything belongs to the wise because the wise arefriends of the gods and all things belong to the gods But what does it mean to say that the wiseare friends of the gods

Although Spinoza uses the word ldquofriendshiprdquo often in his writings he never supplies aformal definition However we can reconstruct the wordrsquos meaning from the contexts in whichhe uses it So for example Proposition 35 of Part III of the Ethics reads

If anyone thinks that there is between the object of his love and another person the sameor a more intimate bond of friendship than there was between them when he alone usedto possess the object loved he will be affected with hatred toward the object loved andwill envy his rival

According to the proposition friendship is an intimate bond between a person and the

object he loves I hate an object of love that I alone once possessed when it wounds my vanity byloving someone else more than me So the object of love must be capable of loving whichmeans that the bond of friendship is a relation of reciprocal love between persons Nowaccording to Spinoza I love something when I have the idea of that thing as the cause of myexperience of joy Joy is an increase in conatus which Spinoza defines as the tendency to persistin being or equivalently the ability to exist and act So friendship is a relation in which Iidentify the other person as the cause of an increase in my conatus and the other personidentifies me as the cause of a similar increase in his or hers Two things each of which causesan increase in the ability to exist and act of the other are said by Spinoza to be in harmony Sincetwo entities in harmony have more combined power than either does singly it is to the advantageof each to be in harmony with the other There is even greater advantage in entering intoharmonious connection with a third individual and the greatest advantage in combining with asmany individuals as possible This is a universal metaphysical principle For example it pertainsjust as much to chemical combination or herding among animals as it does to social relationsbetween people In the case of human relationships it is the fundamental basis of politics orrather one of its two bases the other one being the tendency human beings have to conflict withone another When the state is functioning well it involves not a random collection ofindividuals and certainly not the war of each against all but a group whose members are boundto one another by friendship the human form of harmony Thus for Spinoza friendship is apolitical virtue as it was for Plato and Aristotle

The opposite of friendship is enmity That person is my enemy whom I regard as thecause of my sadness or pain which is the same as saying the cause of a decrease in my abilityto exist and act Like friendship enmity is a reciprocal relationship If I identify you as the causeof my sadness I will seek to injure or eliminate you But that means I will be identified in yourmind as the cause of your sadness Enmity is a relation of reciprocal hatred just as friendship is arelation of reciprocal love Just as there is harmony between friends there is discord betweenenemies The fundamental task of a rational politics is easy to state it is to extend and intensifyfriendship and to reduce and mollify enmity

We have already seen that Spinoza identifies solidarity (generositas) as one of the twoforms of strength of mind (fortitudo) which is the virtue that belongs to the exercise of theintellect Solidarity is the desire to assist others and foster friendship on the basis of reason aloneThe friendship fostered by solidarity is a bond of active love The love of friends for one anotheris active when each person who loves is the adequate cause of his or her love To say that theperson is the adequate cause means that the cause of love is internal to the person who feels it inother words that the love is self-generated Active love differs from passive love in that thecause of passive love is at least partially something that exists outside the person who has theemotion The problem with passive love is that it need not be constant If the bodily dispositionof the person changes in a particular way then the object of erstwhile love will have a differentemotional effect Passive love can change into boredom or indifference or even hatred This isnot possible in the case of active love because it is self-generated Since love involves theexperience of joy no one actively abandons it

There seems to be something odd about the idea of a love between persons that isinternally generated by each of the partners in the relationship Is it not the case that part of theessence of love is the fact that the object of my love is the cause of my love Without denyingthis Spinoza identifies two forms of love that are self-generated in the Ethics One is myintellectual love of God It is indeed true that God is the cause of my love but only insofar as myintellect is part of the infinite intellect of God Thus the object that causes my love - ie God - isinternal to my mind and conversely my mind is internal to it Such reciprocal internality ndash hardas it is to visualize ndash is what Spinoza means by immanence God he tells us is the immanentcause of everything that exists Nothing can exist apart from God while God expresses himselfin all of the things that exist My love of God and Gods love of himself are one and the samebecause Godrsquos intellect is immanent in mine The second form of self-generated love is the

friendship that exists between me and others who love God through the exercise of the intellectThe reason is that the joy I feel in loving God is by the imitation of affects augmented by thejoy you feel in loving God But your love as well as mine is joy caused by the same immanentbeing Another way of saying this is that your intellect and mine are parts (ie finiteexpressions) of the infinite intellect of God Thus the relationship between friends who are boundtogether by the common exercise of the intellect and the love of God that flows from it is basedon an internal bond an internal object and cause of love In this kind of love you and I as itwere discover one another internally You are inside of me and I am inside of you Thus whenyou augment my love and I augment yours it is Gods power as the intellect immanent in us boththat causes the augmentation even though we remain finite individual beings In this state ofaffairs which is admittedly difficult to grasp we can see the rational meaning of the command tolove God by loving the neighbor In intellectual love God not insofar as he is infinite butinsofar as he expresses himself in my finite intellect loves God as he expresses himself in yourfinite intellect

For Spinoza the exercise of the intellect is very different than our ordinary experience ofthe world In the course of ordinary experience we encounter objects in a way that appearshaphazard disordered and incomplete This is so first of all because our encounters are part ofan infinitely complex chain of natural causes and effects of which we know only very limitedparts In addition our experience of objects has as much to do with the condition our bodies arein when we encounter them as it does with the nature of the objects themselves By contrast inexercising the intellect we arrange our ideas in an intelligible pattern that is internal to the mindand entirely different than the images we accumulate through sensory experience The ideas arean expression of our power while the images result from our hapless deliverance to chanceEmotions caused by objects we encounter in the course of ordinary experience are externallydetermined and therefore passive while emotions caused by acts of intellectual comprehensionare internally generated and therefore active That is why love as an active emotion has its originin the exercise of the intellect and the most satisfying form of friendship is based on thereciprocal experience of such love In a letter to Willem van Blyenberg Spinoza provides themost complete description of this kind of friendship to be found in his writings

For my part of all things that are not under my control what I most value is to enterinto a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth For I believe that such a lovingrelationship affords us a serenity surpassing any other boon in the whole wide worldThe love that such men bear to one another grounded as it is in the love that each hasfor knowledge of truth is as unshakable as is the acceptance of truth once it has beenperceived It is moreover the highest source of happiness to be found in things notunder our command for truth more than anything else has the power to effect a closeunion between different sentiments and dispositions

Spinoza says that a friendship based on the love of truth is not under our control But how

can that be if intellectual friendship involves a form of love internally generated by each friendIt would seem that the love we generate through the exercise of the intellect is fully under ourcontrol Spinoza however is referring to the fact that we are able to become friends only withpeople we actually meet which is something that occurs in the course of ordinary haphazarddisordered experience To a large extent our friendships are a matter of chance By way ofillustrating this point it turned out that Spinoza decided his initial judgment of Blyenberg wasmistaken He broke off their correspondence when he realized that the infinite chain of causesand effects had brought his way not a lover of truth but a dogmatic worshipper of the ldquopaperand inkrdquo of the Bible

People create commonwealths because the power of each to exist and act is increased byall others who transfer their rights to the sovereign For reasons we have already considered thepolitical bond is one of friendship ldquoIt is of the first importance to men to establish closerelationships and to bind themselves together with such ties as may most effectively unite theminto one body and as an absolute rule to act in such a way as serves to strengthen friendshiprdquo If

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

Had the TPTrsquos program been limited to its first two planks ndash state control of the churchesand freedom of thought and expression ndash it would have been politically coherent But where doesthe idea of democratizing the United Provinces fit into this picture Neither bourgeoisrepublicans nor religious liberals were apt to be sympathetic to the idea of a democratic republicthat would place power in the hands of the multitude If Spinoza wanted to make an appeal to therepublican and liberal Orangist sections of the bourgeoisie he ought to have been defending theexisting oligarchic Republic against its conservative Calvinist and monarchist enemies ratherthan elaborating an argument for its democratization There is only one audience who wouldhave been sympathetic to that argument namely the peasants artisans wage-workers and smallmerchants who comprised the multitude But that is precisely the readership Spinoza deniedhimself by writing in Latin

And yet Spinoza understood that the only way the Republic could survive in face of thealliance between the Reform Church and the House of Orange was to shift the allegiance of themultitude by winning its support Thus the contradiction in Spinozarsquos program is not a theoreticalflaw but a reflection of the real contradiction involved in the stadtholderless Republic or if youprefer the instability in the balance of social forces that enabled it to exist The Republic couldsurvive only by means of an impossible alliance between the multitude and the regents IfSpinoza erred it was in believing that it was possible to convince the regents to democratize bythe force of his arguments But this was the same as asking them to commit political suicidesince their power on the urban and national levels depended upon their ability to defend theirmonopoly on state offices The only alternative which Spinoza rejected was a popularrevolution that would create a new and radically democratic republic But that republic wouldshare with the existing one no more than the name like the animal dog and the dog star thatSpinoza refers to in a different context For that reason it would have fallen under his warningthat those who attempt to change the form of the state are likely to see it restored in a morerepressive version (see page 25 below) In short there was no solution to the problem the TPTattempted to solve or at least none within the limits of Spinozarsquos thinking As a political theoryand a theory of biblical hermeneutics the book is a brilliant work that went on to influencephilosophers and ironically theologians for the next three centuries As an intervention in theextraordinarily difficult and complex political situation of the seventeenth-century Netherlands itwas and had to be an utter failure

There are in fact two political programs in the TPT an overt program and a latent oneThe overt program is liberal republican and bourgeois in the sense that its addressee andintended agent of change is the educated bourgeoisie The latent program lies quite a bit furtherto the left It is radically democratic and its only possible agent of change is the multitude Letter44 makes a contribution to the latent program that moves in an even more radical direction

The Communist Idea

In his letter to Jelles Spinoza develops an idea of the highest good for human beings as

an alternative to what he argues is the false conception of Homo Politicus For the author of thatbook wealth and honors comprise the highest good But Spinoza claims in the letter thatcommonwealths devoted to the pursuit of wealth and honors ldquomust necessarily perish and haveperishedrdquo He then writes

How far superior indeed and excellent were the reflections of Thales of Miletus compared with this writer is shown by the following account All things he said are incommon among friends

The fact that this paragraph follows Spinozarsquos critique of Homo Politicus while proposing

an alternative to the apparent position of its author justifies an interpretation that takes it in apolitical sense Spinoza should be read as offering the saying of Thales as an addendum to the

latent program he articulates in the TPT Like democracy common ownership could have onlyone social basis in the Netherlands of the seventeenth century ndash namely the peasants artisanswage-workers and small retail merchants The problem this raises is how to make the transitionfrom a multitude given to irrationality and superstition ndash and therefore under the sway of theReformed Church ndash to one capable of the rationality necessary to create the democraticcommunism (the content of which we have yet to define) that Letter 44 implies when consideredalong with the TPT Spinoza saw no answer to this problem That is why he suppressed his latentproject in favor of the overt one for a liberal republic able to assert its sovereign authority overthe Church It seemed to him that the educated bourgeoisie had political capacities that themultitude lacked

Spinozarsquos judgment on this matter is similar mutatis mutandis to that of FrederickEngels in the Peasant War in Germany For Engels the Peasant War of the sixteenth century wasa heroic but premature revolution Under the leadership of Thomas Muumlntzer the peasantsadopted a program that included the expropriation of ecclesiastic and aristocratic property andthe common ownership of goods But the princes were the only group with the wealth andmilitary resources necessary to benefit from the ensuing turmoil while their rivals for power ndashthe Catholic prelates and lesser nobility ndash were ruined by the confiscation of property andplundering or destruction of fixed wealth by the peasant masses The rising bourgeoisie was ableto frame an independent liberal political program but did not yet have the social weightnecessary to play a leading role in the economy and the state According to Engels the peasantrywas incapable of mastering the new forces of production unleashed by the world market and theonly class that might have played a progressive role alongside the peasants ndash the proletarianwage-working element in the towns ndash was a very small part of laboring population It would takeanother three centuries for the proletariat to develop along with industry to the point where itwould be able to draft a meaningful equivalent of the communist program first framed by thesixteenth-century German peasantry Spinoza certainly had no idea that industrialization and asizeable proletariat were on their way But he shared with Engels a pessimistic assessment of thechances for a successful social transformation led by peasants and their allies Perhaps with thedisastrous defeat of the German peasants in mind (as well as the allegiance of the Dutchmultitude to the Reformed Church) Spinoza judged that relying upon the common people as anagent of social and political change in his own century would have been equally futile

Why then does Spinoza raise the issue of common ownership in Letter 44 The answer isthe same as for why he discusses democracy in the TPT when it makes no contribution to hispolitical intervention but on the contrary damages it We could say that Spinoza is either a badmilitant or a good philosopher The truth is he is both Like Platorsquos attempt to influence thecourse of events in Syracuse or Aristotlersquos decision to tutor Alexander the Great Spinozarsquos faithin the political efficacy of philosophical reasoning was misguided There is ample historicalevidence that the philosopher who attempts to be politically effective as a philosopher is doomedto defeat That is why Marx ceased considering himself a philosopher in 1845 as he indicates inthe eleventh of his Theses on Feuerbach ldquoUntil now philosophers have only attempted tounderstand the world the point however is to change itrdquo The project of changing the world isdifferent than that of understanding it from a purely theoretical perspective Of course it ispossible for philosophers to influence statesmen as Locke influenced the drafters of the USConstitution But Lockersquos influence was effective more than a century after he wrote the SecondTreatise on Civil Government and so can hardly be called a political intervention The attempt tointervene politically in a concrete situation in which multiple forces and complex structures arein play is something very different than the delayed influence on the drafters of a constitutionwho have had an opportunity to ponder at leisure the meaning of a philosopherrsquos work The mostimportant question of politics is not so much ldquoWhat is to be donerdquo as ldquoWho is to do itrdquoSpinoza may have been right that the multitude was not the collective subject to defendrepublican liberty That is why he appealed to the Dutch bourgeoisie through its philosophicallyliterate elements But he was too much the philosopher to suppress his argument that ademocratic republic is the kind of state that best preserves freedom and encourages rationalityand he was willing to make his point even at the cost of alienating the collective agent he wasattempting to influence

The reference to common ownership in Letter 44 would have had an even more negativeeffect on his readers should Spinoza have made it in the TPT In private communication withJelles however he was able to raise the topic without risking further political difficultiesSpinozarsquos reference presumes an intellectual history with roots in both ancient Greek philosophyand early Christianity a history that was renewed practically as well as theoretically in earlymodern Europe In the passage from Letter 44 where he introduces the theme of commonownership he goes on to elaborate the position he attributes to Thales Here is the passage in fullthat we have already quoted partially

How far superior indeed and excellent were the reflections of Thales of Miletuscompared with this writer is shown by the following account All things he said are incommon among friends The wise are the friends of the Gods and all things belong tothe Gods therefore all things belong to the wise In this way the wise man makeshimself the richest by nobly despising riches instead of greedily pursuing them

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo (Amicorum communia omnia) is

the first entry in his book Adages by the late Renaissance humanist and reform-minded Catholicscholar Desiderius Erasmus The Adages were widely available in Spinozarsquos day and it is likelythat both Spinoza and Jelles had read them although the former must have also consultedErasmusrsquo source for the saying ndash Lives of the Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius We will seewhy in a moment Erasmus cites the same deduction from the maxim as Spinoza does in Letter44 except that he attributes it to Socrates rather than Thales

From this proverb Socrates deduced that all things belong to all good men just as theydo to the gods For to the gods he said belong all things good men are friends of thegods and among friends all possessions are in common

The fact that Spinoza refers to wise men while Erasmus refers to good men does not

indicate any real difference between them because both accepted the ancient Greek and biblicalequivalence between human goodness and wisdom The difference in attributing the deductiveconsequences of the proverb to Thales on the one hand and Socrates on the other also does notindicate any substantive disagreement between Spinoza and Erasmus although it does signify adifference in intellectual vocation and emphasis Interestingly however the attribution in bothcases is incorrect Their common source the Lives of the Philosophers places the argument intothe mouth of Diogenes the Cynic rather than Socrates or Thales Thus both Spinoza and Erasmushave had a failure of memory and probably for the same reason The author of Lives makes itclear that although Diogenes the Cynic despised the pursuit of wealth he was not a veryappealing character he was arrogant and could be verbally and physically abusive to those hejudged to be unwise It is understandable then that the figure of Diogenes would drop out of thememory of both Erasmus and Spinoza and be replaced by a philosopher with whom each tosome extent identified Erasmus the Renaissance humanist undoubtedly found Socrates well-suited to stand in for the part of Diogenes the Cynic because Socrates was a moral philosopherand the teacher of Plato whose influence on the Renaissance was profound As an admirer of thenatural sciences and a maker of telescopes Spinoza would have felt the same way about Thaleswho was an astronomer as well as a philosopher

In Letter 44 a story from Lives follows the identification of Thales as the figureresponsible for the drawing the deductive consequences of the proverb In order to demonstratethat his rejection of the pursuit of wealth was not an alibi for poverty Thales made use of hisexpert knowledge of the heavens Foreseeing a bountiful olive crop after the previous harvestrsquosdearth he rented all of the olive presses in Greece cheaply and then hired them out at a highprice to farmers who needed them to press the oil from their olives In this way he amassed agreat deal of wealth within a single year which ldquohe then distributed with a liberality equal to the

shrewdness by which he had acquired itrdquo Spinozarsquos memory of the story must have acted as abridge for the mistaken identification

The similarity between the ancient Greek proverb and the passages from Acts about thecommunal practices of the early Church with respect to property must have been evident to thebiblical scholar Spinoza Rendered into Latin by Erasmus the proverb ldquoAll things are incommon among friendsrdquo is amicorum communia omnia In Acts 244 ndash ldquoAll that believed weretogether and had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquohad all things in commonrdquo appears in theLatin Vulgate as habebant omnia communia In Acts 432 ndash ldquoNo one claimed that any of theirpossessions was their own but they had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquothey had all thingsin commonrdquo appears in the Vulgate as erant illis omnia communia The equivalence between thecommunia omnia of the proverb and the omnia communia of the two verses from Acts wouldhave been perfectly clear to Spinoza on linguistic grounds alone

In Adages Erasmus is more explicit than Spinoza in connecting the proverb with theverses from Acts He discusses the proverb in its appearance in book 5 of the Laws where Platoappeals to it in order to demonstrate that the best condition of society consists in the communityof possessions Erasmus writes

But it is extraordinary how Christians dislike this common ownership of Platorsquos how infact they throw stones at it although nothing comes closer to the mind of Christ

Further on Erasmus identifies the inventor of the proverb as Pythagoras who he saysestablished a community in which life and property were shared

hellipwhich is the very thing Christ wants to happen among Christians For all those whowere admitted by Pythagoras into that well-known band who followed his instructionswould give to the common fund whatever money and family property they possessed

Even apart from Erasmus the similarity between the Greek philosophersrsquo proverb and the

New Testament passages would have been evident to the Mennonite Jelles from MennoSimonrsquos discussion of the communal practice described in Acts (more on this below) Jelleswould also have found the parallel especially appealing because it makes the principle ofcommon ownership part of that rational philosophical version of Christianity that he and theother Waterlander Mennonites and Collegiants were seeking to establish

Although Erasmus was an advocate of religious reform he never joined the ProtestantReformation remaining a loyal Catholic until his death It is ironic then that during hislifetime the only vigorous champions of the common ownership he espoused were members ofthe most radical wing of the Reformation ironic but completely intelligible since the radicalsrsquoproject was to restore the Church to its original apostolic condition before its accommodationwith worldly power and wealth under Constantine

The Latin phrase designating Anabaptist communism in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies is Omnia sunt communia (for example it appears in this form in the confession theauthorities extracted from Thomas Muumlntzer under torture) It translates into English as ldquoAllthings are commonrdquo which is the present tense version of the phrase in Acts 432 ldquoall thingswere commonrdquo (ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά) to the members of the Church in Jerusalem Theparallel formulation in Acts 244 is slightly different although the distinction is lost in the LatinVulgate It reads that the members of the apostolic Church ldquohad all things in commonrdquo (εἶχονἅπαντα κοινὰ) In the second formulation εἶχον (had) seems to suggest a specific mode ofpossession or even an established quasi-legal form of property But it would be a mistake tointerpret it this way In both verses the anonymous author of Acts is articulating a generalprinciple rather than specifying a form of its implementation As we shall see the concreteapplication of the principle in the first century Church involved not a mode of possession orform of property but rather a practice of redistribution

Within the Anabaptist movement there was a broad range of beliefs and practices thatinvolved specific applications of the principle Omnia sunt communia We need to recognizetheir breadth in order to grasp just how subtle and variegated Anabaptist communism could beFor this purpose it is important to distinguish between communism as 1) a principle ofredistribution 2) a form of joint or communal property 3) a mode of the organization of workand 4) a kind of mutual aid In general all Anabaptist applications of Omnia sunt communia areintended to realize in different ways a communal and spiritual life in which all things arecommon We could say if we like that each of the four categories serves as a means for realizingthe end designated by that principle as long as we keep in mind that in this case the meanscannot be discarded once the end has been achieved Communism as a principle of redistributiona form of communal property a mode of the organization of work a kind of mutual aid ndash orsome combination of these ndash are the concrete ways in which communism as a mode ofcommunal and spiritual life is realized In this case the means are internal to the end That isbecause there can be no fellowship no community of the spirit unless those participating sharesomething ie have it in common Greek recognizes this internal relationship between acommon life and something shared in the word translated into English as fellowship κοινωνίαthe root of which is κοινός which means ldquocommonrdquo Its antonym ἴδιος means ldquobelonging toonerdquo It is the word κοινός that appears in the passages from Acts that refer to the practice ofsharing material wealth

244 ldquoAll who believed were together and had all things in common (Πάντες δὲ οἱπιστεύοντες ἦσαν ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό καὶ εἶχον ἅπαντα κοινὰ)

432 ldquoThe multitude of believers were one in heart and soul (Τοῦ δὲ πλήθους τῶνπιστευσάντων ἦν καρδία καὶ ψυχὴ microία) and no one claimed anything as his ownpossession but to them all things were in common (καὶ οὐδὲ εἷς τι τῶν ὑπαρχόντωναὐτῷ ἔλεγεν ἴδιον εἶναι ἀλλrsquo ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά)

Both verses affirm an internal relationship between living a common life and things

being in common or people having things in common But this is true of any collectiveendeavor A chess club for example is only possible if the members have a common interest inplaying chess But the verses from Acts mean to assert more than this They affirm the intensityand universality of the common life experienced in the early Church (being ldquoone in heart andsoulrdquo) They indicate this by referring to the fact that in the Church in Jerusalem all things areheld in common (ἅπαντα κοινά) Although ldquoall thingsrdquo (ἅπαντα) is not limited to materialpossessions the succeeding verses in chapters 2 and 4 of Acts indicate the depth of thecommitment the early Christians had to sharing a common life by referring to the practice inwhich they enacted it

245 And they sold their possessions and goods and divided them among everyoneaccording to need (καὶ τὰ κτήmicroατα καὶ τὰς ὑπάρξεις ἐπίπρασκον καὶ διεmicroέριζον αὐτὰπᾶσιν καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

434 There was no one among them in need as many as owned land or houses soldthem and brought the values of what was sold (οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐνδεής τις ἦν ἐν αὐτοῖς ὅσοιγὰρ κτήτορες χωρίων ἢ οἰκιῶν ὑπῆρχον πωλοῦντες ἔφερον τὰς τιmicroὰς τῶνπιπρασκοmicroένων) 435 and laid them at the feet of the apostles and distribution wasmade to each in accordance with need (καὶ ἐτίθουν παρὰ τοὺς πόδας τῶν ἀποστόλωνδιεδίδετο δὲ ἑκάστῳ καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

The needs of others are what break the bonds of individual ownership allowing the

transition from the private (ἴδιος) to the common (κοινά) Acts refers to making material goods

common rather than for example communicating private knowledge publicly presumablybecause of the difficulty people experience parting with private property and the correlativesignificance of the act of doing so For material possessions are the means by which they satisfytheir basic needs ndash for food shelter clothing and so on ndash and when possible their desire forluxuries The act of handing over possessions has two consequences The first is that thedistinction between rich and poor wealthy and needy owner and propertyless is abolished andthe members of the community come to stand on level ground The second consequence involvesa more fundamental risk on the part of property-owners By handing over their property theymake a leap of faith that the community will henceforth satisfy their needs as well through thesame practice of redistribution When applied in this fashion the general principle of being incommon or having in common results in an example of the first category of communism asspecified above ie communism as a principle of redistribution

Redistribution of property by the apostles creates occasions for active sharing asexpressions of the new form of common life 246 says that the members of the Church inJerusalem ldquoalso broke bread in each otherrsquos homes and took their meals in exaltation andsimplicity of heartrdquo (κλῶντές τε κατrsquo ο ἴκον ἄρτον microετελάmicroβανον τροφῆς ἐν ἀγαλλιάσει καὶἀφελότητι καρδίας) The value of sharing meals lies not merely in the fact that everyone is fedbut also in the experience of exaltation or ecstatic delight (ἀγαλλιάσεις) and sincerity orsimplicity of heart (ἀφελότητι καρδίας) The experience in common of exaltation and sincerity isat least as important as the act of satisfying needs although the two can be distinguished onlynotionally

The experience has its meaning in relation to the power (δυνάmicroις) that brings together themembers of the new community and inspires them to share their property The gathering of JewsGreeks and those from other nations (the circumcised and the uncircumcised as Paul says)occurs in the period following Pentecost when the Holy Spirit is supposed to have descended incloven tongues of flame upon the twelve apostles endowing them with the ability to speak inevery language Pentecost in turn follows by several weeks the resurrection of Christ and hisbodily ascension into heaven The gift of being able to speak in every language permits theapostles to convey their message to all nations That message ndash confirmed by ldquosigns andwondersrdquo ndash is testimony of their own first-hand witness to the Resurrection It is accompanied bythe baptism of the new members of the Church which repeats the Pentecostal experience byfilling them with the grace and power of the Holy Spirit

433 ldquoAnd with great power the apostles were giving witness to the resurrection of theLord Jesus and abundant grace was upon them all (καὶ δυνάmicroει microεγάλῃ ἀπεδίδουν τὸmicroαρτύριον οἱ ἀπόστολοι τοῦ Κυρίου Ἰησοῦ τῆς ἀναστάσεως χάρις τε microεγάλη ἦν ἐπὶπάντας αὐτούς)

The ecstatic delight and simplicity of heart that the members of the Church in Jerusalem

experience by sharing a common life is their enjoyment of this ldquoabundant gracerdquo (χάρις τεmicroεγάλη) The new community is built upon faith in the apostlesrsquo testimony that Jesus triumphedover death and that his victory promises an eternal life to all who believe That is the gift of theHoly Spirit Yet the ldquospiritualrdquo (πνευmicroατικός) content of early Christian experience does not denyits simultaneously material character For the significance of the Resurrection and the Ascensioninto Heaven is precisely that they concern the physical body of Christ When he appears toThomas who doubts that he has returned Jesus invites his disciple to place his hands into thewounds received from the Crucifixion The point is to show not only that the man standing infront of Thomas is not an imposter but also that the risen Christ is no disembodied ghost Andwhen the apostles witness the Ascension what they see is the physical body of Jesus rising toheaven There is little suggestion of soul-body dualism in Acts The spirit (πνεῦmicroα) infuses andtransfigures the body it does not exist apart from it In this respect it is similar to the life-givingbreath to which the word πνεῦmicroα originally referred Dualism is the result of a Platonizinginterpretation of Christianity that comes later The bodily character of the Resurrection extends tothe promise of eternal life for believers as well The promise is not that their souls will exist apart

from their bodies but that their bodies will rise up from the grave like that of their Savior Giventhis early Christian materialism it is not surprising that commonality of material goods wouldserve as a fundamental expression of the new life of the believers

As we already know the project of the sixteenth-century Anabaptists was to restore theChurch to its original apostolic condition by undoing the corruption they believed had set inwhen it made its peace with worldly wealth and power under Constantine Given the nature ofthe Anabaptist project it would seem that making material things common as described in Actswould follow as a matter of course However there is a long tradition ndash one that began aroundthe middle of the sixteenth century ndash of denying that Anabaptism has anything to do withcommunism regarding it as an accusation brought against the Anabaptists by their enemies It isunderstandable that this should be so The Anabaptists were the victims of a ldquored scarerdquo thatgripped the ruling classes of Europe in the aftermath of the Peasant War and the Muumlnstercommune It is impossible to explain the horrendous tortures forced relocations andinnumerable executions Anabaptists faced on the basis of heretical belief alone Nothing of aremotely similar scale was visited upon other schismatics The fact that the Anabaptistschallenged prevailing property relations is what made them victims of near-genocide It was amatter of survival then to create some distance between themselves and the charge ofadvocating common ownership of goods that came from Luther Zwingli and those whoextracted the confession from Thomas Muumlntzer that he held to the principle of Omnia communiasunt Recent scholarship however has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that having thingsin common was indeed a basic and widespread principle of Anabaptism at its origin just as it hasdemonstrated the influence veterans of the Peasant War had among the early Anabaptists

The dominant form of communist practice in early Anabaptism was appropriatelymodeled on the description of redistribution in Acts In Switzerland where the movementoriginated converts were often asked or required to make contributions to a ldquocommon purserdquoafter receiving adult baptism Some especially pious initiates went so far as to sell their land andhouses for that purpose in accordance with the biblical precedent When necessary officialsdistributed the contents of the purse to members of the community who were in need

Both proponents and enemies of Anabaptist communism often confused the redistributionof wealth with joint or communal property However except for the taking of meals in commonthere is no indication in Acts that redistribution collectivized ownership of wealth in this fashionbut only that it transferred wealth from the better-off members of the community to the worse-off Nevertheless some Anabaptists took joint or communal property as a paradigm for newproperty relations For example the visionary writing of the Nuremberg printer Hans Hergotwho was executed for rebellion in 1527 includes the following passage

And everything that grows on the land belongs to the church and the people who livethere Everything is bestowed for common use so that the people will eat from one potdrink from one vesselhellip And all things will be used in common so that no one is betteroff than another

The ldquowar communismrdquo of the city of Muumlnster involved an ad hoc form of communal propertythrough the edict that the doors to all homes be left open and the owners take in anyone whowished to reside with them But the most significant successful and long-lasting attempt toimplement communal property was that of the Hutterites

The Hutterites took their name from the charismatic hat-maker and Anabaptist leaderJacob Hutter However at their origins they were influenced by the revolutionary bookbinderHans Hut Hut shared Thomas Muumlntzerrsquos sanguinary apocalyptic view of social change andadvocated community ownership of goods in accordance with his own understanding of ActsHe survived the battle of Frankenhausen in which the peasant rebels were finally defeated butwas tortured and executed a few years later In the aftermath and under the influence of JacobHutter the Hutterites adopted pacifism and a strategy of creating autonomous communities Inorder escape persecution thousands of the brethren emigrated from Switzerland and Germany to

the more tolerant Moravia where they created hundreds of Bruderhofs farms and vineyards inwhich land houses farm implements produce and even objects of personal use were ownedcollectively The center of Bruderhof life was a large communal house in which craft productionoccurred on the ground floor and couples lived in small apartments on the upper levels The menengaged in farm labor and craftwork while the women were limited to traditional domesticduties in spite of the fact that children were raised communally apart from their parents TheBruderhofs enjoyed great economic success for a number of reasons People worked hard andconsumed little resulting in a surplus that could be used to purchase additional land seed andtools The size of the communities and of their agricultural production also enabled them to sellcheaply and to pay for supplies at generous prices both of which made the communitieseconomic assets to the areas in which they were located The Hutterites also organized both farmlabor and craft production cooperatively including the education boys were given in thenecessary skills They were therefore practitioners of the second and third forms of communismwe have identified namely communal ownership and cooperative organization of work Whenthey were ultimately forced out of Moravia by the triumph of Catholic forces in the Thirty YearsWar the Hutterites migrated eastward many finally relocating to Canada and the United Stateswhere the Bruderhofs continue to exist to this day

Communism as a kind of mutual aid was the contribution of the other major form ofAnabaptism that of the Mennonites With great political intelligence and skill Menno Simonswas able to reformulate the meaning of Omnia communia sunt in such a way as to avoidthreatening the property interests of nobles and clerics He did this in his book A Humble andChristian Justification and Replication First he denied that Mennonites were advocates ofcommunal property

This accusation is false and without all truth We do not teach and practice communityof goods but we teach and testify the Word of the Lord that all true believers in Christare of one body (1 Corinthians 1213) partakers of one bread (1 Corinthians 1017)have one God and one Lord (Ephesians 4)

In his assertion that the believers are of one body and partakers of one bread Simons is affirmingwhat we have called the general principle of communism while denying that Mennonitesembrace it in the specific form of communal property But he goes further by denying thatMennonites advocate a contemporary version of the apostolic redistribution of wealth

For although we know that the apostolic church had this practice in the beginning ascan be seen in the Acts of the Apostles nevertheless we note from their epistles that itdisappeared in their time and was no longer practiced

Instead of communal property or centralized redistribution of wealth the Mennonites derivefrom the general principle of Christian communism an alternative practice

Seeing then that they are one as said it is Christian and reasonable that they also havedivine love among them and that one member cares for another for both the Scripturesand nature teach this They show mercy and love as much as is in them They do notsuffer a beggar among them They have pity on the wants of the saints They receive thewretched They take strangers into their houses They comfort the sad They lend to theneedy They clothe the naked They share their bread with the hungry They do not turntheir face from the poorhellip

In the subsequent history of Mennonism the practice Simons describes came to be calledldquomutual aidrdquo Note that it is different from charitable giving and this in two ways First thereferences to receiving the wretched taking in strangers sharing bread and so on indicate a farmore personal even intimate form of involvement than simple charitable donation Second

there is the suggestion of reciprocity or mutuality (ldquoone member cares for anotherrdquo) that tends todeny the difference in status between the charitable giver and the recipient of charity Thepractice Simons describes is similar to what some anthropologists have called ldquogeneralizedreciprocityrdquo in which my obligation to give to you when you are in need corresponds to yourobligation to give to me when I am in need In a sense this is a form of redistribution inaccordance with need but it is enacted directly between individual members of the communityrather than administered centrally through a common purse

In line with his political purpose Simons is careful to distinguish between mutual aid andthe expropriation of private property

This is the kind of brotherhood we teach and not that some should take over andpossess the land soil and properties of others as we are falsely maligned accused andlied about by many

In this way he detaches the Mennonite version of communism from any revolutionary intentionThat was the prerequisite for communal survival during the long counter-revolution thatfollowed the Peasant War Still Simons never abandons the general principle Omnia communiasunt nor does he even really reject the practice of the early Church

Since we do not find it a permanent practice with the apostles we have not taught orpracticed community of goods but we urge earnestly and zealously to practice liberalgiving love and mercy as the apostolic writings teach and testify abundantly Andeven if we had taught and practiced community of goods as we are falsely accused ofdoing we would still not be doing otherwise than the holy apostles full of the HolySpirit themselves did in the former church at Jerusalem in the beginning of the holyChristian Church although they stopped the practice as has been said

Like the Hutterites Mennonite communities prospered once they managed to survive the

bloody period of reaction In Holland the Mennonite population consisted largely in successfulmerchants along with a number of lawyers doctors and other professionals Most of thepeasant artisan and laborer families who had started as Mennonites in the sixteenth century hadlong since converted to the Reform Church which is one reason Spinoza faced the problem ofpolitical agency in the TPT Although the idea of mutual aid persisted among the DutchMennonites it took the form predominantly of organized international philanthropy in which thecommunity made contributions not only to Mennonites abroad but to other populations in needThere was no escaping the fact however that in this philanthropic form mutual aid becamehardly distinguishable from conventional charity

Jarig Jelles was born into the Dutch Mennonite community around a century afterSimmons wrote his book when this process of slippage was well underway But there is littledoubt that Jelles knew the Mennonite teaching on mutual aid and its origin in the generalprinciple of Christian communism Even if Jelles never read Erasmusrsquo Adages Spinozarsquosreference to the supposed communism of Thales was likely to resonate with him on the basis ofhis own religious tradition

We cannot be certain how much Spinoza knew in detail about the communist practices ofthe Anabaptists but it is probably not a coincidence that he recommends three of the four atvarious places in his writings In Part 4 of the Ethics ldquoOf Human Bondage or the Strength of theEmotionsrdquo he identifies the chief virtue of the intellect as ldquostrength of the mindrdquo (fortitudo)According to him it takes two forms one directed to the self and one directed to others He callsthe inwardly directed form ldquocouragerdquo defining it as ldquothe desire whereby every individualendeavors to preserve his own being according to the dictates of reason alonerdquo The outwardlydirected form is generositas which Shirley translates as ldquonobilityrdquo though ldquosolidarityrdquo is closerto what Spinoza is getting at He defines it as ldquothe desire whereby every individual according to

the dictates of reason alone endeavors to assist others and make friends of themrdquo When twopeople in contact with one another possess the virtue of generositas they will clearly exhibit itreciprocally in the form of mutual aid the fourth communist practice

In Part 4 of the Ethics Spinoza also formulates a version of the first communist practicethat of the redistribution of wealth in accordance with need

Again men are won over by generosity especially those who do not have thewherewithal to produce what is necessary to support life Yet it is far beyond the powerand resources of a private person to come to the assistance of everyone in need For thewealth of a private person is quite unequal to such a demand It is also a practicalimpossibility for one man to establish friendship with all Therefore the care of the poordevolves upon society as a whole and looks only to the common good

The fact that society as a whole has responsibility for meeting the needs of the poor makes thepractice Spinoza recommends in this passage a version of the centralized redistribution of wealthdescribed in the Acts of the Apostles and institutionalized in Anabaptist form as the ldquocommonpurserdquo More than that the fact that society as a whole must take on this responsibility ratherthan a church or other sub-community makes Spinoza an early advocate of what will becomethree centuries later the European welfare state In our own period as the welfare state is beingdismantled it is easy to see that what neoliberals object to concerning it is precisely its implicitcommunism ie its practice of distribution in accordance with need

Spinoza advocates a third communist practice in his unfinished final work the PoliticalTreatise The context is his discussion of a maximally democratic version of monarchy in whichthe entire citizen body is armed and the king forbidden from making any decision contrary to thewill of a massive council of ordinary citizens In such a state

The fields and the soil and if possible the houses as well should be public property thatis should belong to the sovereign by whom they should be let at an annual rent tocitizens whether townsmen or country-dwellers Apart from this all citizens should befree or exempt from any form of taxation in time of peace Of this rent part should beallocated to the defense works of the commonwealth part to the kings domestic needsFor in time of peace it is still necessary to fortify cities as for war and to have in a stateof readiness ships and other armaments

Ownership of land and buildings by the sovereign is a form of communal property first becausethe citizens of the commonwealth delegate to him or them the property they hold in commonand second because that delegation occurs with the understanding that the sovereign will use theproperty in service of the common good

Spinoza supplies an argument based on more than simple utility for the practice ofholding land and buildings in common

hellip in a state of Nature the one thing a man cannot appropriate to himself and make hisown is land and whatever is so fixed to the land that he cannot conceal it anywhere orcarry it away where he pleases Thus the land and whatever is fixed to it in the way wehave described is especially the public property of the commonwealth that is of allthose who by their united strength can claim it or of him to whom all have delegated thepower to claim it

To state the argument differently since rights are the same as powers no individual has a naturalright to appropriate privately the land or any of its fixed structures because none has the powernecessary to do so The only response an individual can make to incursions by a more powerfulperson or group of people is flight in which he must leave the land and its buildings behind It is

only by entering into a community in which the strength of each is combined for the purpose ofdefense that people can effectively possess fixed property but they do so as a members of thecommunity rather than as an separate individuals According to Spinozarsquos theory of rights onlythe community has the right to own the land and its structures because only the community hasthe required power

The communal ownership of land houses and other buildings is a version of the secondcommunist practice on our list of which Hutterite joint ownership is the most developedhistorical example When adopted by a polity rather than a small community though thepractice has an added advantage Under those circumstances communal possession of fixedproperty eliminates the need for taxes except in time of war What takes their place is ageneration of revenue pegged to wealth since the members of society who are able to rent themost expensive and largest amounts of communal property will obviously pay the most in rentIn this way the form of communal ownership of land and buildings that Spinoza recommendsalso acts as a mechanism for the redistribution of wealth

The only communist practice of the Anabaptists that does not find an equivalent inSpinozarsquos writings is that of the cooperative organization of work The absence is related toSpinozarsquos inability to resolve the problem of political agency in the TPT An attempt to mobilizethe multitude on behalf of democratic social change would need to address the organization ofwork in such a way as to alleviate the burden of toil Reducing the number of hours spent inonerous labor is the only way to provide the multitude with the free time necessary to participatein institutionalized democratic politics Along with the redistribution of wealth and thedevelopment of communal property the cooperative reorganization of work would need to beincorporated as a plank in the latent political program that makes its first democratic appearancein the TPT and is extended in a communist direction in the passages from the Ethics and thePolitical Treatise that we have just examined But that would constitute an explicit anddangerous appeal to the multitude as the agent of political and social transformation an appealthat Spinoza consistently rejects It would involve nothing less than the revival of therevolutionary energies of the Peasant War on a new seventeenth-century foundation

In spite of his radicalism Spinoza doubted that revolution was capable of reconstructingsociety and the state in the way revolutionaries wanted In Chapter 18 of the TPT he takes aposition that is at least on the surface opposed to revolution or any attempt to change the formof the state fundamentally The context is a discussion of the transition from the early Hebrewcommonwealth in which the people held sovereignty to the rule of kings Spinoza tells us thatthe first period saw only a single civil war and concluded with a compassion for the vanquishedthat resulted in lasting peace By contrast the period of kings was marred by multiple warswaged only for the glory of the rulers and involved the massacre of hundreds of thousandsDuring the first period few prophets arose to rebuke the Jews while a great many emergedduring the time of the monarchies From this example Spinoza reasons that it is fatal for peopleaccustomed to popular sovereignty and governed by settled laws to adopt a new monarchicalform of government On the one hand they will be unable to tolerate the arbitrary exercise ofpower by a single individual while on the other the new monarch will be compelled to abolishthe existing laws because they did not originate by his own authority But it is just as dangerousaccording to Spinoza for the subjects of a monarch to attempt his replacement with popular ruleThis is because a popular revolution must advance to the point where it annihilates the king thekingrsquos family and the friends of the king in order to prevent the restoration of royal power But inthe process the revolutionary authority must assume a power even more draconian then thatpreviously exercised by the king In addition having committed regicide the new popularauthority faces the danger that it will fall victim to its own precedent For this reason as well andin the interest of survival it must wield power more repressively than the deposed sovereignSpinoza illustrates his point with reference to the English revolution which eliminated themonarch Charles I only to replace him with the Lord Protector Cromwell who was monarch inall but name and more repressive than Charles

Spinozarsquos point seems unassailable especially since the pattern he describes in the caseof the English Revolution repeated itself over the course of the next three centuries in the French

and Russian Revolutions It is at least arguable that Napoleon if not Robespierre was a newLouis XVI and Stalin a new Tsar even if this understates the more fundamental social changesthat resulted form the two revolutions Still Spinoza does not absolutely proscribe therevolutionary overthrow of a tyrannical government but says instead that there is a great dangerin making the attempt Besides his analysis of the conditions necessary for retaining sovereigntydoes not leave the decision about whether to engage in revolution up to militants He argues thatno state can survive that creates mass indignation in its people and this is precisely theunavoidable result of tyrannical government Spinozarsquos real purpose in Chapter 18 is to opposethe Orangist-Calvinist project of replacing the Dutch Republic with a monarchy ldquoAs for theEstates of Hollandrdquo he writes ldquoas far as we know they never had kings but counts to whom theright of sovereignty was never transferredrdquo His point is that the Dutch War of Independenceagainst Spain was justified because it restored the sovereignty of the people against the attemptby the Spanish ldquocountrdquo (King Philip II) to abolish it However any attempt to replace theRepublic with a monarchy would change the form of the state disastrously by divesting thepeople of their former rights

When Spinoza wrote his treatise the only revolutionary forces that existed were on theRight The danger he warns about in Chapter 18 of the TPT did indeed come to pass only oneyear after his letter to Jelles In 1672 a Calvinist-Orangist mob hacked Johan De Witt and hisbrother Cornelius to death at a time when Holland was invaded by the French army Streetorators stirred up the mob by claiming that the invasion was the result of the brothersrsquo treason Inthe aftermath of the murders William III prince of Orange was elevated to the position ofstadtholder of Holland Although William went on to become King of England he stopped shortof claiming a Dutch throne However in actuality he substituted his own power for much of thatwhich had belonged to the Estates General while the Reformed Church gained considerableinfluence in Dutch government According to a story made famous by Spinozarsquos earliestbiographer Johannes Colerus when the De Witt brothers were murdered Spinozarsquos landlordthwarted his attempt to go the site of the assassinations where the bodies of the brothers werestill on gruesome display in order to plant a sign reading Ultimi Barbarorum (the ultimatebarbarians) In this way the landlord undoubtedly saved the philosopherrsquos life It was the onlytime we know of when the mature Spinoza gave in to his passive affects in a significant way

There is a passage in Chapter 18 of the TPT that uncannily anticipates the murders

Tyranny is most violent where individual beliefs which are unalienable rights areregarded as criminal Indeed in such circumstances the anger of the common people[plebis] is usually the greatest tyrant of allhellip the vilest hypocrites urged on by that samefury which they call zeal for Gods law have everywhere persecuted men whoseblameless character and distinguished qualities have excited the hostility of the commonpeople [plebi] publicly denouncing their beliefs and inflaming the savage multitudersquos[multitudinem] anger against them

Spinoza was the first political philosopher who grappled with the problem of a mass-

based politics of the Right The problem would occur again with the fascist movements of the1920s and 1930s and with the return of the rightwing religious fundamentalisms of our own dayndash Jewish Christian Muslim and Hindu It is not surprising that he failed to solve the problemdefinitively since it continues to remain unsolved The remarkable thing about Spinoza thoughis not that he was skeptical about the liberatory possibilities of revolution by the masses but thathe defended the idea of a popular democracy nonetheless And this he continued to do even inthe aftermath of the De Witt murders In his work on the Political Treatise in the final year of hislife Spinoza developed a powerful critique of the elitist claim that the multitude are incapable ofgoverning

Yet perhaps our [democratic] suggestions will be received with ridicule by those whorestrict to the common people the faults that are inherent in all mankind saying There

is no moderation in the mob they terrorize unless they are frightened and Thecommon people is either a humble servant or an arrogant master there is no truth orjudgment in itrdquo and the like But all men share in one and the same nature it is powerand culture that mislead us with the result that when two men do the same thing weoften say that it is permissible for the one to do it and not the other not because of anydifference in the thing done but in the doer hellipThen again There is no moderation inthe mob they terrorize unless they are frightened For freedom and slavery do not gowell together Finally that there is no truth or judgment in the common people is notsurprising since the important affairs of state are conducted without their knowledgeand from the little that cannot be concealed they can only make conjecturehellip Howeveras we have said all men have the same nature ndash all grow haughty with rule terrorizeunless they are frightened ndash and everywhere truth becomes a casualty through hostilityor servility especially when despotic power is in the hands of one or a few who in trialspay attention not to justice or truth but to the extent of a persons wealth

Surprisingly Spinoza develops this democratic argument while discussing the institutions

appropriate to a monarchy But the key point he makes in the discussion is that a condition ofeffective monarchical rule is expansion of the democratic element within the state in the form ofa sizeable legislative council whose members are drawn from the general population of citizensover the age of fifty On Spinozarsquos view the mistake those who oppose democracy make isassuming that the faults exhibited by the common people ndash such as poor judgment arroganceand hostility ndash belong only to them while they are in fact typical of human beings Actually it iselitist politics that magnifies these all-too-human faults by restricting political power to a limitednumber of people while democratic politics minimizes them through the principle of majorityrule among numerous decision-makers The reason as we already know is that passions pullpeople in different directions making it nearly impossible for the members of a large council toagree on a common position unless they make decisions based not on passion but an idea of thecommon good On Spinozarsquos view it is when government is in the hands of a single person oronly a few people that the dangers the critics of democracy attribute to the common people are infact the greatest

Spinoza also argues against the claim that the common people are not qualified to makepolitical decisions because they lack the necessary education or degree of intellect There is noone he says who has been engaged in an occupation until the age of fifty who lacksunderstanding of his sphere of work ldquoevery man is reasonably competent and sagacious inmatters in which he has been long and attentively engagedrdquo So each is qualified at least to giveadvice in the kingrsquos council concerning his own business especially if given the time necessaryto reflect on the matter under discussion

Most of all the plebs are the group best suited to serving on the council because theirinterest is that of society as a whole ldquoHence it follows that counselors must necessarily beappointed whose private fortune and advantage depend on the general welfare and the peace ofallrdquo For example Spinoza emphasizes the idea that the common people have the highest stake inavoiding war or concluding an existing war with a settlement that brings lasting peace Thereason is they are ones who bear the heaviest burdens of war Unlike the wealthy well-bornmembers of society it is the common person whose occupation is most likely to be interrupted itis his taxes that are raised to onerous levels and it is his son who dies Thus the common interestof society in peace is best served not by a wealthy or educated elite but rather by those whohave the most to lose from war

At the end of the long paragraph defending popular power quoted above Spinozaconnects the question of who holds power within the state to that of who owns property Truthand justice he says are casualties in states where power is held by one person or a handful ofpeople who conduct courtroom trials that favor the rich The implication is that elitist politicalpower and ownership of wealth are intrinsically connected One of the reasons Spinozarecommends public ownership of land and buildings in a monarchy is to prevent the rise of aclass of wealthy landowners with interests different than those of the rest of society Under the

conditions of common ownership ldquothe greatest part of the council will generally have one andthe same attitude of mind towards their common interests and peaceful activitieshelliprdquo And yethaving gone this far he has trouble imagining a state where fixed property is owned collectivelyin which the actually existing multitude holds power The peasants artisans and urban poor whoconstitute the common people of the United Provinces drop out of the picture in the democratic-communist monarchy he describes and nearly everyone makes his living by selling merchandiseor lending money to countrymen ldquoall will have to make a living by engaging in trade or bylending money to their fellow citizensrdquo He seems to assume that the collectivization of land andfixed property would eliminate the occupations of peasant and artisan leaving trade and loaningat interest the only remaining possibilities of work But that of course is not true The fact thatpeople would have to rent farm land would not prevent them from farming any more than theneed to rent workshops in the cities and towns would prevent artisans from plying their tradesBut Spinoza finds the idea of a commonwealth based on commercial enterprise politicallyappealing This is because he regards commercial occupations as contributing to harmony andpeace since he claims they establish connections between people that further the interests of allwhile those who engage in them prosper only in peacetime Both of these assumptions are asquestionable as the expectation that non-commercial occupations will die out After all even inSpinozarsquos day colonialism and the struggle for colonies between imperialist states led to warsbetween the great powers including the United Provinces not to mention the military and otherforms of violence involved in subjugating the colonies The East India Company was not exactlya force for peace What seems to be at work here instead is a failure of social imaginationthough one we may find understandable given the fact that the capitalist economy was still at anearly stage in its development However this may be there is no denying the fact that despite hispowerful arguments in favor of democratic rule and communal property it is still a bourgeoissociety and state that Spinoza envisions

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of what we should not hesitate to call Spinozarsquoscommunism is the critique of private ownership he develops in the Ethics based on his theory ofaffects For him there is a paradox involved in social and political life It stems from the fact thaton the one hand people can survive and develop their capacities only by joining with oneanother in societies and states But on the other hand the necessity of combining with oneanother does not prevent them from seeking their own advantage above that of their fellowsbeing quarrelsome or hateful and erecting obstacles to each otherrsquos happiness Spinoza identifiesthe reason for these deep-rooted problems of social coexistence in Part IV Proposition 35 of theEthics ldquoInsofar as men are assailed by emotions that are passive they can be contrary to oneanotherrdquo Emotions are states of the body characterized by a transition from a lower degree of thepower to exist and act (conatus) to a higher one or conversely from a higher degree to a lowerone The first transition is the affect of joy while the second is that of sadness Passive emotionsare caused by an object external to the body or more precisely external to its essential natureSpinoza conceives of that nature as a specific proportion of motion-and-rest that the parts of thebody exhibit in relation to one another While joy is an increase in our capacity to preserve theproportion of motion-and-rest essential to our body (ie to exist and act as we do) sadness is adecrease in that capacity The political problem created by the passive emotions is that evenwhen they are joyful they are not under the control of the person who experiences themMoreover different people are affected by the same external object in different ways because theparts of their bodies and their proportionate relations of motion-and rest-differ The same objectmay elicit anger in one person and pity in another or love in one and hatred in another and soon And because people differ in their emotional reactions to the same things they also differ inthe judgments they frame on the basis of these reactions What one person praises anotherperson blames what one regards as fearless another believes to be timid etc Finally sincepeople act upon their judgments seeking to foster what they judge to be good and destroy whatthey judge to be bad their differing judgments can result in actions that are in conflict with oneanother In short ldquoinsofar as they are assailed by passive emotions [people] can be contrary toone anotherrdquo

In Proposition 34 Spinoza gives an example of the contrariety caused by the passiveaffects Suppose Peter has sole possession of something Paul loves Deprivation of the loved

object causes sadness in Paul with the idea of Peter as its cause In accordance with Spinozarsquosdefinition of hatred Paul will hate Peter and therefore seek to injure or destroy him in order toremove the cause of his Paulrsquos sadness Spinoza says that this example may seem wrong becausePaul and Peter appear to be contrary to one another because of something they share ndash ie theirlove for the thing Peter possesses But that is not the case Paul has an image of himself aslacking the loved object while Peter has an image of himself as possessing the loved object Sothey in fact differ from one another by virtue of the different images they have rather than bypossessing something in common It is clear from the example that the root of this contrariety ndashie this enmity ndash between Paul and Peter is the fact that the object can be possessed by only oneof them so that what one has the other must lack The difficulty with private property is that it isexclusive to the one who possesses it which means that what I experience as possession othersexperience as deprivation It may seem that there is no problem if other people are indifferent tothe thing I possess However in accordance with Spinozarsquos theory of the imitation of affects themere fact that I love the thing I own other things being equal will cause you to love it as wellMy exclusive possession of the thing will therefore cause sadness in you that takes the form ofhatred or more precisely the kind of hatred called envy which involves pain at the good fortuneof another ldquohuman nature is in general so constituted that men pity the unfortunate and envy thefortunate in the latter case with a hatred proportionate to their love of what they think anotherpossessesrdquo

Common Possession Friendship and Philosophy

In the Ethics Spinoza does not follow his analysis of the antagonisms of private property

by considering the collective possession of material goods (although he does advocateredistribution of wealth to the poor in Part 4 as we have seen) But the theme of commonpossession figures large in the book anyway in his treatment of the intellectual love of God Inorder to understand the connection between common possession and amor Dei intellectualis itwill be necessary to engage in a detailed analysis of Spinozarsquos metaphysics We will begin thattask in earnest in the next chapter At this point we will simply introduce the theme byexamining the relationship between friendship and common possession in the letter to Jelles andsome related writings

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo unlike the similar passages fromActs has its provenance among philosophers Spinoza mistakenly attributes it to Thales but itoccurs in Platorsquos Phaedrus and Laws and is present though not in so many words in thediscussion in the Republic of common ownership of property by the guardian class Thetradition cited by Erasmus that traces the proverb back to Pythagoras is plausible when weconsider the influence the Pythagorean community in Sicily had on Plato in the aftermath ofSocratesrsquo death Erasmus sees the supposed use of a common fund by the Pythagoreans as ananticipation of the similar practice in Acts But Spinozarsquos approach is different What interestshim in the letter is common ownership not as a religious practice but as a matter of thephilosopherrsquos relation to the world Remember the deductive consequences of the proverb sinceall things are in common among friends everything belongs to the wise because the wise arefriends of the gods and all things belong to the gods But what does it mean to say that the wiseare friends of the gods

Although Spinoza uses the word ldquofriendshiprdquo often in his writings he never supplies aformal definition However we can reconstruct the wordrsquos meaning from the contexts in whichhe uses it So for example Proposition 35 of Part III of the Ethics reads

If anyone thinks that there is between the object of his love and another person the sameor a more intimate bond of friendship than there was between them when he alone usedto possess the object loved he will be affected with hatred toward the object loved andwill envy his rival

According to the proposition friendship is an intimate bond between a person and the

object he loves I hate an object of love that I alone once possessed when it wounds my vanity byloving someone else more than me So the object of love must be capable of loving whichmeans that the bond of friendship is a relation of reciprocal love between persons Nowaccording to Spinoza I love something when I have the idea of that thing as the cause of myexperience of joy Joy is an increase in conatus which Spinoza defines as the tendency to persistin being or equivalently the ability to exist and act So friendship is a relation in which Iidentify the other person as the cause of an increase in my conatus and the other personidentifies me as the cause of a similar increase in his or hers Two things each of which causesan increase in the ability to exist and act of the other are said by Spinoza to be in harmony Sincetwo entities in harmony have more combined power than either does singly it is to the advantageof each to be in harmony with the other There is even greater advantage in entering intoharmonious connection with a third individual and the greatest advantage in combining with asmany individuals as possible This is a universal metaphysical principle For example it pertainsjust as much to chemical combination or herding among animals as it does to social relationsbetween people In the case of human relationships it is the fundamental basis of politics orrather one of its two bases the other one being the tendency human beings have to conflict withone another When the state is functioning well it involves not a random collection ofindividuals and certainly not the war of each against all but a group whose members are boundto one another by friendship the human form of harmony Thus for Spinoza friendship is apolitical virtue as it was for Plato and Aristotle

The opposite of friendship is enmity That person is my enemy whom I regard as thecause of my sadness or pain which is the same as saying the cause of a decrease in my abilityto exist and act Like friendship enmity is a reciprocal relationship If I identify you as the causeof my sadness I will seek to injure or eliminate you But that means I will be identified in yourmind as the cause of your sadness Enmity is a relation of reciprocal hatred just as friendship is arelation of reciprocal love Just as there is harmony between friends there is discord betweenenemies The fundamental task of a rational politics is easy to state it is to extend and intensifyfriendship and to reduce and mollify enmity

We have already seen that Spinoza identifies solidarity (generositas) as one of the twoforms of strength of mind (fortitudo) which is the virtue that belongs to the exercise of theintellect Solidarity is the desire to assist others and foster friendship on the basis of reason aloneThe friendship fostered by solidarity is a bond of active love The love of friends for one anotheris active when each person who loves is the adequate cause of his or her love To say that theperson is the adequate cause means that the cause of love is internal to the person who feels it inother words that the love is self-generated Active love differs from passive love in that thecause of passive love is at least partially something that exists outside the person who has theemotion The problem with passive love is that it need not be constant If the bodily dispositionof the person changes in a particular way then the object of erstwhile love will have a differentemotional effect Passive love can change into boredom or indifference or even hatred This isnot possible in the case of active love because it is self-generated Since love involves theexperience of joy no one actively abandons it

There seems to be something odd about the idea of a love between persons that isinternally generated by each of the partners in the relationship Is it not the case that part of theessence of love is the fact that the object of my love is the cause of my love Without denyingthis Spinoza identifies two forms of love that are self-generated in the Ethics One is myintellectual love of God It is indeed true that God is the cause of my love but only insofar as myintellect is part of the infinite intellect of God Thus the object that causes my love - ie God - isinternal to my mind and conversely my mind is internal to it Such reciprocal internality ndash hardas it is to visualize ndash is what Spinoza means by immanence God he tells us is the immanentcause of everything that exists Nothing can exist apart from God while God expresses himselfin all of the things that exist My love of God and Gods love of himself are one and the samebecause Godrsquos intellect is immanent in mine The second form of self-generated love is the

friendship that exists between me and others who love God through the exercise of the intellectThe reason is that the joy I feel in loving God is by the imitation of affects augmented by thejoy you feel in loving God But your love as well as mine is joy caused by the same immanentbeing Another way of saying this is that your intellect and mine are parts (ie finiteexpressions) of the infinite intellect of God Thus the relationship between friends who are boundtogether by the common exercise of the intellect and the love of God that flows from it is basedon an internal bond an internal object and cause of love In this kind of love you and I as itwere discover one another internally You are inside of me and I am inside of you Thus whenyou augment my love and I augment yours it is Gods power as the intellect immanent in us boththat causes the augmentation even though we remain finite individual beings In this state ofaffairs which is admittedly difficult to grasp we can see the rational meaning of the command tolove God by loving the neighbor In intellectual love God not insofar as he is infinite butinsofar as he expresses himself in my finite intellect loves God as he expresses himself in yourfinite intellect

For Spinoza the exercise of the intellect is very different than our ordinary experience ofthe world In the course of ordinary experience we encounter objects in a way that appearshaphazard disordered and incomplete This is so first of all because our encounters are part ofan infinitely complex chain of natural causes and effects of which we know only very limitedparts In addition our experience of objects has as much to do with the condition our bodies arein when we encounter them as it does with the nature of the objects themselves By contrast inexercising the intellect we arrange our ideas in an intelligible pattern that is internal to the mindand entirely different than the images we accumulate through sensory experience The ideas arean expression of our power while the images result from our hapless deliverance to chanceEmotions caused by objects we encounter in the course of ordinary experience are externallydetermined and therefore passive while emotions caused by acts of intellectual comprehensionare internally generated and therefore active That is why love as an active emotion has its originin the exercise of the intellect and the most satisfying form of friendship is based on thereciprocal experience of such love In a letter to Willem van Blyenberg Spinoza provides themost complete description of this kind of friendship to be found in his writings

For my part of all things that are not under my control what I most value is to enterinto a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth For I believe that such a lovingrelationship affords us a serenity surpassing any other boon in the whole wide worldThe love that such men bear to one another grounded as it is in the love that each hasfor knowledge of truth is as unshakable as is the acceptance of truth once it has beenperceived It is moreover the highest source of happiness to be found in things notunder our command for truth more than anything else has the power to effect a closeunion between different sentiments and dispositions

Spinoza says that a friendship based on the love of truth is not under our control But how

can that be if intellectual friendship involves a form of love internally generated by each friendIt would seem that the love we generate through the exercise of the intellect is fully under ourcontrol Spinoza however is referring to the fact that we are able to become friends only withpeople we actually meet which is something that occurs in the course of ordinary haphazarddisordered experience To a large extent our friendships are a matter of chance By way ofillustrating this point it turned out that Spinoza decided his initial judgment of Blyenberg wasmistaken He broke off their correspondence when he realized that the infinite chain of causesand effects had brought his way not a lover of truth but a dogmatic worshipper of the ldquopaperand inkrdquo of the Bible

People create commonwealths because the power of each to exist and act is increased byall others who transfer their rights to the sovereign For reasons we have already considered thepolitical bond is one of friendship ldquoIt is of the first importance to men to establish closerelationships and to bind themselves together with such ties as may most effectively unite theminto one body and as an absolute rule to act in such a way as serves to strengthen friendshiprdquo If

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

latent program he articulates in the TPT Like democracy common ownership could have onlyone social basis in the Netherlands of the seventeenth century ndash namely the peasants artisanswage-workers and small retail merchants The problem this raises is how to make the transitionfrom a multitude given to irrationality and superstition ndash and therefore under the sway of theReformed Church ndash to one capable of the rationality necessary to create the democraticcommunism (the content of which we have yet to define) that Letter 44 implies when consideredalong with the TPT Spinoza saw no answer to this problem That is why he suppressed his latentproject in favor of the overt one for a liberal republic able to assert its sovereign authority overthe Church It seemed to him that the educated bourgeoisie had political capacities that themultitude lacked

Spinozarsquos judgment on this matter is similar mutatis mutandis to that of FrederickEngels in the Peasant War in Germany For Engels the Peasant War of the sixteenth century wasa heroic but premature revolution Under the leadership of Thomas Muumlntzer the peasantsadopted a program that included the expropriation of ecclesiastic and aristocratic property andthe common ownership of goods But the princes were the only group with the wealth andmilitary resources necessary to benefit from the ensuing turmoil while their rivals for power ndashthe Catholic prelates and lesser nobility ndash were ruined by the confiscation of property andplundering or destruction of fixed wealth by the peasant masses The rising bourgeoisie was ableto frame an independent liberal political program but did not yet have the social weightnecessary to play a leading role in the economy and the state According to Engels the peasantrywas incapable of mastering the new forces of production unleashed by the world market and theonly class that might have played a progressive role alongside the peasants ndash the proletarianwage-working element in the towns ndash was a very small part of laboring population It would takeanother three centuries for the proletariat to develop along with industry to the point where itwould be able to draft a meaningful equivalent of the communist program first framed by thesixteenth-century German peasantry Spinoza certainly had no idea that industrialization and asizeable proletariat were on their way But he shared with Engels a pessimistic assessment of thechances for a successful social transformation led by peasants and their allies Perhaps with thedisastrous defeat of the German peasants in mind (as well as the allegiance of the Dutchmultitude to the Reformed Church) Spinoza judged that relying upon the common people as anagent of social and political change in his own century would have been equally futile

Why then does Spinoza raise the issue of common ownership in Letter 44 The answer isthe same as for why he discusses democracy in the TPT when it makes no contribution to hispolitical intervention but on the contrary damages it We could say that Spinoza is either a badmilitant or a good philosopher The truth is he is both Like Platorsquos attempt to influence thecourse of events in Syracuse or Aristotlersquos decision to tutor Alexander the Great Spinozarsquos faithin the political efficacy of philosophical reasoning was misguided There is ample historicalevidence that the philosopher who attempts to be politically effective as a philosopher is doomedto defeat That is why Marx ceased considering himself a philosopher in 1845 as he indicates inthe eleventh of his Theses on Feuerbach ldquoUntil now philosophers have only attempted tounderstand the world the point however is to change itrdquo The project of changing the world isdifferent than that of understanding it from a purely theoretical perspective Of course it ispossible for philosophers to influence statesmen as Locke influenced the drafters of the USConstitution But Lockersquos influence was effective more than a century after he wrote the SecondTreatise on Civil Government and so can hardly be called a political intervention The attempt tointervene politically in a concrete situation in which multiple forces and complex structures arein play is something very different than the delayed influence on the drafters of a constitutionwho have had an opportunity to ponder at leisure the meaning of a philosopherrsquos work The mostimportant question of politics is not so much ldquoWhat is to be donerdquo as ldquoWho is to do itrdquoSpinoza may have been right that the multitude was not the collective subject to defendrepublican liberty That is why he appealed to the Dutch bourgeoisie through its philosophicallyliterate elements But he was too much the philosopher to suppress his argument that ademocratic republic is the kind of state that best preserves freedom and encourages rationalityand he was willing to make his point even at the cost of alienating the collective agent he wasattempting to influence

The reference to common ownership in Letter 44 would have had an even more negativeeffect on his readers should Spinoza have made it in the TPT In private communication withJelles however he was able to raise the topic without risking further political difficultiesSpinozarsquos reference presumes an intellectual history with roots in both ancient Greek philosophyand early Christianity a history that was renewed practically as well as theoretically in earlymodern Europe In the passage from Letter 44 where he introduces the theme of commonownership he goes on to elaborate the position he attributes to Thales Here is the passage in fullthat we have already quoted partially

How far superior indeed and excellent were the reflections of Thales of Miletuscompared with this writer is shown by the following account All things he said are incommon among friends The wise are the friends of the Gods and all things belong tothe Gods therefore all things belong to the wise In this way the wise man makeshimself the richest by nobly despising riches instead of greedily pursuing them

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo (Amicorum communia omnia) is

the first entry in his book Adages by the late Renaissance humanist and reform-minded Catholicscholar Desiderius Erasmus The Adages were widely available in Spinozarsquos day and it is likelythat both Spinoza and Jelles had read them although the former must have also consultedErasmusrsquo source for the saying ndash Lives of the Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius We will seewhy in a moment Erasmus cites the same deduction from the maxim as Spinoza does in Letter44 except that he attributes it to Socrates rather than Thales

From this proverb Socrates deduced that all things belong to all good men just as theydo to the gods For to the gods he said belong all things good men are friends of thegods and among friends all possessions are in common

The fact that Spinoza refers to wise men while Erasmus refers to good men does not

indicate any real difference between them because both accepted the ancient Greek and biblicalequivalence between human goodness and wisdom The difference in attributing the deductiveconsequences of the proverb to Thales on the one hand and Socrates on the other also does notindicate any substantive disagreement between Spinoza and Erasmus although it does signify adifference in intellectual vocation and emphasis Interestingly however the attribution in bothcases is incorrect Their common source the Lives of the Philosophers places the argument intothe mouth of Diogenes the Cynic rather than Socrates or Thales Thus both Spinoza and Erasmushave had a failure of memory and probably for the same reason The author of Lives makes itclear that although Diogenes the Cynic despised the pursuit of wealth he was not a veryappealing character he was arrogant and could be verbally and physically abusive to those hejudged to be unwise It is understandable then that the figure of Diogenes would drop out of thememory of both Erasmus and Spinoza and be replaced by a philosopher with whom each tosome extent identified Erasmus the Renaissance humanist undoubtedly found Socrates well-suited to stand in for the part of Diogenes the Cynic because Socrates was a moral philosopherand the teacher of Plato whose influence on the Renaissance was profound As an admirer of thenatural sciences and a maker of telescopes Spinoza would have felt the same way about Thaleswho was an astronomer as well as a philosopher

In Letter 44 a story from Lives follows the identification of Thales as the figureresponsible for the drawing the deductive consequences of the proverb In order to demonstratethat his rejection of the pursuit of wealth was not an alibi for poverty Thales made use of hisexpert knowledge of the heavens Foreseeing a bountiful olive crop after the previous harvestrsquosdearth he rented all of the olive presses in Greece cheaply and then hired them out at a highprice to farmers who needed them to press the oil from their olives In this way he amassed agreat deal of wealth within a single year which ldquohe then distributed with a liberality equal to the

shrewdness by which he had acquired itrdquo Spinozarsquos memory of the story must have acted as abridge for the mistaken identification

The similarity between the ancient Greek proverb and the passages from Acts about thecommunal practices of the early Church with respect to property must have been evident to thebiblical scholar Spinoza Rendered into Latin by Erasmus the proverb ldquoAll things are incommon among friendsrdquo is amicorum communia omnia In Acts 244 ndash ldquoAll that believed weretogether and had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquohad all things in commonrdquo appears in theLatin Vulgate as habebant omnia communia In Acts 432 ndash ldquoNo one claimed that any of theirpossessions was their own but they had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquothey had all thingsin commonrdquo appears in the Vulgate as erant illis omnia communia The equivalence between thecommunia omnia of the proverb and the omnia communia of the two verses from Acts wouldhave been perfectly clear to Spinoza on linguistic grounds alone

In Adages Erasmus is more explicit than Spinoza in connecting the proverb with theverses from Acts He discusses the proverb in its appearance in book 5 of the Laws where Platoappeals to it in order to demonstrate that the best condition of society consists in the communityof possessions Erasmus writes

But it is extraordinary how Christians dislike this common ownership of Platorsquos how infact they throw stones at it although nothing comes closer to the mind of Christ

Further on Erasmus identifies the inventor of the proverb as Pythagoras who he saysestablished a community in which life and property were shared

hellipwhich is the very thing Christ wants to happen among Christians For all those whowere admitted by Pythagoras into that well-known band who followed his instructionswould give to the common fund whatever money and family property they possessed

Even apart from Erasmus the similarity between the Greek philosophersrsquo proverb and the

New Testament passages would have been evident to the Mennonite Jelles from MennoSimonrsquos discussion of the communal practice described in Acts (more on this below) Jelleswould also have found the parallel especially appealing because it makes the principle ofcommon ownership part of that rational philosophical version of Christianity that he and theother Waterlander Mennonites and Collegiants were seeking to establish

Although Erasmus was an advocate of religious reform he never joined the ProtestantReformation remaining a loyal Catholic until his death It is ironic then that during hislifetime the only vigorous champions of the common ownership he espoused were members ofthe most radical wing of the Reformation ironic but completely intelligible since the radicalsrsquoproject was to restore the Church to its original apostolic condition before its accommodationwith worldly power and wealth under Constantine

The Latin phrase designating Anabaptist communism in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies is Omnia sunt communia (for example it appears in this form in the confession theauthorities extracted from Thomas Muumlntzer under torture) It translates into English as ldquoAllthings are commonrdquo which is the present tense version of the phrase in Acts 432 ldquoall thingswere commonrdquo (ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά) to the members of the Church in Jerusalem Theparallel formulation in Acts 244 is slightly different although the distinction is lost in the LatinVulgate It reads that the members of the apostolic Church ldquohad all things in commonrdquo (εἶχονἅπαντα κοινὰ) In the second formulation εἶχον (had) seems to suggest a specific mode ofpossession or even an established quasi-legal form of property But it would be a mistake tointerpret it this way In both verses the anonymous author of Acts is articulating a generalprinciple rather than specifying a form of its implementation As we shall see the concreteapplication of the principle in the first century Church involved not a mode of possession orform of property but rather a practice of redistribution

Within the Anabaptist movement there was a broad range of beliefs and practices thatinvolved specific applications of the principle Omnia sunt communia We need to recognizetheir breadth in order to grasp just how subtle and variegated Anabaptist communism could beFor this purpose it is important to distinguish between communism as 1) a principle ofredistribution 2) a form of joint or communal property 3) a mode of the organization of workand 4) a kind of mutual aid In general all Anabaptist applications of Omnia sunt communia areintended to realize in different ways a communal and spiritual life in which all things arecommon We could say if we like that each of the four categories serves as a means for realizingthe end designated by that principle as long as we keep in mind that in this case the meanscannot be discarded once the end has been achieved Communism as a principle of redistributiona form of communal property a mode of the organization of work a kind of mutual aid ndash orsome combination of these ndash are the concrete ways in which communism as a mode ofcommunal and spiritual life is realized In this case the means are internal to the end That isbecause there can be no fellowship no community of the spirit unless those participating sharesomething ie have it in common Greek recognizes this internal relationship between acommon life and something shared in the word translated into English as fellowship κοινωνίαthe root of which is κοινός which means ldquocommonrdquo Its antonym ἴδιος means ldquobelonging toonerdquo It is the word κοινός that appears in the passages from Acts that refer to the practice ofsharing material wealth

244 ldquoAll who believed were together and had all things in common (Πάντες δὲ οἱπιστεύοντες ἦσαν ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό καὶ εἶχον ἅπαντα κοινὰ)

432 ldquoThe multitude of believers were one in heart and soul (Τοῦ δὲ πλήθους τῶνπιστευσάντων ἦν καρδία καὶ ψυχὴ microία) and no one claimed anything as his ownpossession but to them all things were in common (καὶ οὐδὲ εἷς τι τῶν ὑπαρχόντωναὐτῷ ἔλεγεν ἴδιον εἶναι ἀλλrsquo ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά)

Both verses affirm an internal relationship between living a common life and things

being in common or people having things in common But this is true of any collectiveendeavor A chess club for example is only possible if the members have a common interest inplaying chess But the verses from Acts mean to assert more than this They affirm the intensityand universality of the common life experienced in the early Church (being ldquoone in heart andsoulrdquo) They indicate this by referring to the fact that in the Church in Jerusalem all things areheld in common (ἅπαντα κοινά) Although ldquoall thingsrdquo (ἅπαντα) is not limited to materialpossessions the succeeding verses in chapters 2 and 4 of Acts indicate the depth of thecommitment the early Christians had to sharing a common life by referring to the practice inwhich they enacted it

245 And they sold their possessions and goods and divided them among everyoneaccording to need (καὶ τὰ κτήmicroατα καὶ τὰς ὑπάρξεις ἐπίπρασκον καὶ διεmicroέριζον αὐτὰπᾶσιν καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

434 There was no one among them in need as many as owned land or houses soldthem and brought the values of what was sold (οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐνδεής τις ἦν ἐν αὐτοῖς ὅσοιγὰρ κτήτορες χωρίων ἢ οἰκιῶν ὑπῆρχον πωλοῦντες ἔφερον τὰς τιmicroὰς τῶνπιπρασκοmicroένων) 435 and laid them at the feet of the apostles and distribution wasmade to each in accordance with need (καὶ ἐτίθουν παρὰ τοὺς πόδας τῶν ἀποστόλωνδιεδίδετο δὲ ἑκάστῳ καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

The needs of others are what break the bonds of individual ownership allowing the

transition from the private (ἴδιος) to the common (κοινά) Acts refers to making material goods

common rather than for example communicating private knowledge publicly presumablybecause of the difficulty people experience parting with private property and the correlativesignificance of the act of doing so For material possessions are the means by which they satisfytheir basic needs ndash for food shelter clothing and so on ndash and when possible their desire forluxuries The act of handing over possessions has two consequences The first is that thedistinction between rich and poor wealthy and needy owner and propertyless is abolished andthe members of the community come to stand on level ground The second consequence involvesa more fundamental risk on the part of property-owners By handing over their property theymake a leap of faith that the community will henceforth satisfy their needs as well through thesame practice of redistribution When applied in this fashion the general principle of being incommon or having in common results in an example of the first category of communism asspecified above ie communism as a principle of redistribution

Redistribution of property by the apostles creates occasions for active sharing asexpressions of the new form of common life 246 says that the members of the Church inJerusalem ldquoalso broke bread in each otherrsquos homes and took their meals in exaltation andsimplicity of heartrdquo (κλῶντές τε κατrsquo ο ἴκον ἄρτον microετελάmicroβανον τροφῆς ἐν ἀγαλλιάσει καὶἀφελότητι καρδίας) The value of sharing meals lies not merely in the fact that everyone is fedbut also in the experience of exaltation or ecstatic delight (ἀγαλλιάσεις) and sincerity orsimplicity of heart (ἀφελότητι καρδίας) The experience in common of exaltation and sincerity isat least as important as the act of satisfying needs although the two can be distinguished onlynotionally

The experience has its meaning in relation to the power (δυνάmicroις) that brings together themembers of the new community and inspires them to share their property The gathering of JewsGreeks and those from other nations (the circumcised and the uncircumcised as Paul says)occurs in the period following Pentecost when the Holy Spirit is supposed to have descended incloven tongues of flame upon the twelve apostles endowing them with the ability to speak inevery language Pentecost in turn follows by several weeks the resurrection of Christ and hisbodily ascension into heaven The gift of being able to speak in every language permits theapostles to convey their message to all nations That message ndash confirmed by ldquosigns andwondersrdquo ndash is testimony of their own first-hand witness to the Resurrection It is accompanied bythe baptism of the new members of the Church which repeats the Pentecostal experience byfilling them with the grace and power of the Holy Spirit

433 ldquoAnd with great power the apostles were giving witness to the resurrection of theLord Jesus and abundant grace was upon them all (καὶ δυνάmicroει microεγάλῃ ἀπεδίδουν τὸmicroαρτύριον οἱ ἀπόστολοι τοῦ Κυρίου Ἰησοῦ τῆς ἀναστάσεως χάρις τε microεγάλη ἦν ἐπὶπάντας αὐτούς)

The ecstatic delight and simplicity of heart that the members of the Church in Jerusalem

experience by sharing a common life is their enjoyment of this ldquoabundant gracerdquo (χάρις τεmicroεγάλη) The new community is built upon faith in the apostlesrsquo testimony that Jesus triumphedover death and that his victory promises an eternal life to all who believe That is the gift of theHoly Spirit Yet the ldquospiritualrdquo (πνευmicroατικός) content of early Christian experience does not denyits simultaneously material character For the significance of the Resurrection and the Ascensioninto Heaven is precisely that they concern the physical body of Christ When he appears toThomas who doubts that he has returned Jesus invites his disciple to place his hands into thewounds received from the Crucifixion The point is to show not only that the man standing infront of Thomas is not an imposter but also that the risen Christ is no disembodied ghost Andwhen the apostles witness the Ascension what they see is the physical body of Jesus rising toheaven There is little suggestion of soul-body dualism in Acts The spirit (πνεῦmicroα) infuses andtransfigures the body it does not exist apart from it In this respect it is similar to the life-givingbreath to which the word πνεῦmicroα originally referred Dualism is the result of a Platonizinginterpretation of Christianity that comes later The bodily character of the Resurrection extends tothe promise of eternal life for believers as well The promise is not that their souls will exist apart

from their bodies but that their bodies will rise up from the grave like that of their Savior Giventhis early Christian materialism it is not surprising that commonality of material goods wouldserve as a fundamental expression of the new life of the believers

As we already know the project of the sixteenth-century Anabaptists was to restore theChurch to its original apostolic condition by undoing the corruption they believed had set inwhen it made its peace with worldly wealth and power under Constantine Given the nature ofthe Anabaptist project it would seem that making material things common as described in Actswould follow as a matter of course However there is a long tradition ndash one that began aroundthe middle of the sixteenth century ndash of denying that Anabaptism has anything to do withcommunism regarding it as an accusation brought against the Anabaptists by their enemies It isunderstandable that this should be so The Anabaptists were the victims of a ldquored scarerdquo thatgripped the ruling classes of Europe in the aftermath of the Peasant War and the Muumlnstercommune It is impossible to explain the horrendous tortures forced relocations andinnumerable executions Anabaptists faced on the basis of heretical belief alone Nothing of aremotely similar scale was visited upon other schismatics The fact that the Anabaptistschallenged prevailing property relations is what made them victims of near-genocide It was amatter of survival then to create some distance between themselves and the charge ofadvocating common ownership of goods that came from Luther Zwingli and those whoextracted the confession from Thomas Muumlntzer that he held to the principle of Omnia communiasunt Recent scholarship however has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that having thingsin common was indeed a basic and widespread principle of Anabaptism at its origin just as it hasdemonstrated the influence veterans of the Peasant War had among the early Anabaptists

The dominant form of communist practice in early Anabaptism was appropriatelymodeled on the description of redistribution in Acts In Switzerland where the movementoriginated converts were often asked or required to make contributions to a ldquocommon purserdquoafter receiving adult baptism Some especially pious initiates went so far as to sell their land andhouses for that purpose in accordance with the biblical precedent When necessary officialsdistributed the contents of the purse to members of the community who were in need

Both proponents and enemies of Anabaptist communism often confused the redistributionof wealth with joint or communal property However except for the taking of meals in commonthere is no indication in Acts that redistribution collectivized ownership of wealth in this fashionbut only that it transferred wealth from the better-off members of the community to the worse-off Nevertheless some Anabaptists took joint or communal property as a paradigm for newproperty relations For example the visionary writing of the Nuremberg printer Hans Hergotwho was executed for rebellion in 1527 includes the following passage

And everything that grows on the land belongs to the church and the people who livethere Everything is bestowed for common use so that the people will eat from one potdrink from one vesselhellip And all things will be used in common so that no one is betteroff than another

The ldquowar communismrdquo of the city of Muumlnster involved an ad hoc form of communal propertythrough the edict that the doors to all homes be left open and the owners take in anyone whowished to reside with them But the most significant successful and long-lasting attempt toimplement communal property was that of the Hutterites

The Hutterites took their name from the charismatic hat-maker and Anabaptist leaderJacob Hutter However at their origins they were influenced by the revolutionary bookbinderHans Hut Hut shared Thomas Muumlntzerrsquos sanguinary apocalyptic view of social change andadvocated community ownership of goods in accordance with his own understanding of ActsHe survived the battle of Frankenhausen in which the peasant rebels were finally defeated butwas tortured and executed a few years later In the aftermath and under the influence of JacobHutter the Hutterites adopted pacifism and a strategy of creating autonomous communities Inorder escape persecution thousands of the brethren emigrated from Switzerland and Germany to

the more tolerant Moravia where they created hundreds of Bruderhofs farms and vineyards inwhich land houses farm implements produce and even objects of personal use were ownedcollectively The center of Bruderhof life was a large communal house in which craft productionoccurred on the ground floor and couples lived in small apartments on the upper levels The menengaged in farm labor and craftwork while the women were limited to traditional domesticduties in spite of the fact that children were raised communally apart from their parents TheBruderhofs enjoyed great economic success for a number of reasons People worked hard andconsumed little resulting in a surplus that could be used to purchase additional land seed andtools The size of the communities and of their agricultural production also enabled them to sellcheaply and to pay for supplies at generous prices both of which made the communitieseconomic assets to the areas in which they were located The Hutterites also organized both farmlabor and craft production cooperatively including the education boys were given in thenecessary skills They were therefore practitioners of the second and third forms of communismwe have identified namely communal ownership and cooperative organization of work Whenthey were ultimately forced out of Moravia by the triumph of Catholic forces in the Thirty YearsWar the Hutterites migrated eastward many finally relocating to Canada and the United Stateswhere the Bruderhofs continue to exist to this day

Communism as a kind of mutual aid was the contribution of the other major form ofAnabaptism that of the Mennonites With great political intelligence and skill Menno Simonswas able to reformulate the meaning of Omnia communia sunt in such a way as to avoidthreatening the property interests of nobles and clerics He did this in his book A Humble andChristian Justification and Replication First he denied that Mennonites were advocates ofcommunal property

This accusation is false and without all truth We do not teach and practice communityof goods but we teach and testify the Word of the Lord that all true believers in Christare of one body (1 Corinthians 1213) partakers of one bread (1 Corinthians 1017)have one God and one Lord (Ephesians 4)

In his assertion that the believers are of one body and partakers of one bread Simons is affirmingwhat we have called the general principle of communism while denying that Mennonitesembrace it in the specific form of communal property But he goes further by denying thatMennonites advocate a contemporary version of the apostolic redistribution of wealth

For although we know that the apostolic church had this practice in the beginning ascan be seen in the Acts of the Apostles nevertheless we note from their epistles that itdisappeared in their time and was no longer practiced

Instead of communal property or centralized redistribution of wealth the Mennonites derivefrom the general principle of Christian communism an alternative practice

Seeing then that they are one as said it is Christian and reasonable that they also havedivine love among them and that one member cares for another for both the Scripturesand nature teach this They show mercy and love as much as is in them They do notsuffer a beggar among them They have pity on the wants of the saints They receive thewretched They take strangers into their houses They comfort the sad They lend to theneedy They clothe the naked They share their bread with the hungry They do not turntheir face from the poorhellip

In the subsequent history of Mennonism the practice Simons describes came to be calledldquomutual aidrdquo Note that it is different from charitable giving and this in two ways First thereferences to receiving the wretched taking in strangers sharing bread and so on indicate a farmore personal even intimate form of involvement than simple charitable donation Second

there is the suggestion of reciprocity or mutuality (ldquoone member cares for anotherrdquo) that tends todeny the difference in status between the charitable giver and the recipient of charity Thepractice Simons describes is similar to what some anthropologists have called ldquogeneralizedreciprocityrdquo in which my obligation to give to you when you are in need corresponds to yourobligation to give to me when I am in need In a sense this is a form of redistribution inaccordance with need but it is enacted directly between individual members of the communityrather than administered centrally through a common purse

In line with his political purpose Simons is careful to distinguish between mutual aid andthe expropriation of private property

This is the kind of brotherhood we teach and not that some should take over andpossess the land soil and properties of others as we are falsely maligned accused andlied about by many

In this way he detaches the Mennonite version of communism from any revolutionary intentionThat was the prerequisite for communal survival during the long counter-revolution thatfollowed the Peasant War Still Simons never abandons the general principle Omnia communiasunt nor does he even really reject the practice of the early Church

Since we do not find it a permanent practice with the apostles we have not taught orpracticed community of goods but we urge earnestly and zealously to practice liberalgiving love and mercy as the apostolic writings teach and testify abundantly Andeven if we had taught and practiced community of goods as we are falsely accused ofdoing we would still not be doing otherwise than the holy apostles full of the HolySpirit themselves did in the former church at Jerusalem in the beginning of the holyChristian Church although they stopped the practice as has been said

Like the Hutterites Mennonite communities prospered once they managed to survive the

bloody period of reaction In Holland the Mennonite population consisted largely in successfulmerchants along with a number of lawyers doctors and other professionals Most of thepeasant artisan and laborer families who had started as Mennonites in the sixteenth century hadlong since converted to the Reform Church which is one reason Spinoza faced the problem ofpolitical agency in the TPT Although the idea of mutual aid persisted among the DutchMennonites it took the form predominantly of organized international philanthropy in which thecommunity made contributions not only to Mennonites abroad but to other populations in needThere was no escaping the fact however that in this philanthropic form mutual aid becamehardly distinguishable from conventional charity

Jarig Jelles was born into the Dutch Mennonite community around a century afterSimmons wrote his book when this process of slippage was well underway But there is littledoubt that Jelles knew the Mennonite teaching on mutual aid and its origin in the generalprinciple of Christian communism Even if Jelles never read Erasmusrsquo Adages Spinozarsquosreference to the supposed communism of Thales was likely to resonate with him on the basis ofhis own religious tradition

We cannot be certain how much Spinoza knew in detail about the communist practices ofthe Anabaptists but it is probably not a coincidence that he recommends three of the four atvarious places in his writings In Part 4 of the Ethics ldquoOf Human Bondage or the Strength of theEmotionsrdquo he identifies the chief virtue of the intellect as ldquostrength of the mindrdquo (fortitudo)According to him it takes two forms one directed to the self and one directed to others He callsthe inwardly directed form ldquocouragerdquo defining it as ldquothe desire whereby every individualendeavors to preserve his own being according to the dictates of reason alonerdquo The outwardlydirected form is generositas which Shirley translates as ldquonobilityrdquo though ldquosolidarityrdquo is closerto what Spinoza is getting at He defines it as ldquothe desire whereby every individual according to

the dictates of reason alone endeavors to assist others and make friends of themrdquo When twopeople in contact with one another possess the virtue of generositas they will clearly exhibit itreciprocally in the form of mutual aid the fourth communist practice

In Part 4 of the Ethics Spinoza also formulates a version of the first communist practicethat of the redistribution of wealth in accordance with need

Again men are won over by generosity especially those who do not have thewherewithal to produce what is necessary to support life Yet it is far beyond the powerand resources of a private person to come to the assistance of everyone in need For thewealth of a private person is quite unequal to such a demand It is also a practicalimpossibility for one man to establish friendship with all Therefore the care of the poordevolves upon society as a whole and looks only to the common good

The fact that society as a whole has responsibility for meeting the needs of the poor makes thepractice Spinoza recommends in this passage a version of the centralized redistribution of wealthdescribed in the Acts of the Apostles and institutionalized in Anabaptist form as the ldquocommonpurserdquo More than that the fact that society as a whole must take on this responsibility ratherthan a church or other sub-community makes Spinoza an early advocate of what will becomethree centuries later the European welfare state In our own period as the welfare state is beingdismantled it is easy to see that what neoliberals object to concerning it is precisely its implicitcommunism ie its practice of distribution in accordance with need

Spinoza advocates a third communist practice in his unfinished final work the PoliticalTreatise The context is his discussion of a maximally democratic version of monarchy in whichthe entire citizen body is armed and the king forbidden from making any decision contrary to thewill of a massive council of ordinary citizens In such a state

The fields and the soil and if possible the houses as well should be public property thatis should belong to the sovereign by whom they should be let at an annual rent tocitizens whether townsmen or country-dwellers Apart from this all citizens should befree or exempt from any form of taxation in time of peace Of this rent part should beallocated to the defense works of the commonwealth part to the kings domestic needsFor in time of peace it is still necessary to fortify cities as for war and to have in a stateof readiness ships and other armaments

Ownership of land and buildings by the sovereign is a form of communal property first becausethe citizens of the commonwealth delegate to him or them the property they hold in commonand second because that delegation occurs with the understanding that the sovereign will use theproperty in service of the common good

Spinoza supplies an argument based on more than simple utility for the practice ofholding land and buildings in common

hellip in a state of Nature the one thing a man cannot appropriate to himself and make hisown is land and whatever is so fixed to the land that he cannot conceal it anywhere orcarry it away where he pleases Thus the land and whatever is fixed to it in the way wehave described is especially the public property of the commonwealth that is of allthose who by their united strength can claim it or of him to whom all have delegated thepower to claim it

To state the argument differently since rights are the same as powers no individual has a naturalright to appropriate privately the land or any of its fixed structures because none has the powernecessary to do so The only response an individual can make to incursions by a more powerfulperson or group of people is flight in which he must leave the land and its buildings behind It is

only by entering into a community in which the strength of each is combined for the purpose ofdefense that people can effectively possess fixed property but they do so as a members of thecommunity rather than as an separate individuals According to Spinozarsquos theory of rights onlythe community has the right to own the land and its structures because only the community hasthe required power

The communal ownership of land houses and other buildings is a version of the secondcommunist practice on our list of which Hutterite joint ownership is the most developedhistorical example When adopted by a polity rather than a small community though thepractice has an added advantage Under those circumstances communal possession of fixedproperty eliminates the need for taxes except in time of war What takes their place is ageneration of revenue pegged to wealth since the members of society who are able to rent themost expensive and largest amounts of communal property will obviously pay the most in rentIn this way the form of communal ownership of land and buildings that Spinoza recommendsalso acts as a mechanism for the redistribution of wealth

The only communist practice of the Anabaptists that does not find an equivalent inSpinozarsquos writings is that of the cooperative organization of work The absence is related toSpinozarsquos inability to resolve the problem of political agency in the TPT An attempt to mobilizethe multitude on behalf of democratic social change would need to address the organization ofwork in such a way as to alleviate the burden of toil Reducing the number of hours spent inonerous labor is the only way to provide the multitude with the free time necessary to participatein institutionalized democratic politics Along with the redistribution of wealth and thedevelopment of communal property the cooperative reorganization of work would need to beincorporated as a plank in the latent political program that makes its first democratic appearancein the TPT and is extended in a communist direction in the passages from the Ethics and thePolitical Treatise that we have just examined But that would constitute an explicit anddangerous appeal to the multitude as the agent of political and social transformation an appealthat Spinoza consistently rejects It would involve nothing less than the revival of therevolutionary energies of the Peasant War on a new seventeenth-century foundation

In spite of his radicalism Spinoza doubted that revolution was capable of reconstructingsociety and the state in the way revolutionaries wanted In Chapter 18 of the TPT he takes aposition that is at least on the surface opposed to revolution or any attempt to change the formof the state fundamentally The context is a discussion of the transition from the early Hebrewcommonwealth in which the people held sovereignty to the rule of kings Spinoza tells us thatthe first period saw only a single civil war and concluded with a compassion for the vanquishedthat resulted in lasting peace By contrast the period of kings was marred by multiple warswaged only for the glory of the rulers and involved the massacre of hundreds of thousandsDuring the first period few prophets arose to rebuke the Jews while a great many emergedduring the time of the monarchies From this example Spinoza reasons that it is fatal for peopleaccustomed to popular sovereignty and governed by settled laws to adopt a new monarchicalform of government On the one hand they will be unable to tolerate the arbitrary exercise ofpower by a single individual while on the other the new monarch will be compelled to abolishthe existing laws because they did not originate by his own authority But it is just as dangerousaccording to Spinoza for the subjects of a monarch to attempt his replacement with popular ruleThis is because a popular revolution must advance to the point where it annihilates the king thekingrsquos family and the friends of the king in order to prevent the restoration of royal power But inthe process the revolutionary authority must assume a power even more draconian then thatpreviously exercised by the king In addition having committed regicide the new popularauthority faces the danger that it will fall victim to its own precedent For this reason as well andin the interest of survival it must wield power more repressively than the deposed sovereignSpinoza illustrates his point with reference to the English revolution which eliminated themonarch Charles I only to replace him with the Lord Protector Cromwell who was monarch inall but name and more repressive than Charles

Spinozarsquos point seems unassailable especially since the pattern he describes in the caseof the English Revolution repeated itself over the course of the next three centuries in the French

and Russian Revolutions It is at least arguable that Napoleon if not Robespierre was a newLouis XVI and Stalin a new Tsar even if this understates the more fundamental social changesthat resulted form the two revolutions Still Spinoza does not absolutely proscribe therevolutionary overthrow of a tyrannical government but says instead that there is a great dangerin making the attempt Besides his analysis of the conditions necessary for retaining sovereigntydoes not leave the decision about whether to engage in revolution up to militants He argues thatno state can survive that creates mass indignation in its people and this is precisely theunavoidable result of tyrannical government Spinozarsquos real purpose in Chapter 18 is to opposethe Orangist-Calvinist project of replacing the Dutch Republic with a monarchy ldquoAs for theEstates of Hollandrdquo he writes ldquoas far as we know they never had kings but counts to whom theright of sovereignty was never transferredrdquo His point is that the Dutch War of Independenceagainst Spain was justified because it restored the sovereignty of the people against the attemptby the Spanish ldquocountrdquo (King Philip II) to abolish it However any attempt to replace theRepublic with a monarchy would change the form of the state disastrously by divesting thepeople of their former rights

When Spinoza wrote his treatise the only revolutionary forces that existed were on theRight The danger he warns about in Chapter 18 of the TPT did indeed come to pass only oneyear after his letter to Jelles In 1672 a Calvinist-Orangist mob hacked Johan De Witt and hisbrother Cornelius to death at a time when Holland was invaded by the French army Streetorators stirred up the mob by claiming that the invasion was the result of the brothersrsquo treason Inthe aftermath of the murders William III prince of Orange was elevated to the position ofstadtholder of Holland Although William went on to become King of England he stopped shortof claiming a Dutch throne However in actuality he substituted his own power for much of thatwhich had belonged to the Estates General while the Reformed Church gained considerableinfluence in Dutch government According to a story made famous by Spinozarsquos earliestbiographer Johannes Colerus when the De Witt brothers were murdered Spinozarsquos landlordthwarted his attempt to go the site of the assassinations where the bodies of the brothers werestill on gruesome display in order to plant a sign reading Ultimi Barbarorum (the ultimatebarbarians) In this way the landlord undoubtedly saved the philosopherrsquos life It was the onlytime we know of when the mature Spinoza gave in to his passive affects in a significant way

There is a passage in Chapter 18 of the TPT that uncannily anticipates the murders

Tyranny is most violent where individual beliefs which are unalienable rights areregarded as criminal Indeed in such circumstances the anger of the common people[plebis] is usually the greatest tyrant of allhellip the vilest hypocrites urged on by that samefury which they call zeal for Gods law have everywhere persecuted men whoseblameless character and distinguished qualities have excited the hostility of the commonpeople [plebi] publicly denouncing their beliefs and inflaming the savage multitudersquos[multitudinem] anger against them

Spinoza was the first political philosopher who grappled with the problem of a mass-

based politics of the Right The problem would occur again with the fascist movements of the1920s and 1930s and with the return of the rightwing religious fundamentalisms of our own dayndash Jewish Christian Muslim and Hindu It is not surprising that he failed to solve the problemdefinitively since it continues to remain unsolved The remarkable thing about Spinoza thoughis not that he was skeptical about the liberatory possibilities of revolution by the masses but thathe defended the idea of a popular democracy nonetheless And this he continued to do even inthe aftermath of the De Witt murders In his work on the Political Treatise in the final year of hislife Spinoza developed a powerful critique of the elitist claim that the multitude are incapable ofgoverning

Yet perhaps our [democratic] suggestions will be received with ridicule by those whorestrict to the common people the faults that are inherent in all mankind saying There

is no moderation in the mob they terrorize unless they are frightened and Thecommon people is either a humble servant or an arrogant master there is no truth orjudgment in itrdquo and the like But all men share in one and the same nature it is powerand culture that mislead us with the result that when two men do the same thing weoften say that it is permissible for the one to do it and not the other not because of anydifference in the thing done but in the doer hellipThen again There is no moderation inthe mob they terrorize unless they are frightened For freedom and slavery do not gowell together Finally that there is no truth or judgment in the common people is notsurprising since the important affairs of state are conducted without their knowledgeand from the little that cannot be concealed they can only make conjecturehellip Howeveras we have said all men have the same nature ndash all grow haughty with rule terrorizeunless they are frightened ndash and everywhere truth becomes a casualty through hostilityor servility especially when despotic power is in the hands of one or a few who in trialspay attention not to justice or truth but to the extent of a persons wealth

Surprisingly Spinoza develops this democratic argument while discussing the institutions

appropriate to a monarchy But the key point he makes in the discussion is that a condition ofeffective monarchical rule is expansion of the democratic element within the state in the form ofa sizeable legislative council whose members are drawn from the general population of citizensover the age of fifty On Spinozarsquos view the mistake those who oppose democracy make isassuming that the faults exhibited by the common people ndash such as poor judgment arroganceand hostility ndash belong only to them while they are in fact typical of human beings Actually it iselitist politics that magnifies these all-too-human faults by restricting political power to a limitednumber of people while democratic politics minimizes them through the principle of majorityrule among numerous decision-makers The reason as we already know is that passions pullpeople in different directions making it nearly impossible for the members of a large council toagree on a common position unless they make decisions based not on passion but an idea of thecommon good On Spinozarsquos view it is when government is in the hands of a single person oronly a few people that the dangers the critics of democracy attribute to the common people are infact the greatest

Spinoza also argues against the claim that the common people are not qualified to makepolitical decisions because they lack the necessary education or degree of intellect There is noone he says who has been engaged in an occupation until the age of fifty who lacksunderstanding of his sphere of work ldquoevery man is reasonably competent and sagacious inmatters in which he has been long and attentively engagedrdquo So each is qualified at least to giveadvice in the kingrsquos council concerning his own business especially if given the time necessaryto reflect on the matter under discussion

Most of all the plebs are the group best suited to serving on the council because theirinterest is that of society as a whole ldquoHence it follows that counselors must necessarily beappointed whose private fortune and advantage depend on the general welfare and the peace ofallrdquo For example Spinoza emphasizes the idea that the common people have the highest stake inavoiding war or concluding an existing war with a settlement that brings lasting peace Thereason is they are ones who bear the heaviest burdens of war Unlike the wealthy well-bornmembers of society it is the common person whose occupation is most likely to be interrupted itis his taxes that are raised to onerous levels and it is his son who dies Thus the common interestof society in peace is best served not by a wealthy or educated elite but rather by those whohave the most to lose from war

At the end of the long paragraph defending popular power quoted above Spinozaconnects the question of who holds power within the state to that of who owns property Truthand justice he says are casualties in states where power is held by one person or a handful ofpeople who conduct courtroom trials that favor the rich The implication is that elitist politicalpower and ownership of wealth are intrinsically connected One of the reasons Spinozarecommends public ownership of land and buildings in a monarchy is to prevent the rise of aclass of wealthy landowners with interests different than those of the rest of society Under the

conditions of common ownership ldquothe greatest part of the council will generally have one andthe same attitude of mind towards their common interests and peaceful activitieshelliprdquo And yethaving gone this far he has trouble imagining a state where fixed property is owned collectivelyin which the actually existing multitude holds power The peasants artisans and urban poor whoconstitute the common people of the United Provinces drop out of the picture in the democratic-communist monarchy he describes and nearly everyone makes his living by selling merchandiseor lending money to countrymen ldquoall will have to make a living by engaging in trade or bylending money to their fellow citizensrdquo He seems to assume that the collectivization of land andfixed property would eliminate the occupations of peasant and artisan leaving trade and loaningat interest the only remaining possibilities of work But that of course is not true The fact thatpeople would have to rent farm land would not prevent them from farming any more than theneed to rent workshops in the cities and towns would prevent artisans from plying their tradesBut Spinoza finds the idea of a commonwealth based on commercial enterprise politicallyappealing This is because he regards commercial occupations as contributing to harmony andpeace since he claims they establish connections between people that further the interests of allwhile those who engage in them prosper only in peacetime Both of these assumptions are asquestionable as the expectation that non-commercial occupations will die out After all even inSpinozarsquos day colonialism and the struggle for colonies between imperialist states led to warsbetween the great powers including the United Provinces not to mention the military and otherforms of violence involved in subjugating the colonies The East India Company was not exactlya force for peace What seems to be at work here instead is a failure of social imaginationthough one we may find understandable given the fact that the capitalist economy was still at anearly stage in its development However this may be there is no denying the fact that despite hispowerful arguments in favor of democratic rule and communal property it is still a bourgeoissociety and state that Spinoza envisions

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of what we should not hesitate to call Spinozarsquoscommunism is the critique of private ownership he develops in the Ethics based on his theory ofaffects For him there is a paradox involved in social and political life It stems from the fact thaton the one hand people can survive and develop their capacities only by joining with oneanother in societies and states But on the other hand the necessity of combining with oneanother does not prevent them from seeking their own advantage above that of their fellowsbeing quarrelsome or hateful and erecting obstacles to each otherrsquos happiness Spinoza identifiesthe reason for these deep-rooted problems of social coexistence in Part IV Proposition 35 of theEthics ldquoInsofar as men are assailed by emotions that are passive they can be contrary to oneanotherrdquo Emotions are states of the body characterized by a transition from a lower degree of thepower to exist and act (conatus) to a higher one or conversely from a higher degree to a lowerone The first transition is the affect of joy while the second is that of sadness Passive emotionsare caused by an object external to the body or more precisely external to its essential natureSpinoza conceives of that nature as a specific proportion of motion-and-rest that the parts of thebody exhibit in relation to one another While joy is an increase in our capacity to preserve theproportion of motion-and-rest essential to our body (ie to exist and act as we do) sadness is adecrease in that capacity The political problem created by the passive emotions is that evenwhen they are joyful they are not under the control of the person who experiences themMoreover different people are affected by the same external object in different ways because theparts of their bodies and their proportionate relations of motion-and rest-differ The same objectmay elicit anger in one person and pity in another or love in one and hatred in another and soon And because people differ in their emotional reactions to the same things they also differ inthe judgments they frame on the basis of these reactions What one person praises anotherperson blames what one regards as fearless another believes to be timid etc Finally sincepeople act upon their judgments seeking to foster what they judge to be good and destroy whatthey judge to be bad their differing judgments can result in actions that are in conflict with oneanother In short ldquoinsofar as they are assailed by passive emotions [people] can be contrary toone anotherrdquo

In Proposition 34 Spinoza gives an example of the contrariety caused by the passiveaffects Suppose Peter has sole possession of something Paul loves Deprivation of the loved

object causes sadness in Paul with the idea of Peter as its cause In accordance with Spinozarsquosdefinition of hatred Paul will hate Peter and therefore seek to injure or destroy him in order toremove the cause of his Paulrsquos sadness Spinoza says that this example may seem wrong becausePaul and Peter appear to be contrary to one another because of something they share ndash ie theirlove for the thing Peter possesses But that is not the case Paul has an image of himself aslacking the loved object while Peter has an image of himself as possessing the loved object Sothey in fact differ from one another by virtue of the different images they have rather than bypossessing something in common It is clear from the example that the root of this contrariety ndashie this enmity ndash between Paul and Peter is the fact that the object can be possessed by only oneof them so that what one has the other must lack The difficulty with private property is that it isexclusive to the one who possesses it which means that what I experience as possession othersexperience as deprivation It may seem that there is no problem if other people are indifferent tothe thing I possess However in accordance with Spinozarsquos theory of the imitation of affects themere fact that I love the thing I own other things being equal will cause you to love it as wellMy exclusive possession of the thing will therefore cause sadness in you that takes the form ofhatred or more precisely the kind of hatred called envy which involves pain at the good fortuneof another ldquohuman nature is in general so constituted that men pity the unfortunate and envy thefortunate in the latter case with a hatred proportionate to their love of what they think anotherpossessesrdquo

Common Possession Friendship and Philosophy

In the Ethics Spinoza does not follow his analysis of the antagonisms of private property

by considering the collective possession of material goods (although he does advocateredistribution of wealth to the poor in Part 4 as we have seen) But the theme of commonpossession figures large in the book anyway in his treatment of the intellectual love of God Inorder to understand the connection between common possession and amor Dei intellectualis itwill be necessary to engage in a detailed analysis of Spinozarsquos metaphysics We will begin thattask in earnest in the next chapter At this point we will simply introduce the theme byexamining the relationship between friendship and common possession in the letter to Jelles andsome related writings

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo unlike the similar passages fromActs has its provenance among philosophers Spinoza mistakenly attributes it to Thales but itoccurs in Platorsquos Phaedrus and Laws and is present though not in so many words in thediscussion in the Republic of common ownership of property by the guardian class Thetradition cited by Erasmus that traces the proverb back to Pythagoras is plausible when weconsider the influence the Pythagorean community in Sicily had on Plato in the aftermath ofSocratesrsquo death Erasmus sees the supposed use of a common fund by the Pythagoreans as ananticipation of the similar practice in Acts But Spinozarsquos approach is different What interestshim in the letter is common ownership not as a religious practice but as a matter of thephilosopherrsquos relation to the world Remember the deductive consequences of the proverb sinceall things are in common among friends everything belongs to the wise because the wise arefriends of the gods and all things belong to the gods But what does it mean to say that the wiseare friends of the gods

Although Spinoza uses the word ldquofriendshiprdquo often in his writings he never supplies aformal definition However we can reconstruct the wordrsquos meaning from the contexts in whichhe uses it So for example Proposition 35 of Part III of the Ethics reads

If anyone thinks that there is between the object of his love and another person the sameor a more intimate bond of friendship than there was between them when he alone usedto possess the object loved he will be affected with hatred toward the object loved andwill envy his rival

According to the proposition friendship is an intimate bond between a person and the

object he loves I hate an object of love that I alone once possessed when it wounds my vanity byloving someone else more than me So the object of love must be capable of loving whichmeans that the bond of friendship is a relation of reciprocal love between persons Nowaccording to Spinoza I love something when I have the idea of that thing as the cause of myexperience of joy Joy is an increase in conatus which Spinoza defines as the tendency to persistin being or equivalently the ability to exist and act So friendship is a relation in which Iidentify the other person as the cause of an increase in my conatus and the other personidentifies me as the cause of a similar increase in his or hers Two things each of which causesan increase in the ability to exist and act of the other are said by Spinoza to be in harmony Sincetwo entities in harmony have more combined power than either does singly it is to the advantageof each to be in harmony with the other There is even greater advantage in entering intoharmonious connection with a third individual and the greatest advantage in combining with asmany individuals as possible This is a universal metaphysical principle For example it pertainsjust as much to chemical combination or herding among animals as it does to social relationsbetween people In the case of human relationships it is the fundamental basis of politics orrather one of its two bases the other one being the tendency human beings have to conflict withone another When the state is functioning well it involves not a random collection ofindividuals and certainly not the war of each against all but a group whose members are boundto one another by friendship the human form of harmony Thus for Spinoza friendship is apolitical virtue as it was for Plato and Aristotle

The opposite of friendship is enmity That person is my enemy whom I regard as thecause of my sadness or pain which is the same as saying the cause of a decrease in my abilityto exist and act Like friendship enmity is a reciprocal relationship If I identify you as the causeof my sadness I will seek to injure or eliminate you But that means I will be identified in yourmind as the cause of your sadness Enmity is a relation of reciprocal hatred just as friendship is arelation of reciprocal love Just as there is harmony between friends there is discord betweenenemies The fundamental task of a rational politics is easy to state it is to extend and intensifyfriendship and to reduce and mollify enmity

We have already seen that Spinoza identifies solidarity (generositas) as one of the twoforms of strength of mind (fortitudo) which is the virtue that belongs to the exercise of theintellect Solidarity is the desire to assist others and foster friendship on the basis of reason aloneThe friendship fostered by solidarity is a bond of active love The love of friends for one anotheris active when each person who loves is the adequate cause of his or her love To say that theperson is the adequate cause means that the cause of love is internal to the person who feels it inother words that the love is self-generated Active love differs from passive love in that thecause of passive love is at least partially something that exists outside the person who has theemotion The problem with passive love is that it need not be constant If the bodily dispositionof the person changes in a particular way then the object of erstwhile love will have a differentemotional effect Passive love can change into boredom or indifference or even hatred This isnot possible in the case of active love because it is self-generated Since love involves theexperience of joy no one actively abandons it

There seems to be something odd about the idea of a love between persons that isinternally generated by each of the partners in the relationship Is it not the case that part of theessence of love is the fact that the object of my love is the cause of my love Without denyingthis Spinoza identifies two forms of love that are self-generated in the Ethics One is myintellectual love of God It is indeed true that God is the cause of my love but only insofar as myintellect is part of the infinite intellect of God Thus the object that causes my love - ie God - isinternal to my mind and conversely my mind is internal to it Such reciprocal internality ndash hardas it is to visualize ndash is what Spinoza means by immanence God he tells us is the immanentcause of everything that exists Nothing can exist apart from God while God expresses himselfin all of the things that exist My love of God and Gods love of himself are one and the samebecause Godrsquos intellect is immanent in mine The second form of self-generated love is the

friendship that exists between me and others who love God through the exercise of the intellectThe reason is that the joy I feel in loving God is by the imitation of affects augmented by thejoy you feel in loving God But your love as well as mine is joy caused by the same immanentbeing Another way of saying this is that your intellect and mine are parts (ie finiteexpressions) of the infinite intellect of God Thus the relationship between friends who are boundtogether by the common exercise of the intellect and the love of God that flows from it is basedon an internal bond an internal object and cause of love In this kind of love you and I as itwere discover one another internally You are inside of me and I am inside of you Thus whenyou augment my love and I augment yours it is Gods power as the intellect immanent in us boththat causes the augmentation even though we remain finite individual beings In this state ofaffairs which is admittedly difficult to grasp we can see the rational meaning of the command tolove God by loving the neighbor In intellectual love God not insofar as he is infinite butinsofar as he expresses himself in my finite intellect loves God as he expresses himself in yourfinite intellect

For Spinoza the exercise of the intellect is very different than our ordinary experience ofthe world In the course of ordinary experience we encounter objects in a way that appearshaphazard disordered and incomplete This is so first of all because our encounters are part ofan infinitely complex chain of natural causes and effects of which we know only very limitedparts In addition our experience of objects has as much to do with the condition our bodies arein when we encounter them as it does with the nature of the objects themselves By contrast inexercising the intellect we arrange our ideas in an intelligible pattern that is internal to the mindand entirely different than the images we accumulate through sensory experience The ideas arean expression of our power while the images result from our hapless deliverance to chanceEmotions caused by objects we encounter in the course of ordinary experience are externallydetermined and therefore passive while emotions caused by acts of intellectual comprehensionare internally generated and therefore active That is why love as an active emotion has its originin the exercise of the intellect and the most satisfying form of friendship is based on thereciprocal experience of such love In a letter to Willem van Blyenberg Spinoza provides themost complete description of this kind of friendship to be found in his writings

For my part of all things that are not under my control what I most value is to enterinto a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth For I believe that such a lovingrelationship affords us a serenity surpassing any other boon in the whole wide worldThe love that such men bear to one another grounded as it is in the love that each hasfor knowledge of truth is as unshakable as is the acceptance of truth once it has beenperceived It is moreover the highest source of happiness to be found in things notunder our command for truth more than anything else has the power to effect a closeunion between different sentiments and dispositions

Spinoza says that a friendship based on the love of truth is not under our control But how

can that be if intellectual friendship involves a form of love internally generated by each friendIt would seem that the love we generate through the exercise of the intellect is fully under ourcontrol Spinoza however is referring to the fact that we are able to become friends only withpeople we actually meet which is something that occurs in the course of ordinary haphazarddisordered experience To a large extent our friendships are a matter of chance By way ofillustrating this point it turned out that Spinoza decided his initial judgment of Blyenberg wasmistaken He broke off their correspondence when he realized that the infinite chain of causesand effects had brought his way not a lover of truth but a dogmatic worshipper of the ldquopaperand inkrdquo of the Bible

People create commonwealths because the power of each to exist and act is increased byall others who transfer their rights to the sovereign For reasons we have already considered thepolitical bond is one of friendship ldquoIt is of the first importance to men to establish closerelationships and to bind themselves together with such ties as may most effectively unite theminto one body and as an absolute rule to act in such a way as serves to strengthen friendshiprdquo If

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

The reference to common ownership in Letter 44 would have had an even more negativeeffect on his readers should Spinoza have made it in the TPT In private communication withJelles however he was able to raise the topic without risking further political difficultiesSpinozarsquos reference presumes an intellectual history with roots in both ancient Greek philosophyand early Christianity a history that was renewed practically as well as theoretically in earlymodern Europe In the passage from Letter 44 where he introduces the theme of commonownership he goes on to elaborate the position he attributes to Thales Here is the passage in fullthat we have already quoted partially

How far superior indeed and excellent were the reflections of Thales of Miletuscompared with this writer is shown by the following account All things he said are incommon among friends The wise are the friends of the Gods and all things belong tothe Gods therefore all things belong to the wise In this way the wise man makeshimself the richest by nobly despising riches instead of greedily pursuing them

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo (Amicorum communia omnia) is

the first entry in his book Adages by the late Renaissance humanist and reform-minded Catholicscholar Desiderius Erasmus The Adages were widely available in Spinozarsquos day and it is likelythat both Spinoza and Jelles had read them although the former must have also consultedErasmusrsquo source for the saying ndash Lives of the Philosophers by Diogenes Laertius We will seewhy in a moment Erasmus cites the same deduction from the maxim as Spinoza does in Letter44 except that he attributes it to Socrates rather than Thales

From this proverb Socrates deduced that all things belong to all good men just as theydo to the gods For to the gods he said belong all things good men are friends of thegods and among friends all possessions are in common

The fact that Spinoza refers to wise men while Erasmus refers to good men does not

indicate any real difference between them because both accepted the ancient Greek and biblicalequivalence between human goodness and wisdom The difference in attributing the deductiveconsequences of the proverb to Thales on the one hand and Socrates on the other also does notindicate any substantive disagreement between Spinoza and Erasmus although it does signify adifference in intellectual vocation and emphasis Interestingly however the attribution in bothcases is incorrect Their common source the Lives of the Philosophers places the argument intothe mouth of Diogenes the Cynic rather than Socrates or Thales Thus both Spinoza and Erasmushave had a failure of memory and probably for the same reason The author of Lives makes itclear that although Diogenes the Cynic despised the pursuit of wealth he was not a veryappealing character he was arrogant and could be verbally and physically abusive to those hejudged to be unwise It is understandable then that the figure of Diogenes would drop out of thememory of both Erasmus and Spinoza and be replaced by a philosopher with whom each tosome extent identified Erasmus the Renaissance humanist undoubtedly found Socrates well-suited to stand in for the part of Diogenes the Cynic because Socrates was a moral philosopherand the teacher of Plato whose influence on the Renaissance was profound As an admirer of thenatural sciences and a maker of telescopes Spinoza would have felt the same way about Thaleswho was an astronomer as well as a philosopher

In Letter 44 a story from Lives follows the identification of Thales as the figureresponsible for the drawing the deductive consequences of the proverb In order to demonstratethat his rejection of the pursuit of wealth was not an alibi for poverty Thales made use of hisexpert knowledge of the heavens Foreseeing a bountiful olive crop after the previous harvestrsquosdearth he rented all of the olive presses in Greece cheaply and then hired them out at a highprice to farmers who needed them to press the oil from their olives In this way he amassed agreat deal of wealth within a single year which ldquohe then distributed with a liberality equal to the

shrewdness by which he had acquired itrdquo Spinozarsquos memory of the story must have acted as abridge for the mistaken identification

The similarity between the ancient Greek proverb and the passages from Acts about thecommunal practices of the early Church with respect to property must have been evident to thebiblical scholar Spinoza Rendered into Latin by Erasmus the proverb ldquoAll things are incommon among friendsrdquo is amicorum communia omnia In Acts 244 ndash ldquoAll that believed weretogether and had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquohad all things in commonrdquo appears in theLatin Vulgate as habebant omnia communia In Acts 432 ndash ldquoNo one claimed that any of theirpossessions was their own but they had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquothey had all thingsin commonrdquo appears in the Vulgate as erant illis omnia communia The equivalence between thecommunia omnia of the proverb and the omnia communia of the two verses from Acts wouldhave been perfectly clear to Spinoza on linguistic grounds alone

In Adages Erasmus is more explicit than Spinoza in connecting the proverb with theverses from Acts He discusses the proverb in its appearance in book 5 of the Laws where Platoappeals to it in order to demonstrate that the best condition of society consists in the communityof possessions Erasmus writes

But it is extraordinary how Christians dislike this common ownership of Platorsquos how infact they throw stones at it although nothing comes closer to the mind of Christ

Further on Erasmus identifies the inventor of the proverb as Pythagoras who he saysestablished a community in which life and property were shared

hellipwhich is the very thing Christ wants to happen among Christians For all those whowere admitted by Pythagoras into that well-known band who followed his instructionswould give to the common fund whatever money and family property they possessed

Even apart from Erasmus the similarity between the Greek philosophersrsquo proverb and the

New Testament passages would have been evident to the Mennonite Jelles from MennoSimonrsquos discussion of the communal practice described in Acts (more on this below) Jelleswould also have found the parallel especially appealing because it makes the principle ofcommon ownership part of that rational philosophical version of Christianity that he and theother Waterlander Mennonites and Collegiants were seeking to establish

Although Erasmus was an advocate of religious reform he never joined the ProtestantReformation remaining a loyal Catholic until his death It is ironic then that during hislifetime the only vigorous champions of the common ownership he espoused were members ofthe most radical wing of the Reformation ironic but completely intelligible since the radicalsrsquoproject was to restore the Church to its original apostolic condition before its accommodationwith worldly power and wealth under Constantine

The Latin phrase designating Anabaptist communism in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies is Omnia sunt communia (for example it appears in this form in the confession theauthorities extracted from Thomas Muumlntzer under torture) It translates into English as ldquoAllthings are commonrdquo which is the present tense version of the phrase in Acts 432 ldquoall thingswere commonrdquo (ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά) to the members of the Church in Jerusalem Theparallel formulation in Acts 244 is slightly different although the distinction is lost in the LatinVulgate It reads that the members of the apostolic Church ldquohad all things in commonrdquo (εἶχονἅπαντα κοινὰ) In the second formulation εἶχον (had) seems to suggest a specific mode ofpossession or even an established quasi-legal form of property But it would be a mistake tointerpret it this way In both verses the anonymous author of Acts is articulating a generalprinciple rather than specifying a form of its implementation As we shall see the concreteapplication of the principle in the first century Church involved not a mode of possession orform of property but rather a practice of redistribution

Within the Anabaptist movement there was a broad range of beliefs and practices thatinvolved specific applications of the principle Omnia sunt communia We need to recognizetheir breadth in order to grasp just how subtle and variegated Anabaptist communism could beFor this purpose it is important to distinguish between communism as 1) a principle ofredistribution 2) a form of joint or communal property 3) a mode of the organization of workand 4) a kind of mutual aid In general all Anabaptist applications of Omnia sunt communia areintended to realize in different ways a communal and spiritual life in which all things arecommon We could say if we like that each of the four categories serves as a means for realizingthe end designated by that principle as long as we keep in mind that in this case the meanscannot be discarded once the end has been achieved Communism as a principle of redistributiona form of communal property a mode of the organization of work a kind of mutual aid ndash orsome combination of these ndash are the concrete ways in which communism as a mode ofcommunal and spiritual life is realized In this case the means are internal to the end That isbecause there can be no fellowship no community of the spirit unless those participating sharesomething ie have it in common Greek recognizes this internal relationship between acommon life and something shared in the word translated into English as fellowship κοινωνίαthe root of which is κοινός which means ldquocommonrdquo Its antonym ἴδιος means ldquobelonging toonerdquo It is the word κοινός that appears in the passages from Acts that refer to the practice ofsharing material wealth

244 ldquoAll who believed were together and had all things in common (Πάντες δὲ οἱπιστεύοντες ἦσαν ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό καὶ εἶχον ἅπαντα κοινὰ)

432 ldquoThe multitude of believers were one in heart and soul (Τοῦ δὲ πλήθους τῶνπιστευσάντων ἦν καρδία καὶ ψυχὴ microία) and no one claimed anything as his ownpossession but to them all things were in common (καὶ οὐδὲ εἷς τι τῶν ὑπαρχόντωναὐτῷ ἔλεγεν ἴδιον εἶναι ἀλλrsquo ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά)

Both verses affirm an internal relationship between living a common life and things

being in common or people having things in common But this is true of any collectiveendeavor A chess club for example is only possible if the members have a common interest inplaying chess But the verses from Acts mean to assert more than this They affirm the intensityand universality of the common life experienced in the early Church (being ldquoone in heart andsoulrdquo) They indicate this by referring to the fact that in the Church in Jerusalem all things areheld in common (ἅπαντα κοινά) Although ldquoall thingsrdquo (ἅπαντα) is not limited to materialpossessions the succeeding verses in chapters 2 and 4 of Acts indicate the depth of thecommitment the early Christians had to sharing a common life by referring to the practice inwhich they enacted it

245 And they sold their possessions and goods and divided them among everyoneaccording to need (καὶ τὰ κτήmicroατα καὶ τὰς ὑπάρξεις ἐπίπρασκον καὶ διεmicroέριζον αὐτὰπᾶσιν καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

434 There was no one among them in need as many as owned land or houses soldthem and brought the values of what was sold (οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐνδεής τις ἦν ἐν αὐτοῖς ὅσοιγὰρ κτήτορες χωρίων ἢ οἰκιῶν ὑπῆρχον πωλοῦντες ἔφερον τὰς τιmicroὰς τῶνπιπρασκοmicroένων) 435 and laid them at the feet of the apostles and distribution wasmade to each in accordance with need (καὶ ἐτίθουν παρὰ τοὺς πόδας τῶν ἀποστόλωνδιεδίδετο δὲ ἑκάστῳ καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

The needs of others are what break the bonds of individual ownership allowing the

transition from the private (ἴδιος) to the common (κοινά) Acts refers to making material goods

common rather than for example communicating private knowledge publicly presumablybecause of the difficulty people experience parting with private property and the correlativesignificance of the act of doing so For material possessions are the means by which they satisfytheir basic needs ndash for food shelter clothing and so on ndash and when possible their desire forluxuries The act of handing over possessions has two consequences The first is that thedistinction between rich and poor wealthy and needy owner and propertyless is abolished andthe members of the community come to stand on level ground The second consequence involvesa more fundamental risk on the part of property-owners By handing over their property theymake a leap of faith that the community will henceforth satisfy their needs as well through thesame practice of redistribution When applied in this fashion the general principle of being incommon or having in common results in an example of the first category of communism asspecified above ie communism as a principle of redistribution

Redistribution of property by the apostles creates occasions for active sharing asexpressions of the new form of common life 246 says that the members of the Church inJerusalem ldquoalso broke bread in each otherrsquos homes and took their meals in exaltation andsimplicity of heartrdquo (κλῶντές τε κατrsquo ο ἴκον ἄρτον microετελάmicroβανον τροφῆς ἐν ἀγαλλιάσει καὶἀφελότητι καρδίας) The value of sharing meals lies not merely in the fact that everyone is fedbut also in the experience of exaltation or ecstatic delight (ἀγαλλιάσεις) and sincerity orsimplicity of heart (ἀφελότητι καρδίας) The experience in common of exaltation and sincerity isat least as important as the act of satisfying needs although the two can be distinguished onlynotionally

The experience has its meaning in relation to the power (δυνάmicroις) that brings together themembers of the new community and inspires them to share their property The gathering of JewsGreeks and those from other nations (the circumcised and the uncircumcised as Paul says)occurs in the period following Pentecost when the Holy Spirit is supposed to have descended incloven tongues of flame upon the twelve apostles endowing them with the ability to speak inevery language Pentecost in turn follows by several weeks the resurrection of Christ and hisbodily ascension into heaven The gift of being able to speak in every language permits theapostles to convey their message to all nations That message ndash confirmed by ldquosigns andwondersrdquo ndash is testimony of their own first-hand witness to the Resurrection It is accompanied bythe baptism of the new members of the Church which repeats the Pentecostal experience byfilling them with the grace and power of the Holy Spirit

433 ldquoAnd with great power the apostles were giving witness to the resurrection of theLord Jesus and abundant grace was upon them all (καὶ δυνάmicroει microεγάλῃ ἀπεδίδουν τὸmicroαρτύριον οἱ ἀπόστολοι τοῦ Κυρίου Ἰησοῦ τῆς ἀναστάσεως χάρις τε microεγάλη ἦν ἐπὶπάντας αὐτούς)

The ecstatic delight and simplicity of heart that the members of the Church in Jerusalem

experience by sharing a common life is their enjoyment of this ldquoabundant gracerdquo (χάρις τεmicroεγάλη) The new community is built upon faith in the apostlesrsquo testimony that Jesus triumphedover death and that his victory promises an eternal life to all who believe That is the gift of theHoly Spirit Yet the ldquospiritualrdquo (πνευmicroατικός) content of early Christian experience does not denyits simultaneously material character For the significance of the Resurrection and the Ascensioninto Heaven is precisely that they concern the physical body of Christ When he appears toThomas who doubts that he has returned Jesus invites his disciple to place his hands into thewounds received from the Crucifixion The point is to show not only that the man standing infront of Thomas is not an imposter but also that the risen Christ is no disembodied ghost Andwhen the apostles witness the Ascension what they see is the physical body of Jesus rising toheaven There is little suggestion of soul-body dualism in Acts The spirit (πνεῦmicroα) infuses andtransfigures the body it does not exist apart from it In this respect it is similar to the life-givingbreath to which the word πνεῦmicroα originally referred Dualism is the result of a Platonizinginterpretation of Christianity that comes later The bodily character of the Resurrection extends tothe promise of eternal life for believers as well The promise is not that their souls will exist apart

from their bodies but that their bodies will rise up from the grave like that of their Savior Giventhis early Christian materialism it is not surprising that commonality of material goods wouldserve as a fundamental expression of the new life of the believers

As we already know the project of the sixteenth-century Anabaptists was to restore theChurch to its original apostolic condition by undoing the corruption they believed had set inwhen it made its peace with worldly wealth and power under Constantine Given the nature ofthe Anabaptist project it would seem that making material things common as described in Actswould follow as a matter of course However there is a long tradition ndash one that began aroundthe middle of the sixteenth century ndash of denying that Anabaptism has anything to do withcommunism regarding it as an accusation brought against the Anabaptists by their enemies It isunderstandable that this should be so The Anabaptists were the victims of a ldquored scarerdquo thatgripped the ruling classes of Europe in the aftermath of the Peasant War and the Muumlnstercommune It is impossible to explain the horrendous tortures forced relocations andinnumerable executions Anabaptists faced on the basis of heretical belief alone Nothing of aremotely similar scale was visited upon other schismatics The fact that the Anabaptistschallenged prevailing property relations is what made them victims of near-genocide It was amatter of survival then to create some distance between themselves and the charge ofadvocating common ownership of goods that came from Luther Zwingli and those whoextracted the confession from Thomas Muumlntzer that he held to the principle of Omnia communiasunt Recent scholarship however has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that having thingsin common was indeed a basic and widespread principle of Anabaptism at its origin just as it hasdemonstrated the influence veterans of the Peasant War had among the early Anabaptists

The dominant form of communist practice in early Anabaptism was appropriatelymodeled on the description of redistribution in Acts In Switzerland where the movementoriginated converts were often asked or required to make contributions to a ldquocommon purserdquoafter receiving adult baptism Some especially pious initiates went so far as to sell their land andhouses for that purpose in accordance with the biblical precedent When necessary officialsdistributed the contents of the purse to members of the community who were in need

Both proponents and enemies of Anabaptist communism often confused the redistributionof wealth with joint or communal property However except for the taking of meals in commonthere is no indication in Acts that redistribution collectivized ownership of wealth in this fashionbut only that it transferred wealth from the better-off members of the community to the worse-off Nevertheless some Anabaptists took joint or communal property as a paradigm for newproperty relations For example the visionary writing of the Nuremberg printer Hans Hergotwho was executed for rebellion in 1527 includes the following passage

And everything that grows on the land belongs to the church and the people who livethere Everything is bestowed for common use so that the people will eat from one potdrink from one vesselhellip And all things will be used in common so that no one is betteroff than another

The ldquowar communismrdquo of the city of Muumlnster involved an ad hoc form of communal propertythrough the edict that the doors to all homes be left open and the owners take in anyone whowished to reside with them But the most significant successful and long-lasting attempt toimplement communal property was that of the Hutterites

The Hutterites took their name from the charismatic hat-maker and Anabaptist leaderJacob Hutter However at their origins they were influenced by the revolutionary bookbinderHans Hut Hut shared Thomas Muumlntzerrsquos sanguinary apocalyptic view of social change andadvocated community ownership of goods in accordance with his own understanding of ActsHe survived the battle of Frankenhausen in which the peasant rebels were finally defeated butwas tortured and executed a few years later In the aftermath and under the influence of JacobHutter the Hutterites adopted pacifism and a strategy of creating autonomous communities Inorder escape persecution thousands of the brethren emigrated from Switzerland and Germany to

the more tolerant Moravia where they created hundreds of Bruderhofs farms and vineyards inwhich land houses farm implements produce and even objects of personal use were ownedcollectively The center of Bruderhof life was a large communal house in which craft productionoccurred on the ground floor and couples lived in small apartments on the upper levels The menengaged in farm labor and craftwork while the women were limited to traditional domesticduties in spite of the fact that children were raised communally apart from their parents TheBruderhofs enjoyed great economic success for a number of reasons People worked hard andconsumed little resulting in a surplus that could be used to purchase additional land seed andtools The size of the communities and of their agricultural production also enabled them to sellcheaply and to pay for supplies at generous prices both of which made the communitieseconomic assets to the areas in which they were located The Hutterites also organized both farmlabor and craft production cooperatively including the education boys were given in thenecessary skills They were therefore practitioners of the second and third forms of communismwe have identified namely communal ownership and cooperative organization of work Whenthey were ultimately forced out of Moravia by the triumph of Catholic forces in the Thirty YearsWar the Hutterites migrated eastward many finally relocating to Canada and the United Stateswhere the Bruderhofs continue to exist to this day

Communism as a kind of mutual aid was the contribution of the other major form ofAnabaptism that of the Mennonites With great political intelligence and skill Menno Simonswas able to reformulate the meaning of Omnia communia sunt in such a way as to avoidthreatening the property interests of nobles and clerics He did this in his book A Humble andChristian Justification and Replication First he denied that Mennonites were advocates ofcommunal property

This accusation is false and without all truth We do not teach and practice communityof goods but we teach and testify the Word of the Lord that all true believers in Christare of one body (1 Corinthians 1213) partakers of one bread (1 Corinthians 1017)have one God and one Lord (Ephesians 4)

In his assertion that the believers are of one body and partakers of one bread Simons is affirmingwhat we have called the general principle of communism while denying that Mennonitesembrace it in the specific form of communal property But he goes further by denying thatMennonites advocate a contemporary version of the apostolic redistribution of wealth

For although we know that the apostolic church had this practice in the beginning ascan be seen in the Acts of the Apostles nevertheless we note from their epistles that itdisappeared in their time and was no longer practiced

Instead of communal property or centralized redistribution of wealth the Mennonites derivefrom the general principle of Christian communism an alternative practice

Seeing then that they are one as said it is Christian and reasonable that they also havedivine love among them and that one member cares for another for both the Scripturesand nature teach this They show mercy and love as much as is in them They do notsuffer a beggar among them They have pity on the wants of the saints They receive thewretched They take strangers into their houses They comfort the sad They lend to theneedy They clothe the naked They share their bread with the hungry They do not turntheir face from the poorhellip

In the subsequent history of Mennonism the practice Simons describes came to be calledldquomutual aidrdquo Note that it is different from charitable giving and this in two ways First thereferences to receiving the wretched taking in strangers sharing bread and so on indicate a farmore personal even intimate form of involvement than simple charitable donation Second

there is the suggestion of reciprocity or mutuality (ldquoone member cares for anotherrdquo) that tends todeny the difference in status between the charitable giver and the recipient of charity Thepractice Simons describes is similar to what some anthropologists have called ldquogeneralizedreciprocityrdquo in which my obligation to give to you when you are in need corresponds to yourobligation to give to me when I am in need In a sense this is a form of redistribution inaccordance with need but it is enacted directly between individual members of the communityrather than administered centrally through a common purse

In line with his political purpose Simons is careful to distinguish between mutual aid andthe expropriation of private property

This is the kind of brotherhood we teach and not that some should take over andpossess the land soil and properties of others as we are falsely maligned accused andlied about by many

In this way he detaches the Mennonite version of communism from any revolutionary intentionThat was the prerequisite for communal survival during the long counter-revolution thatfollowed the Peasant War Still Simons never abandons the general principle Omnia communiasunt nor does he even really reject the practice of the early Church

Since we do not find it a permanent practice with the apostles we have not taught orpracticed community of goods but we urge earnestly and zealously to practice liberalgiving love and mercy as the apostolic writings teach and testify abundantly Andeven if we had taught and practiced community of goods as we are falsely accused ofdoing we would still not be doing otherwise than the holy apostles full of the HolySpirit themselves did in the former church at Jerusalem in the beginning of the holyChristian Church although they stopped the practice as has been said

Like the Hutterites Mennonite communities prospered once they managed to survive the

bloody period of reaction In Holland the Mennonite population consisted largely in successfulmerchants along with a number of lawyers doctors and other professionals Most of thepeasant artisan and laborer families who had started as Mennonites in the sixteenth century hadlong since converted to the Reform Church which is one reason Spinoza faced the problem ofpolitical agency in the TPT Although the idea of mutual aid persisted among the DutchMennonites it took the form predominantly of organized international philanthropy in which thecommunity made contributions not only to Mennonites abroad but to other populations in needThere was no escaping the fact however that in this philanthropic form mutual aid becamehardly distinguishable from conventional charity

Jarig Jelles was born into the Dutch Mennonite community around a century afterSimmons wrote his book when this process of slippage was well underway But there is littledoubt that Jelles knew the Mennonite teaching on mutual aid and its origin in the generalprinciple of Christian communism Even if Jelles never read Erasmusrsquo Adages Spinozarsquosreference to the supposed communism of Thales was likely to resonate with him on the basis ofhis own religious tradition

We cannot be certain how much Spinoza knew in detail about the communist practices ofthe Anabaptists but it is probably not a coincidence that he recommends three of the four atvarious places in his writings In Part 4 of the Ethics ldquoOf Human Bondage or the Strength of theEmotionsrdquo he identifies the chief virtue of the intellect as ldquostrength of the mindrdquo (fortitudo)According to him it takes two forms one directed to the self and one directed to others He callsthe inwardly directed form ldquocouragerdquo defining it as ldquothe desire whereby every individualendeavors to preserve his own being according to the dictates of reason alonerdquo The outwardlydirected form is generositas which Shirley translates as ldquonobilityrdquo though ldquosolidarityrdquo is closerto what Spinoza is getting at He defines it as ldquothe desire whereby every individual according to

the dictates of reason alone endeavors to assist others and make friends of themrdquo When twopeople in contact with one another possess the virtue of generositas they will clearly exhibit itreciprocally in the form of mutual aid the fourth communist practice

In Part 4 of the Ethics Spinoza also formulates a version of the first communist practicethat of the redistribution of wealth in accordance with need

Again men are won over by generosity especially those who do not have thewherewithal to produce what is necessary to support life Yet it is far beyond the powerand resources of a private person to come to the assistance of everyone in need For thewealth of a private person is quite unequal to such a demand It is also a practicalimpossibility for one man to establish friendship with all Therefore the care of the poordevolves upon society as a whole and looks only to the common good

The fact that society as a whole has responsibility for meeting the needs of the poor makes thepractice Spinoza recommends in this passage a version of the centralized redistribution of wealthdescribed in the Acts of the Apostles and institutionalized in Anabaptist form as the ldquocommonpurserdquo More than that the fact that society as a whole must take on this responsibility ratherthan a church or other sub-community makes Spinoza an early advocate of what will becomethree centuries later the European welfare state In our own period as the welfare state is beingdismantled it is easy to see that what neoliberals object to concerning it is precisely its implicitcommunism ie its practice of distribution in accordance with need

Spinoza advocates a third communist practice in his unfinished final work the PoliticalTreatise The context is his discussion of a maximally democratic version of monarchy in whichthe entire citizen body is armed and the king forbidden from making any decision contrary to thewill of a massive council of ordinary citizens In such a state

The fields and the soil and if possible the houses as well should be public property thatis should belong to the sovereign by whom they should be let at an annual rent tocitizens whether townsmen or country-dwellers Apart from this all citizens should befree or exempt from any form of taxation in time of peace Of this rent part should beallocated to the defense works of the commonwealth part to the kings domestic needsFor in time of peace it is still necessary to fortify cities as for war and to have in a stateof readiness ships and other armaments

Ownership of land and buildings by the sovereign is a form of communal property first becausethe citizens of the commonwealth delegate to him or them the property they hold in commonand second because that delegation occurs with the understanding that the sovereign will use theproperty in service of the common good

Spinoza supplies an argument based on more than simple utility for the practice ofholding land and buildings in common

hellip in a state of Nature the one thing a man cannot appropriate to himself and make hisown is land and whatever is so fixed to the land that he cannot conceal it anywhere orcarry it away where he pleases Thus the land and whatever is fixed to it in the way wehave described is especially the public property of the commonwealth that is of allthose who by their united strength can claim it or of him to whom all have delegated thepower to claim it

To state the argument differently since rights are the same as powers no individual has a naturalright to appropriate privately the land or any of its fixed structures because none has the powernecessary to do so The only response an individual can make to incursions by a more powerfulperson or group of people is flight in which he must leave the land and its buildings behind It is

only by entering into a community in which the strength of each is combined for the purpose ofdefense that people can effectively possess fixed property but they do so as a members of thecommunity rather than as an separate individuals According to Spinozarsquos theory of rights onlythe community has the right to own the land and its structures because only the community hasthe required power

The communal ownership of land houses and other buildings is a version of the secondcommunist practice on our list of which Hutterite joint ownership is the most developedhistorical example When adopted by a polity rather than a small community though thepractice has an added advantage Under those circumstances communal possession of fixedproperty eliminates the need for taxes except in time of war What takes their place is ageneration of revenue pegged to wealth since the members of society who are able to rent themost expensive and largest amounts of communal property will obviously pay the most in rentIn this way the form of communal ownership of land and buildings that Spinoza recommendsalso acts as a mechanism for the redistribution of wealth

The only communist practice of the Anabaptists that does not find an equivalent inSpinozarsquos writings is that of the cooperative organization of work The absence is related toSpinozarsquos inability to resolve the problem of political agency in the TPT An attempt to mobilizethe multitude on behalf of democratic social change would need to address the organization ofwork in such a way as to alleviate the burden of toil Reducing the number of hours spent inonerous labor is the only way to provide the multitude with the free time necessary to participatein institutionalized democratic politics Along with the redistribution of wealth and thedevelopment of communal property the cooperative reorganization of work would need to beincorporated as a plank in the latent political program that makes its first democratic appearancein the TPT and is extended in a communist direction in the passages from the Ethics and thePolitical Treatise that we have just examined But that would constitute an explicit anddangerous appeal to the multitude as the agent of political and social transformation an appealthat Spinoza consistently rejects It would involve nothing less than the revival of therevolutionary energies of the Peasant War on a new seventeenth-century foundation

In spite of his radicalism Spinoza doubted that revolution was capable of reconstructingsociety and the state in the way revolutionaries wanted In Chapter 18 of the TPT he takes aposition that is at least on the surface opposed to revolution or any attempt to change the formof the state fundamentally The context is a discussion of the transition from the early Hebrewcommonwealth in which the people held sovereignty to the rule of kings Spinoza tells us thatthe first period saw only a single civil war and concluded with a compassion for the vanquishedthat resulted in lasting peace By contrast the period of kings was marred by multiple warswaged only for the glory of the rulers and involved the massacre of hundreds of thousandsDuring the first period few prophets arose to rebuke the Jews while a great many emergedduring the time of the monarchies From this example Spinoza reasons that it is fatal for peopleaccustomed to popular sovereignty and governed by settled laws to adopt a new monarchicalform of government On the one hand they will be unable to tolerate the arbitrary exercise ofpower by a single individual while on the other the new monarch will be compelled to abolishthe existing laws because they did not originate by his own authority But it is just as dangerousaccording to Spinoza for the subjects of a monarch to attempt his replacement with popular ruleThis is because a popular revolution must advance to the point where it annihilates the king thekingrsquos family and the friends of the king in order to prevent the restoration of royal power But inthe process the revolutionary authority must assume a power even more draconian then thatpreviously exercised by the king In addition having committed regicide the new popularauthority faces the danger that it will fall victim to its own precedent For this reason as well andin the interest of survival it must wield power more repressively than the deposed sovereignSpinoza illustrates his point with reference to the English revolution which eliminated themonarch Charles I only to replace him with the Lord Protector Cromwell who was monarch inall but name and more repressive than Charles

Spinozarsquos point seems unassailable especially since the pattern he describes in the caseof the English Revolution repeated itself over the course of the next three centuries in the French

and Russian Revolutions It is at least arguable that Napoleon if not Robespierre was a newLouis XVI and Stalin a new Tsar even if this understates the more fundamental social changesthat resulted form the two revolutions Still Spinoza does not absolutely proscribe therevolutionary overthrow of a tyrannical government but says instead that there is a great dangerin making the attempt Besides his analysis of the conditions necessary for retaining sovereigntydoes not leave the decision about whether to engage in revolution up to militants He argues thatno state can survive that creates mass indignation in its people and this is precisely theunavoidable result of tyrannical government Spinozarsquos real purpose in Chapter 18 is to opposethe Orangist-Calvinist project of replacing the Dutch Republic with a monarchy ldquoAs for theEstates of Hollandrdquo he writes ldquoas far as we know they never had kings but counts to whom theright of sovereignty was never transferredrdquo His point is that the Dutch War of Independenceagainst Spain was justified because it restored the sovereignty of the people against the attemptby the Spanish ldquocountrdquo (King Philip II) to abolish it However any attempt to replace theRepublic with a monarchy would change the form of the state disastrously by divesting thepeople of their former rights

When Spinoza wrote his treatise the only revolutionary forces that existed were on theRight The danger he warns about in Chapter 18 of the TPT did indeed come to pass only oneyear after his letter to Jelles In 1672 a Calvinist-Orangist mob hacked Johan De Witt and hisbrother Cornelius to death at a time when Holland was invaded by the French army Streetorators stirred up the mob by claiming that the invasion was the result of the brothersrsquo treason Inthe aftermath of the murders William III prince of Orange was elevated to the position ofstadtholder of Holland Although William went on to become King of England he stopped shortof claiming a Dutch throne However in actuality he substituted his own power for much of thatwhich had belonged to the Estates General while the Reformed Church gained considerableinfluence in Dutch government According to a story made famous by Spinozarsquos earliestbiographer Johannes Colerus when the De Witt brothers were murdered Spinozarsquos landlordthwarted his attempt to go the site of the assassinations where the bodies of the brothers werestill on gruesome display in order to plant a sign reading Ultimi Barbarorum (the ultimatebarbarians) In this way the landlord undoubtedly saved the philosopherrsquos life It was the onlytime we know of when the mature Spinoza gave in to his passive affects in a significant way

There is a passage in Chapter 18 of the TPT that uncannily anticipates the murders

Tyranny is most violent where individual beliefs which are unalienable rights areregarded as criminal Indeed in such circumstances the anger of the common people[plebis] is usually the greatest tyrant of allhellip the vilest hypocrites urged on by that samefury which they call zeal for Gods law have everywhere persecuted men whoseblameless character and distinguished qualities have excited the hostility of the commonpeople [plebi] publicly denouncing their beliefs and inflaming the savage multitudersquos[multitudinem] anger against them

Spinoza was the first political philosopher who grappled with the problem of a mass-

based politics of the Right The problem would occur again with the fascist movements of the1920s and 1930s and with the return of the rightwing religious fundamentalisms of our own dayndash Jewish Christian Muslim and Hindu It is not surprising that he failed to solve the problemdefinitively since it continues to remain unsolved The remarkable thing about Spinoza thoughis not that he was skeptical about the liberatory possibilities of revolution by the masses but thathe defended the idea of a popular democracy nonetheless And this he continued to do even inthe aftermath of the De Witt murders In his work on the Political Treatise in the final year of hislife Spinoza developed a powerful critique of the elitist claim that the multitude are incapable ofgoverning

Yet perhaps our [democratic] suggestions will be received with ridicule by those whorestrict to the common people the faults that are inherent in all mankind saying There

is no moderation in the mob they terrorize unless they are frightened and Thecommon people is either a humble servant or an arrogant master there is no truth orjudgment in itrdquo and the like But all men share in one and the same nature it is powerand culture that mislead us with the result that when two men do the same thing weoften say that it is permissible for the one to do it and not the other not because of anydifference in the thing done but in the doer hellipThen again There is no moderation inthe mob they terrorize unless they are frightened For freedom and slavery do not gowell together Finally that there is no truth or judgment in the common people is notsurprising since the important affairs of state are conducted without their knowledgeand from the little that cannot be concealed they can only make conjecturehellip Howeveras we have said all men have the same nature ndash all grow haughty with rule terrorizeunless they are frightened ndash and everywhere truth becomes a casualty through hostilityor servility especially when despotic power is in the hands of one or a few who in trialspay attention not to justice or truth but to the extent of a persons wealth

Surprisingly Spinoza develops this democratic argument while discussing the institutions

appropriate to a monarchy But the key point he makes in the discussion is that a condition ofeffective monarchical rule is expansion of the democratic element within the state in the form ofa sizeable legislative council whose members are drawn from the general population of citizensover the age of fifty On Spinozarsquos view the mistake those who oppose democracy make isassuming that the faults exhibited by the common people ndash such as poor judgment arroganceand hostility ndash belong only to them while they are in fact typical of human beings Actually it iselitist politics that magnifies these all-too-human faults by restricting political power to a limitednumber of people while democratic politics minimizes them through the principle of majorityrule among numerous decision-makers The reason as we already know is that passions pullpeople in different directions making it nearly impossible for the members of a large council toagree on a common position unless they make decisions based not on passion but an idea of thecommon good On Spinozarsquos view it is when government is in the hands of a single person oronly a few people that the dangers the critics of democracy attribute to the common people are infact the greatest

Spinoza also argues against the claim that the common people are not qualified to makepolitical decisions because they lack the necessary education or degree of intellect There is noone he says who has been engaged in an occupation until the age of fifty who lacksunderstanding of his sphere of work ldquoevery man is reasonably competent and sagacious inmatters in which he has been long and attentively engagedrdquo So each is qualified at least to giveadvice in the kingrsquos council concerning his own business especially if given the time necessaryto reflect on the matter under discussion

Most of all the plebs are the group best suited to serving on the council because theirinterest is that of society as a whole ldquoHence it follows that counselors must necessarily beappointed whose private fortune and advantage depend on the general welfare and the peace ofallrdquo For example Spinoza emphasizes the idea that the common people have the highest stake inavoiding war or concluding an existing war with a settlement that brings lasting peace Thereason is they are ones who bear the heaviest burdens of war Unlike the wealthy well-bornmembers of society it is the common person whose occupation is most likely to be interrupted itis his taxes that are raised to onerous levels and it is his son who dies Thus the common interestof society in peace is best served not by a wealthy or educated elite but rather by those whohave the most to lose from war

At the end of the long paragraph defending popular power quoted above Spinozaconnects the question of who holds power within the state to that of who owns property Truthand justice he says are casualties in states where power is held by one person or a handful ofpeople who conduct courtroom trials that favor the rich The implication is that elitist politicalpower and ownership of wealth are intrinsically connected One of the reasons Spinozarecommends public ownership of land and buildings in a monarchy is to prevent the rise of aclass of wealthy landowners with interests different than those of the rest of society Under the

conditions of common ownership ldquothe greatest part of the council will generally have one andthe same attitude of mind towards their common interests and peaceful activitieshelliprdquo And yethaving gone this far he has trouble imagining a state where fixed property is owned collectivelyin which the actually existing multitude holds power The peasants artisans and urban poor whoconstitute the common people of the United Provinces drop out of the picture in the democratic-communist monarchy he describes and nearly everyone makes his living by selling merchandiseor lending money to countrymen ldquoall will have to make a living by engaging in trade or bylending money to their fellow citizensrdquo He seems to assume that the collectivization of land andfixed property would eliminate the occupations of peasant and artisan leaving trade and loaningat interest the only remaining possibilities of work But that of course is not true The fact thatpeople would have to rent farm land would not prevent them from farming any more than theneed to rent workshops in the cities and towns would prevent artisans from plying their tradesBut Spinoza finds the idea of a commonwealth based on commercial enterprise politicallyappealing This is because he regards commercial occupations as contributing to harmony andpeace since he claims they establish connections between people that further the interests of allwhile those who engage in them prosper only in peacetime Both of these assumptions are asquestionable as the expectation that non-commercial occupations will die out After all even inSpinozarsquos day colonialism and the struggle for colonies between imperialist states led to warsbetween the great powers including the United Provinces not to mention the military and otherforms of violence involved in subjugating the colonies The East India Company was not exactlya force for peace What seems to be at work here instead is a failure of social imaginationthough one we may find understandable given the fact that the capitalist economy was still at anearly stage in its development However this may be there is no denying the fact that despite hispowerful arguments in favor of democratic rule and communal property it is still a bourgeoissociety and state that Spinoza envisions

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of what we should not hesitate to call Spinozarsquoscommunism is the critique of private ownership he develops in the Ethics based on his theory ofaffects For him there is a paradox involved in social and political life It stems from the fact thaton the one hand people can survive and develop their capacities only by joining with oneanother in societies and states But on the other hand the necessity of combining with oneanother does not prevent them from seeking their own advantage above that of their fellowsbeing quarrelsome or hateful and erecting obstacles to each otherrsquos happiness Spinoza identifiesthe reason for these deep-rooted problems of social coexistence in Part IV Proposition 35 of theEthics ldquoInsofar as men are assailed by emotions that are passive they can be contrary to oneanotherrdquo Emotions are states of the body characterized by a transition from a lower degree of thepower to exist and act (conatus) to a higher one or conversely from a higher degree to a lowerone The first transition is the affect of joy while the second is that of sadness Passive emotionsare caused by an object external to the body or more precisely external to its essential natureSpinoza conceives of that nature as a specific proportion of motion-and-rest that the parts of thebody exhibit in relation to one another While joy is an increase in our capacity to preserve theproportion of motion-and-rest essential to our body (ie to exist and act as we do) sadness is adecrease in that capacity The political problem created by the passive emotions is that evenwhen they are joyful they are not under the control of the person who experiences themMoreover different people are affected by the same external object in different ways because theparts of their bodies and their proportionate relations of motion-and rest-differ The same objectmay elicit anger in one person and pity in another or love in one and hatred in another and soon And because people differ in their emotional reactions to the same things they also differ inthe judgments they frame on the basis of these reactions What one person praises anotherperson blames what one regards as fearless another believes to be timid etc Finally sincepeople act upon their judgments seeking to foster what they judge to be good and destroy whatthey judge to be bad their differing judgments can result in actions that are in conflict with oneanother In short ldquoinsofar as they are assailed by passive emotions [people] can be contrary toone anotherrdquo

In Proposition 34 Spinoza gives an example of the contrariety caused by the passiveaffects Suppose Peter has sole possession of something Paul loves Deprivation of the loved

object causes sadness in Paul with the idea of Peter as its cause In accordance with Spinozarsquosdefinition of hatred Paul will hate Peter and therefore seek to injure or destroy him in order toremove the cause of his Paulrsquos sadness Spinoza says that this example may seem wrong becausePaul and Peter appear to be contrary to one another because of something they share ndash ie theirlove for the thing Peter possesses But that is not the case Paul has an image of himself aslacking the loved object while Peter has an image of himself as possessing the loved object Sothey in fact differ from one another by virtue of the different images they have rather than bypossessing something in common It is clear from the example that the root of this contrariety ndashie this enmity ndash between Paul and Peter is the fact that the object can be possessed by only oneof them so that what one has the other must lack The difficulty with private property is that it isexclusive to the one who possesses it which means that what I experience as possession othersexperience as deprivation It may seem that there is no problem if other people are indifferent tothe thing I possess However in accordance with Spinozarsquos theory of the imitation of affects themere fact that I love the thing I own other things being equal will cause you to love it as wellMy exclusive possession of the thing will therefore cause sadness in you that takes the form ofhatred or more precisely the kind of hatred called envy which involves pain at the good fortuneof another ldquohuman nature is in general so constituted that men pity the unfortunate and envy thefortunate in the latter case with a hatred proportionate to their love of what they think anotherpossessesrdquo

Common Possession Friendship and Philosophy

In the Ethics Spinoza does not follow his analysis of the antagonisms of private property

by considering the collective possession of material goods (although he does advocateredistribution of wealth to the poor in Part 4 as we have seen) But the theme of commonpossession figures large in the book anyway in his treatment of the intellectual love of God Inorder to understand the connection between common possession and amor Dei intellectualis itwill be necessary to engage in a detailed analysis of Spinozarsquos metaphysics We will begin thattask in earnest in the next chapter At this point we will simply introduce the theme byexamining the relationship between friendship and common possession in the letter to Jelles andsome related writings

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo unlike the similar passages fromActs has its provenance among philosophers Spinoza mistakenly attributes it to Thales but itoccurs in Platorsquos Phaedrus and Laws and is present though not in so many words in thediscussion in the Republic of common ownership of property by the guardian class Thetradition cited by Erasmus that traces the proverb back to Pythagoras is plausible when weconsider the influence the Pythagorean community in Sicily had on Plato in the aftermath ofSocratesrsquo death Erasmus sees the supposed use of a common fund by the Pythagoreans as ananticipation of the similar practice in Acts But Spinozarsquos approach is different What interestshim in the letter is common ownership not as a religious practice but as a matter of thephilosopherrsquos relation to the world Remember the deductive consequences of the proverb sinceall things are in common among friends everything belongs to the wise because the wise arefriends of the gods and all things belong to the gods But what does it mean to say that the wiseare friends of the gods

Although Spinoza uses the word ldquofriendshiprdquo often in his writings he never supplies aformal definition However we can reconstruct the wordrsquos meaning from the contexts in whichhe uses it So for example Proposition 35 of Part III of the Ethics reads

If anyone thinks that there is between the object of his love and another person the sameor a more intimate bond of friendship than there was between them when he alone usedto possess the object loved he will be affected with hatred toward the object loved andwill envy his rival

According to the proposition friendship is an intimate bond between a person and the

object he loves I hate an object of love that I alone once possessed when it wounds my vanity byloving someone else more than me So the object of love must be capable of loving whichmeans that the bond of friendship is a relation of reciprocal love between persons Nowaccording to Spinoza I love something when I have the idea of that thing as the cause of myexperience of joy Joy is an increase in conatus which Spinoza defines as the tendency to persistin being or equivalently the ability to exist and act So friendship is a relation in which Iidentify the other person as the cause of an increase in my conatus and the other personidentifies me as the cause of a similar increase in his or hers Two things each of which causesan increase in the ability to exist and act of the other are said by Spinoza to be in harmony Sincetwo entities in harmony have more combined power than either does singly it is to the advantageof each to be in harmony with the other There is even greater advantage in entering intoharmonious connection with a third individual and the greatest advantage in combining with asmany individuals as possible This is a universal metaphysical principle For example it pertainsjust as much to chemical combination or herding among animals as it does to social relationsbetween people In the case of human relationships it is the fundamental basis of politics orrather one of its two bases the other one being the tendency human beings have to conflict withone another When the state is functioning well it involves not a random collection ofindividuals and certainly not the war of each against all but a group whose members are boundto one another by friendship the human form of harmony Thus for Spinoza friendship is apolitical virtue as it was for Plato and Aristotle

The opposite of friendship is enmity That person is my enemy whom I regard as thecause of my sadness or pain which is the same as saying the cause of a decrease in my abilityto exist and act Like friendship enmity is a reciprocal relationship If I identify you as the causeof my sadness I will seek to injure or eliminate you But that means I will be identified in yourmind as the cause of your sadness Enmity is a relation of reciprocal hatred just as friendship is arelation of reciprocal love Just as there is harmony between friends there is discord betweenenemies The fundamental task of a rational politics is easy to state it is to extend and intensifyfriendship and to reduce and mollify enmity

We have already seen that Spinoza identifies solidarity (generositas) as one of the twoforms of strength of mind (fortitudo) which is the virtue that belongs to the exercise of theintellect Solidarity is the desire to assist others and foster friendship on the basis of reason aloneThe friendship fostered by solidarity is a bond of active love The love of friends for one anotheris active when each person who loves is the adequate cause of his or her love To say that theperson is the adequate cause means that the cause of love is internal to the person who feels it inother words that the love is self-generated Active love differs from passive love in that thecause of passive love is at least partially something that exists outside the person who has theemotion The problem with passive love is that it need not be constant If the bodily dispositionof the person changes in a particular way then the object of erstwhile love will have a differentemotional effect Passive love can change into boredom or indifference or even hatred This isnot possible in the case of active love because it is self-generated Since love involves theexperience of joy no one actively abandons it

There seems to be something odd about the idea of a love between persons that isinternally generated by each of the partners in the relationship Is it not the case that part of theessence of love is the fact that the object of my love is the cause of my love Without denyingthis Spinoza identifies two forms of love that are self-generated in the Ethics One is myintellectual love of God It is indeed true that God is the cause of my love but only insofar as myintellect is part of the infinite intellect of God Thus the object that causes my love - ie God - isinternal to my mind and conversely my mind is internal to it Such reciprocal internality ndash hardas it is to visualize ndash is what Spinoza means by immanence God he tells us is the immanentcause of everything that exists Nothing can exist apart from God while God expresses himselfin all of the things that exist My love of God and Gods love of himself are one and the samebecause Godrsquos intellect is immanent in mine The second form of self-generated love is the

friendship that exists between me and others who love God through the exercise of the intellectThe reason is that the joy I feel in loving God is by the imitation of affects augmented by thejoy you feel in loving God But your love as well as mine is joy caused by the same immanentbeing Another way of saying this is that your intellect and mine are parts (ie finiteexpressions) of the infinite intellect of God Thus the relationship between friends who are boundtogether by the common exercise of the intellect and the love of God that flows from it is basedon an internal bond an internal object and cause of love In this kind of love you and I as itwere discover one another internally You are inside of me and I am inside of you Thus whenyou augment my love and I augment yours it is Gods power as the intellect immanent in us boththat causes the augmentation even though we remain finite individual beings In this state ofaffairs which is admittedly difficult to grasp we can see the rational meaning of the command tolove God by loving the neighbor In intellectual love God not insofar as he is infinite butinsofar as he expresses himself in my finite intellect loves God as he expresses himself in yourfinite intellect

For Spinoza the exercise of the intellect is very different than our ordinary experience ofthe world In the course of ordinary experience we encounter objects in a way that appearshaphazard disordered and incomplete This is so first of all because our encounters are part ofan infinitely complex chain of natural causes and effects of which we know only very limitedparts In addition our experience of objects has as much to do with the condition our bodies arein when we encounter them as it does with the nature of the objects themselves By contrast inexercising the intellect we arrange our ideas in an intelligible pattern that is internal to the mindand entirely different than the images we accumulate through sensory experience The ideas arean expression of our power while the images result from our hapless deliverance to chanceEmotions caused by objects we encounter in the course of ordinary experience are externallydetermined and therefore passive while emotions caused by acts of intellectual comprehensionare internally generated and therefore active That is why love as an active emotion has its originin the exercise of the intellect and the most satisfying form of friendship is based on thereciprocal experience of such love In a letter to Willem van Blyenberg Spinoza provides themost complete description of this kind of friendship to be found in his writings

For my part of all things that are not under my control what I most value is to enterinto a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth For I believe that such a lovingrelationship affords us a serenity surpassing any other boon in the whole wide worldThe love that such men bear to one another grounded as it is in the love that each hasfor knowledge of truth is as unshakable as is the acceptance of truth once it has beenperceived It is moreover the highest source of happiness to be found in things notunder our command for truth more than anything else has the power to effect a closeunion between different sentiments and dispositions

Spinoza says that a friendship based on the love of truth is not under our control But how

can that be if intellectual friendship involves a form of love internally generated by each friendIt would seem that the love we generate through the exercise of the intellect is fully under ourcontrol Spinoza however is referring to the fact that we are able to become friends only withpeople we actually meet which is something that occurs in the course of ordinary haphazarddisordered experience To a large extent our friendships are a matter of chance By way ofillustrating this point it turned out that Spinoza decided his initial judgment of Blyenberg wasmistaken He broke off their correspondence when he realized that the infinite chain of causesand effects had brought his way not a lover of truth but a dogmatic worshipper of the ldquopaperand inkrdquo of the Bible

People create commonwealths because the power of each to exist and act is increased byall others who transfer their rights to the sovereign For reasons we have already considered thepolitical bond is one of friendship ldquoIt is of the first importance to men to establish closerelationships and to bind themselves together with such ties as may most effectively unite theminto one body and as an absolute rule to act in such a way as serves to strengthen friendshiprdquo If

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

shrewdness by which he had acquired itrdquo Spinozarsquos memory of the story must have acted as abridge for the mistaken identification

The similarity between the ancient Greek proverb and the passages from Acts about thecommunal practices of the early Church with respect to property must have been evident to thebiblical scholar Spinoza Rendered into Latin by Erasmus the proverb ldquoAll things are incommon among friendsrdquo is amicorum communia omnia In Acts 244 ndash ldquoAll that believed weretogether and had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquohad all things in commonrdquo appears in theLatin Vulgate as habebant omnia communia In Acts 432 ndash ldquoNo one claimed that any of theirpossessions was their own but they had all things in commonrdquo ndash the phrase ldquothey had all thingsin commonrdquo appears in the Vulgate as erant illis omnia communia The equivalence between thecommunia omnia of the proverb and the omnia communia of the two verses from Acts wouldhave been perfectly clear to Spinoza on linguistic grounds alone

In Adages Erasmus is more explicit than Spinoza in connecting the proverb with theverses from Acts He discusses the proverb in its appearance in book 5 of the Laws where Platoappeals to it in order to demonstrate that the best condition of society consists in the communityof possessions Erasmus writes

But it is extraordinary how Christians dislike this common ownership of Platorsquos how infact they throw stones at it although nothing comes closer to the mind of Christ

Further on Erasmus identifies the inventor of the proverb as Pythagoras who he saysestablished a community in which life and property were shared

hellipwhich is the very thing Christ wants to happen among Christians For all those whowere admitted by Pythagoras into that well-known band who followed his instructionswould give to the common fund whatever money and family property they possessed

Even apart from Erasmus the similarity between the Greek philosophersrsquo proverb and the

New Testament passages would have been evident to the Mennonite Jelles from MennoSimonrsquos discussion of the communal practice described in Acts (more on this below) Jelleswould also have found the parallel especially appealing because it makes the principle ofcommon ownership part of that rational philosophical version of Christianity that he and theother Waterlander Mennonites and Collegiants were seeking to establish

Although Erasmus was an advocate of religious reform he never joined the ProtestantReformation remaining a loyal Catholic until his death It is ironic then that during hislifetime the only vigorous champions of the common ownership he espoused were members ofthe most radical wing of the Reformation ironic but completely intelligible since the radicalsrsquoproject was to restore the Church to its original apostolic condition before its accommodationwith worldly power and wealth under Constantine

The Latin phrase designating Anabaptist communism in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies is Omnia sunt communia (for example it appears in this form in the confession theauthorities extracted from Thomas Muumlntzer under torture) It translates into English as ldquoAllthings are commonrdquo which is the present tense version of the phrase in Acts 432 ldquoall thingswere commonrdquo (ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά) to the members of the Church in Jerusalem Theparallel formulation in Acts 244 is slightly different although the distinction is lost in the LatinVulgate It reads that the members of the apostolic Church ldquohad all things in commonrdquo (εἶχονἅπαντα κοινὰ) In the second formulation εἶχον (had) seems to suggest a specific mode ofpossession or even an established quasi-legal form of property But it would be a mistake tointerpret it this way In both verses the anonymous author of Acts is articulating a generalprinciple rather than specifying a form of its implementation As we shall see the concreteapplication of the principle in the first century Church involved not a mode of possession orform of property but rather a practice of redistribution

Within the Anabaptist movement there was a broad range of beliefs and practices thatinvolved specific applications of the principle Omnia sunt communia We need to recognizetheir breadth in order to grasp just how subtle and variegated Anabaptist communism could beFor this purpose it is important to distinguish between communism as 1) a principle ofredistribution 2) a form of joint or communal property 3) a mode of the organization of workand 4) a kind of mutual aid In general all Anabaptist applications of Omnia sunt communia areintended to realize in different ways a communal and spiritual life in which all things arecommon We could say if we like that each of the four categories serves as a means for realizingthe end designated by that principle as long as we keep in mind that in this case the meanscannot be discarded once the end has been achieved Communism as a principle of redistributiona form of communal property a mode of the organization of work a kind of mutual aid ndash orsome combination of these ndash are the concrete ways in which communism as a mode ofcommunal and spiritual life is realized In this case the means are internal to the end That isbecause there can be no fellowship no community of the spirit unless those participating sharesomething ie have it in common Greek recognizes this internal relationship between acommon life and something shared in the word translated into English as fellowship κοινωνίαthe root of which is κοινός which means ldquocommonrdquo Its antonym ἴδιος means ldquobelonging toonerdquo It is the word κοινός that appears in the passages from Acts that refer to the practice ofsharing material wealth

244 ldquoAll who believed were together and had all things in common (Πάντες δὲ οἱπιστεύοντες ἦσαν ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό καὶ εἶχον ἅπαντα κοινὰ)

432 ldquoThe multitude of believers were one in heart and soul (Τοῦ δὲ πλήθους τῶνπιστευσάντων ἦν καρδία καὶ ψυχὴ microία) and no one claimed anything as his ownpossession but to them all things were in common (καὶ οὐδὲ εἷς τι τῶν ὑπαρχόντωναὐτῷ ἔλεγεν ἴδιον εἶναι ἀλλrsquo ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά)

Both verses affirm an internal relationship between living a common life and things

being in common or people having things in common But this is true of any collectiveendeavor A chess club for example is only possible if the members have a common interest inplaying chess But the verses from Acts mean to assert more than this They affirm the intensityand universality of the common life experienced in the early Church (being ldquoone in heart andsoulrdquo) They indicate this by referring to the fact that in the Church in Jerusalem all things areheld in common (ἅπαντα κοινά) Although ldquoall thingsrdquo (ἅπαντα) is not limited to materialpossessions the succeeding verses in chapters 2 and 4 of Acts indicate the depth of thecommitment the early Christians had to sharing a common life by referring to the practice inwhich they enacted it

245 And they sold their possessions and goods and divided them among everyoneaccording to need (καὶ τὰ κτήmicroατα καὶ τὰς ὑπάρξεις ἐπίπρασκον καὶ διεmicroέριζον αὐτὰπᾶσιν καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

434 There was no one among them in need as many as owned land or houses soldthem and brought the values of what was sold (οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐνδεής τις ἦν ἐν αὐτοῖς ὅσοιγὰρ κτήτορες χωρίων ἢ οἰκιῶν ὑπῆρχον πωλοῦντες ἔφερον τὰς τιmicroὰς τῶνπιπρασκοmicroένων) 435 and laid them at the feet of the apostles and distribution wasmade to each in accordance with need (καὶ ἐτίθουν παρὰ τοὺς πόδας τῶν ἀποστόλωνδιεδίδετο δὲ ἑκάστῳ καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

The needs of others are what break the bonds of individual ownership allowing the

transition from the private (ἴδιος) to the common (κοινά) Acts refers to making material goods

common rather than for example communicating private knowledge publicly presumablybecause of the difficulty people experience parting with private property and the correlativesignificance of the act of doing so For material possessions are the means by which they satisfytheir basic needs ndash for food shelter clothing and so on ndash and when possible their desire forluxuries The act of handing over possessions has two consequences The first is that thedistinction between rich and poor wealthy and needy owner and propertyless is abolished andthe members of the community come to stand on level ground The second consequence involvesa more fundamental risk on the part of property-owners By handing over their property theymake a leap of faith that the community will henceforth satisfy their needs as well through thesame practice of redistribution When applied in this fashion the general principle of being incommon or having in common results in an example of the first category of communism asspecified above ie communism as a principle of redistribution

Redistribution of property by the apostles creates occasions for active sharing asexpressions of the new form of common life 246 says that the members of the Church inJerusalem ldquoalso broke bread in each otherrsquos homes and took their meals in exaltation andsimplicity of heartrdquo (κλῶντές τε κατrsquo ο ἴκον ἄρτον microετελάmicroβανον τροφῆς ἐν ἀγαλλιάσει καὶἀφελότητι καρδίας) The value of sharing meals lies not merely in the fact that everyone is fedbut also in the experience of exaltation or ecstatic delight (ἀγαλλιάσεις) and sincerity orsimplicity of heart (ἀφελότητι καρδίας) The experience in common of exaltation and sincerity isat least as important as the act of satisfying needs although the two can be distinguished onlynotionally

The experience has its meaning in relation to the power (δυνάmicroις) that brings together themembers of the new community and inspires them to share their property The gathering of JewsGreeks and those from other nations (the circumcised and the uncircumcised as Paul says)occurs in the period following Pentecost when the Holy Spirit is supposed to have descended incloven tongues of flame upon the twelve apostles endowing them with the ability to speak inevery language Pentecost in turn follows by several weeks the resurrection of Christ and hisbodily ascension into heaven The gift of being able to speak in every language permits theapostles to convey their message to all nations That message ndash confirmed by ldquosigns andwondersrdquo ndash is testimony of their own first-hand witness to the Resurrection It is accompanied bythe baptism of the new members of the Church which repeats the Pentecostal experience byfilling them with the grace and power of the Holy Spirit

433 ldquoAnd with great power the apostles were giving witness to the resurrection of theLord Jesus and abundant grace was upon them all (καὶ δυνάmicroει microεγάλῃ ἀπεδίδουν τὸmicroαρτύριον οἱ ἀπόστολοι τοῦ Κυρίου Ἰησοῦ τῆς ἀναστάσεως χάρις τε microεγάλη ἦν ἐπὶπάντας αὐτούς)

The ecstatic delight and simplicity of heart that the members of the Church in Jerusalem

experience by sharing a common life is their enjoyment of this ldquoabundant gracerdquo (χάρις τεmicroεγάλη) The new community is built upon faith in the apostlesrsquo testimony that Jesus triumphedover death and that his victory promises an eternal life to all who believe That is the gift of theHoly Spirit Yet the ldquospiritualrdquo (πνευmicroατικός) content of early Christian experience does not denyits simultaneously material character For the significance of the Resurrection and the Ascensioninto Heaven is precisely that they concern the physical body of Christ When he appears toThomas who doubts that he has returned Jesus invites his disciple to place his hands into thewounds received from the Crucifixion The point is to show not only that the man standing infront of Thomas is not an imposter but also that the risen Christ is no disembodied ghost Andwhen the apostles witness the Ascension what they see is the physical body of Jesus rising toheaven There is little suggestion of soul-body dualism in Acts The spirit (πνεῦmicroα) infuses andtransfigures the body it does not exist apart from it In this respect it is similar to the life-givingbreath to which the word πνεῦmicroα originally referred Dualism is the result of a Platonizinginterpretation of Christianity that comes later The bodily character of the Resurrection extends tothe promise of eternal life for believers as well The promise is not that their souls will exist apart

from their bodies but that their bodies will rise up from the grave like that of their Savior Giventhis early Christian materialism it is not surprising that commonality of material goods wouldserve as a fundamental expression of the new life of the believers

As we already know the project of the sixteenth-century Anabaptists was to restore theChurch to its original apostolic condition by undoing the corruption they believed had set inwhen it made its peace with worldly wealth and power under Constantine Given the nature ofthe Anabaptist project it would seem that making material things common as described in Actswould follow as a matter of course However there is a long tradition ndash one that began aroundthe middle of the sixteenth century ndash of denying that Anabaptism has anything to do withcommunism regarding it as an accusation brought against the Anabaptists by their enemies It isunderstandable that this should be so The Anabaptists were the victims of a ldquored scarerdquo thatgripped the ruling classes of Europe in the aftermath of the Peasant War and the Muumlnstercommune It is impossible to explain the horrendous tortures forced relocations andinnumerable executions Anabaptists faced on the basis of heretical belief alone Nothing of aremotely similar scale was visited upon other schismatics The fact that the Anabaptistschallenged prevailing property relations is what made them victims of near-genocide It was amatter of survival then to create some distance between themselves and the charge ofadvocating common ownership of goods that came from Luther Zwingli and those whoextracted the confession from Thomas Muumlntzer that he held to the principle of Omnia communiasunt Recent scholarship however has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that having thingsin common was indeed a basic and widespread principle of Anabaptism at its origin just as it hasdemonstrated the influence veterans of the Peasant War had among the early Anabaptists

The dominant form of communist practice in early Anabaptism was appropriatelymodeled on the description of redistribution in Acts In Switzerland where the movementoriginated converts were often asked or required to make contributions to a ldquocommon purserdquoafter receiving adult baptism Some especially pious initiates went so far as to sell their land andhouses for that purpose in accordance with the biblical precedent When necessary officialsdistributed the contents of the purse to members of the community who were in need

Both proponents and enemies of Anabaptist communism often confused the redistributionof wealth with joint or communal property However except for the taking of meals in commonthere is no indication in Acts that redistribution collectivized ownership of wealth in this fashionbut only that it transferred wealth from the better-off members of the community to the worse-off Nevertheless some Anabaptists took joint or communal property as a paradigm for newproperty relations For example the visionary writing of the Nuremberg printer Hans Hergotwho was executed for rebellion in 1527 includes the following passage

And everything that grows on the land belongs to the church and the people who livethere Everything is bestowed for common use so that the people will eat from one potdrink from one vesselhellip And all things will be used in common so that no one is betteroff than another

The ldquowar communismrdquo of the city of Muumlnster involved an ad hoc form of communal propertythrough the edict that the doors to all homes be left open and the owners take in anyone whowished to reside with them But the most significant successful and long-lasting attempt toimplement communal property was that of the Hutterites

The Hutterites took their name from the charismatic hat-maker and Anabaptist leaderJacob Hutter However at their origins they were influenced by the revolutionary bookbinderHans Hut Hut shared Thomas Muumlntzerrsquos sanguinary apocalyptic view of social change andadvocated community ownership of goods in accordance with his own understanding of ActsHe survived the battle of Frankenhausen in which the peasant rebels were finally defeated butwas tortured and executed a few years later In the aftermath and under the influence of JacobHutter the Hutterites adopted pacifism and a strategy of creating autonomous communities Inorder escape persecution thousands of the brethren emigrated from Switzerland and Germany to

the more tolerant Moravia where they created hundreds of Bruderhofs farms and vineyards inwhich land houses farm implements produce and even objects of personal use were ownedcollectively The center of Bruderhof life was a large communal house in which craft productionoccurred on the ground floor and couples lived in small apartments on the upper levels The menengaged in farm labor and craftwork while the women were limited to traditional domesticduties in spite of the fact that children were raised communally apart from their parents TheBruderhofs enjoyed great economic success for a number of reasons People worked hard andconsumed little resulting in a surplus that could be used to purchase additional land seed andtools The size of the communities and of their agricultural production also enabled them to sellcheaply and to pay for supplies at generous prices both of which made the communitieseconomic assets to the areas in which they were located The Hutterites also organized both farmlabor and craft production cooperatively including the education boys were given in thenecessary skills They were therefore practitioners of the second and third forms of communismwe have identified namely communal ownership and cooperative organization of work Whenthey were ultimately forced out of Moravia by the triumph of Catholic forces in the Thirty YearsWar the Hutterites migrated eastward many finally relocating to Canada and the United Stateswhere the Bruderhofs continue to exist to this day

Communism as a kind of mutual aid was the contribution of the other major form ofAnabaptism that of the Mennonites With great political intelligence and skill Menno Simonswas able to reformulate the meaning of Omnia communia sunt in such a way as to avoidthreatening the property interests of nobles and clerics He did this in his book A Humble andChristian Justification and Replication First he denied that Mennonites were advocates ofcommunal property

This accusation is false and without all truth We do not teach and practice communityof goods but we teach and testify the Word of the Lord that all true believers in Christare of one body (1 Corinthians 1213) partakers of one bread (1 Corinthians 1017)have one God and one Lord (Ephesians 4)

In his assertion that the believers are of one body and partakers of one bread Simons is affirmingwhat we have called the general principle of communism while denying that Mennonitesembrace it in the specific form of communal property But he goes further by denying thatMennonites advocate a contemporary version of the apostolic redistribution of wealth

For although we know that the apostolic church had this practice in the beginning ascan be seen in the Acts of the Apostles nevertheless we note from their epistles that itdisappeared in their time and was no longer practiced

Instead of communal property or centralized redistribution of wealth the Mennonites derivefrom the general principle of Christian communism an alternative practice

Seeing then that they are one as said it is Christian and reasonable that they also havedivine love among them and that one member cares for another for both the Scripturesand nature teach this They show mercy and love as much as is in them They do notsuffer a beggar among them They have pity on the wants of the saints They receive thewretched They take strangers into their houses They comfort the sad They lend to theneedy They clothe the naked They share their bread with the hungry They do not turntheir face from the poorhellip

In the subsequent history of Mennonism the practice Simons describes came to be calledldquomutual aidrdquo Note that it is different from charitable giving and this in two ways First thereferences to receiving the wretched taking in strangers sharing bread and so on indicate a farmore personal even intimate form of involvement than simple charitable donation Second

there is the suggestion of reciprocity or mutuality (ldquoone member cares for anotherrdquo) that tends todeny the difference in status between the charitable giver and the recipient of charity Thepractice Simons describes is similar to what some anthropologists have called ldquogeneralizedreciprocityrdquo in which my obligation to give to you when you are in need corresponds to yourobligation to give to me when I am in need In a sense this is a form of redistribution inaccordance with need but it is enacted directly between individual members of the communityrather than administered centrally through a common purse

In line with his political purpose Simons is careful to distinguish between mutual aid andthe expropriation of private property

This is the kind of brotherhood we teach and not that some should take over andpossess the land soil and properties of others as we are falsely maligned accused andlied about by many

In this way he detaches the Mennonite version of communism from any revolutionary intentionThat was the prerequisite for communal survival during the long counter-revolution thatfollowed the Peasant War Still Simons never abandons the general principle Omnia communiasunt nor does he even really reject the practice of the early Church

Since we do not find it a permanent practice with the apostles we have not taught orpracticed community of goods but we urge earnestly and zealously to practice liberalgiving love and mercy as the apostolic writings teach and testify abundantly Andeven if we had taught and practiced community of goods as we are falsely accused ofdoing we would still not be doing otherwise than the holy apostles full of the HolySpirit themselves did in the former church at Jerusalem in the beginning of the holyChristian Church although they stopped the practice as has been said

Like the Hutterites Mennonite communities prospered once they managed to survive the

bloody period of reaction In Holland the Mennonite population consisted largely in successfulmerchants along with a number of lawyers doctors and other professionals Most of thepeasant artisan and laborer families who had started as Mennonites in the sixteenth century hadlong since converted to the Reform Church which is one reason Spinoza faced the problem ofpolitical agency in the TPT Although the idea of mutual aid persisted among the DutchMennonites it took the form predominantly of organized international philanthropy in which thecommunity made contributions not only to Mennonites abroad but to other populations in needThere was no escaping the fact however that in this philanthropic form mutual aid becamehardly distinguishable from conventional charity

Jarig Jelles was born into the Dutch Mennonite community around a century afterSimmons wrote his book when this process of slippage was well underway But there is littledoubt that Jelles knew the Mennonite teaching on mutual aid and its origin in the generalprinciple of Christian communism Even if Jelles never read Erasmusrsquo Adages Spinozarsquosreference to the supposed communism of Thales was likely to resonate with him on the basis ofhis own religious tradition

We cannot be certain how much Spinoza knew in detail about the communist practices ofthe Anabaptists but it is probably not a coincidence that he recommends three of the four atvarious places in his writings In Part 4 of the Ethics ldquoOf Human Bondage or the Strength of theEmotionsrdquo he identifies the chief virtue of the intellect as ldquostrength of the mindrdquo (fortitudo)According to him it takes two forms one directed to the self and one directed to others He callsthe inwardly directed form ldquocouragerdquo defining it as ldquothe desire whereby every individualendeavors to preserve his own being according to the dictates of reason alonerdquo The outwardlydirected form is generositas which Shirley translates as ldquonobilityrdquo though ldquosolidarityrdquo is closerto what Spinoza is getting at He defines it as ldquothe desire whereby every individual according to

the dictates of reason alone endeavors to assist others and make friends of themrdquo When twopeople in contact with one another possess the virtue of generositas they will clearly exhibit itreciprocally in the form of mutual aid the fourth communist practice

In Part 4 of the Ethics Spinoza also formulates a version of the first communist practicethat of the redistribution of wealth in accordance with need

Again men are won over by generosity especially those who do not have thewherewithal to produce what is necessary to support life Yet it is far beyond the powerand resources of a private person to come to the assistance of everyone in need For thewealth of a private person is quite unequal to such a demand It is also a practicalimpossibility for one man to establish friendship with all Therefore the care of the poordevolves upon society as a whole and looks only to the common good

The fact that society as a whole has responsibility for meeting the needs of the poor makes thepractice Spinoza recommends in this passage a version of the centralized redistribution of wealthdescribed in the Acts of the Apostles and institutionalized in Anabaptist form as the ldquocommonpurserdquo More than that the fact that society as a whole must take on this responsibility ratherthan a church or other sub-community makes Spinoza an early advocate of what will becomethree centuries later the European welfare state In our own period as the welfare state is beingdismantled it is easy to see that what neoliberals object to concerning it is precisely its implicitcommunism ie its practice of distribution in accordance with need

Spinoza advocates a third communist practice in his unfinished final work the PoliticalTreatise The context is his discussion of a maximally democratic version of monarchy in whichthe entire citizen body is armed and the king forbidden from making any decision contrary to thewill of a massive council of ordinary citizens In such a state

The fields and the soil and if possible the houses as well should be public property thatis should belong to the sovereign by whom they should be let at an annual rent tocitizens whether townsmen or country-dwellers Apart from this all citizens should befree or exempt from any form of taxation in time of peace Of this rent part should beallocated to the defense works of the commonwealth part to the kings domestic needsFor in time of peace it is still necessary to fortify cities as for war and to have in a stateof readiness ships and other armaments

Ownership of land and buildings by the sovereign is a form of communal property first becausethe citizens of the commonwealth delegate to him or them the property they hold in commonand second because that delegation occurs with the understanding that the sovereign will use theproperty in service of the common good

Spinoza supplies an argument based on more than simple utility for the practice ofholding land and buildings in common

hellip in a state of Nature the one thing a man cannot appropriate to himself and make hisown is land and whatever is so fixed to the land that he cannot conceal it anywhere orcarry it away where he pleases Thus the land and whatever is fixed to it in the way wehave described is especially the public property of the commonwealth that is of allthose who by their united strength can claim it or of him to whom all have delegated thepower to claim it

To state the argument differently since rights are the same as powers no individual has a naturalright to appropriate privately the land or any of its fixed structures because none has the powernecessary to do so The only response an individual can make to incursions by a more powerfulperson or group of people is flight in which he must leave the land and its buildings behind It is

only by entering into a community in which the strength of each is combined for the purpose ofdefense that people can effectively possess fixed property but they do so as a members of thecommunity rather than as an separate individuals According to Spinozarsquos theory of rights onlythe community has the right to own the land and its structures because only the community hasthe required power

The communal ownership of land houses and other buildings is a version of the secondcommunist practice on our list of which Hutterite joint ownership is the most developedhistorical example When adopted by a polity rather than a small community though thepractice has an added advantage Under those circumstances communal possession of fixedproperty eliminates the need for taxes except in time of war What takes their place is ageneration of revenue pegged to wealth since the members of society who are able to rent themost expensive and largest amounts of communal property will obviously pay the most in rentIn this way the form of communal ownership of land and buildings that Spinoza recommendsalso acts as a mechanism for the redistribution of wealth

The only communist practice of the Anabaptists that does not find an equivalent inSpinozarsquos writings is that of the cooperative organization of work The absence is related toSpinozarsquos inability to resolve the problem of political agency in the TPT An attempt to mobilizethe multitude on behalf of democratic social change would need to address the organization ofwork in such a way as to alleviate the burden of toil Reducing the number of hours spent inonerous labor is the only way to provide the multitude with the free time necessary to participatein institutionalized democratic politics Along with the redistribution of wealth and thedevelopment of communal property the cooperative reorganization of work would need to beincorporated as a plank in the latent political program that makes its first democratic appearancein the TPT and is extended in a communist direction in the passages from the Ethics and thePolitical Treatise that we have just examined But that would constitute an explicit anddangerous appeal to the multitude as the agent of political and social transformation an appealthat Spinoza consistently rejects It would involve nothing less than the revival of therevolutionary energies of the Peasant War on a new seventeenth-century foundation

In spite of his radicalism Spinoza doubted that revolution was capable of reconstructingsociety and the state in the way revolutionaries wanted In Chapter 18 of the TPT he takes aposition that is at least on the surface opposed to revolution or any attempt to change the formof the state fundamentally The context is a discussion of the transition from the early Hebrewcommonwealth in which the people held sovereignty to the rule of kings Spinoza tells us thatthe first period saw only a single civil war and concluded with a compassion for the vanquishedthat resulted in lasting peace By contrast the period of kings was marred by multiple warswaged only for the glory of the rulers and involved the massacre of hundreds of thousandsDuring the first period few prophets arose to rebuke the Jews while a great many emergedduring the time of the monarchies From this example Spinoza reasons that it is fatal for peopleaccustomed to popular sovereignty and governed by settled laws to adopt a new monarchicalform of government On the one hand they will be unable to tolerate the arbitrary exercise ofpower by a single individual while on the other the new monarch will be compelled to abolishthe existing laws because they did not originate by his own authority But it is just as dangerousaccording to Spinoza for the subjects of a monarch to attempt his replacement with popular ruleThis is because a popular revolution must advance to the point where it annihilates the king thekingrsquos family and the friends of the king in order to prevent the restoration of royal power But inthe process the revolutionary authority must assume a power even more draconian then thatpreviously exercised by the king In addition having committed regicide the new popularauthority faces the danger that it will fall victim to its own precedent For this reason as well andin the interest of survival it must wield power more repressively than the deposed sovereignSpinoza illustrates his point with reference to the English revolution which eliminated themonarch Charles I only to replace him with the Lord Protector Cromwell who was monarch inall but name and more repressive than Charles

Spinozarsquos point seems unassailable especially since the pattern he describes in the caseof the English Revolution repeated itself over the course of the next three centuries in the French

and Russian Revolutions It is at least arguable that Napoleon if not Robespierre was a newLouis XVI and Stalin a new Tsar even if this understates the more fundamental social changesthat resulted form the two revolutions Still Spinoza does not absolutely proscribe therevolutionary overthrow of a tyrannical government but says instead that there is a great dangerin making the attempt Besides his analysis of the conditions necessary for retaining sovereigntydoes not leave the decision about whether to engage in revolution up to militants He argues thatno state can survive that creates mass indignation in its people and this is precisely theunavoidable result of tyrannical government Spinozarsquos real purpose in Chapter 18 is to opposethe Orangist-Calvinist project of replacing the Dutch Republic with a monarchy ldquoAs for theEstates of Hollandrdquo he writes ldquoas far as we know they never had kings but counts to whom theright of sovereignty was never transferredrdquo His point is that the Dutch War of Independenceagainst Spain was justified because it restored the sovereignty of the people against the attemptby the Spanish ldquocountrdquo (King Philip II) to abolish it However any attempt to replace theRepublic with a monarchy would change the form of the state disastrously by divesting thepeople of their former rights

When Spinoza wrote his treatise the only revolutionary forces that existed were on theRight The danger he warns about in Chapter 18 of the TPT did indeed come to pass only oneyear after his letter to Jelles In 1672 a Calvinist-Orangist mob hacked Johan De Witt and hisbrother Cornelius to death at a time when Holland was invaded by the French army Streetorators stirred up the mob by claiming that the invasion was the result of the brothersrsquo treason Inthe aftermath of the murders William III prince of Orange was elevated to the position ofstadtholder of Holland Although William went on to become King of England he stopped shortof claiming a Dutch throne However in actuality he substituted his own power for much of thatwhich had belonged to the Estates General while the Reformed Church gained considerableinfluence in Dutch government According to a story made famous by Spinozarsquos earliestbiographer Johannes Colerus when the De Witt brothers were murdered Spinozarsquos landlordthwarted his attempt to go the site of the assassinations where the bodies of the brothers werestill on gruesome display in order to plant a sign reading Ultimi Barbarorum (the ultimatebarbarians) In this way the landlord undoubtedly saved the philosopherrsquos life It was the onlytime we know of when the mature Spinoza gave in to his passive affects in a significant way

There is a passage in Chapter 18 of the TPT that uncannily anticipates the murders

Tyranny is most violent where individual beliefs which are unalienable rights areregarded as criminal Indeed in such circumstances the anger of the common people[plebis] is usually the greatest tyrant of allhellip the vilest hypocrites urged on by that samefury which they call zeal for Gods law have everywhere persecuted men whoseblameless character and distinguished qualities have excited the hostility of the commonpeople [plebi] publicly denouncing their beliefs and inflaming the savage multitudersquos[multitudinem] anger against them

Spinoza was the first political philosopher who grappled with the problem of a mass-

based politics of the Right The problem would occur again with the fascist movements of the1920s and 1930s and with the return of the rightwing religious fundamentalisms of our own dayndash Jewish Christian Muslim and Hindu It is not surprising that he failed to solve the problemdefinitively since it continues to remain unsolved The remarkable thing about Spinoza thoughis not that he was skeptical about the liberatory possibilities of revolution by the masses but thathe defended the idea of a popular democracy nonetheless And this he continued to do even inthe aftermath of the De Witt murders In his work on the Political Treatise in the final year of hislife Spinoza developed a powerful critique of the elitist claim that the multitude are incapable ofgoverning

Yet perhaps our [democratic] suggestions will be received with ridicule by those whorestrict to the common people the faults that are inherent in all mankind saying There

is no moderation in the mob they terrorize unless they are frightened and Thecommon people is either a humble servant or an arrogant master there is no truth orjudgment in itrdquo and the like But all men share in one and the same nature it is powerand culture that mislead us with the result that when two men do the same thing weoften say that it is permissible for the one to do it and not the other not because of anydifference in the thing done but in the doer hellipThen again There is no moderation inthe mob they terrorize unless they are frightened For freedom and slavery do not gowell together Finally that there is no truth or judgment in the common people is notsurprising since the important affairs of state are conducted without their knowledgeand from the little that cannot be concealed they can only make conjecturehellip Howeveras we have said all men have the same nature ndash all grow haughty with rule terrorizeunless they are frightened ndash and everywhere truth becomes a casualty through hostilityor servility especially when despotic power is in the hands of one or a few who in trialspay attention not to justice or truth but to the extent of a persons wealth

Surprisingly Spinoza develops this democratic argument while discussing the institutions

appropriate to a monarchy But the key point he makes in the discussion is that a condition ofeffective monarchical rule is expansion of the democratic element within the state in the form ofa sizeable legislative council whose members are drawn from the general population of citizensover the age of fifty On Spinozarsquos view the mistake those who oppose democracy make isassuming that the faults exhibited by the common people ndash such as poor judgment arroganceand hostility ndash belong only to them while they are in fact typical of human beings Actually it iselitist politics that magnifies these all-too-human faults by restricting political power to a limitednumber of people while democratic politics minimizes them through the principle of majorityrule among numerous decision-makers The reason as we already know is that passions pullpeople in different directions making it nearly impossible for the members of a large council toagree on a common position unless they make decisions based not on passion but an idea of thecommon good On Spinozarsquos view it is when government is in the hands of a single person oronly a few people that the dangers the critics of democracy attribute to the common people are infact the greatest

Spinoza also argues against the claim that the common people are not qualified to makepolitical decisions because they lack the necessary education or degree of intellect There is noone he says who has been engaged in an occupation until the age of fifty who lacksunderstanding of his sphere of work ldquoevery man is reasonably competent and sagacious inmatters in which he has been long and attentively engagedrdquo So each is qualified at least to giveadvice in the kingrsquos council concerning his own business especially if given the time necessaryto reflect on the matter under discussion

Most of all the plebs are the group best suited to serving on the council because theirinterest is that of society as a whole ldquoHence it follows that counselors must necessarily beappointed whose private fortune and advantage depend on the general welfare and the peace ofallrdquo For example Spinoza emphasizes the idea that the common people have the highest stake inavoiding war or concluding an existing war with a settlement that brings lasting peace Thereason is they are ones who bear the heaviest burdens of war Unlike the wealthy well-bornmembers of society it is the common person whose occupation is most likely to be interrupted itis his taxes that are raised to onerous levels and it is his son who dies Thus the common interestof society in peace is best served not by a wealthy or educated elite but rather by those whohave the most to lose from war

At the end of the long paragraph defending popular power quoted above Spinozaconnects the question of who holds power within the state to that of who owns property Truthand justice he says are casualties in states where power is held by one person or a handful ofpeople who conduct courtroom trials that favor the rich The implication is that elitist politicalpower and ownership of wealth are intrinsically connected One of the reasons Spinozarecommends public ownership of land and buildings in a monarchy is to prevent the rise of aclass of wealthy landowners with interests different than those of the rest of society Under the

conditions of common ownership ldquothe greatest part of the council will generally have one andthe same attitude of mind towards their common interests and peaceful activitieshelliprdquo And yethaving gone this far he has trouble imagining a state where fixed property is owned collectivelyin which the actually existing multitude holds power The peasants artisans and urban poor whoconstitute the common people of the United Provinces drop out of the picture in the democratic-communist monarchy he describes and nearly everyone makes his living by selling merchandiseor lending money to countrymen ldquoall will have to make a living by engaging in trade or bylending money to their fellow citizensrdquo He seems to assume that the collectivization of land andfixed property would eliminate the occupations of peasant and artisan leaving trade and loaningat interest the only remaining possibilities of work But that of course is not true The fact thatpeople would have to rent farm land would not prevent them from farming any more than theneed to rent workshops in the cities and towns would prevent artisans from plying their tradesBut Spinoza finds the idea of a commonwealth based on commercial enterprise politicallyappealing This is because he regards commercial occupations as contributing to harmony andpeace since he claims they establish connections between people that further the interests of allwhile those who engage in them prosper only in peacetime Both of these assumptions are asquestionable as the expectation that non-commercial occupations will die out After all even inSpinozarsquos day colonialism and the struggle for colonies between imperialist states led to warsbetween the great powers including the United Provinces not to mention the military and otherforms of violence involved in subjugating the colonies The East India Company was not exactlya force for peace What seems to be at work here instead is a failure of social imaginationthough one we may find understandable given the fact that the capitalist economy was still at anearly stage in its development However this may be there is no denying the fact that despite hispowerful arguments in favor of democratic rule and communal property it is still a bourgeoissociety and state that Spinoza envisions

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of what we should not hesitate to call Spinozarsquoscommunism is the critique of private ownership he develops in the Ethics based on his theory ofaffects For him there is a paradox involved in social and political life It stems from the fact thaton the one hand people can survive and develop their capacities only by joining with oneanother in societies and states But on the other hand the necessity of combining with oneanother does not prevent them from seeking their own advantage above that of their fellowsbeing quarrelsome or hateful and erecting obstacles to each otherrsquos happiness Spinoza identifiesthe reason for these deep-rooted problems of social coexistence in Part IV Proposition 35 of theEthics ldquoInsofar as men are assailed by emotions that are passive they can be contrary to oneanotherrdquo Emotions are states of the body characterized by a transition from a lower degree of thepower to exist and act (conatus) to a higher one or conversely from a higher degree to a lowerone The first transition is the affect of joy while the second is that of sadness Passive emotionsare caused by an object external to the body or more precisely external to its essential natureSpinoza conceives of that nature as a specific proportion of motion-and-rest that the parts of thebody exhibit in relation to one another While joy is an increase in our capacity to preserve theproportion of motion-and-rest essential to our body (ie to exist and act as we do) sadness is adecrease in that capacity The political problem created by the passive emotions is that evenwhen they are joyful they are not under the control of the person who experiences themMoreover different people are affected by the same external object in different ways because theparts of their bodies and their proportionate relations of motion-and rest-differ The same objectmay elicit anger in one person and pity in another or love in one and hatred in another and soon And because people differ in their emotional reactions to the same things they also differ inthe judgments they frame on the basis of these reactions What one person praises anotherperson blames what one regards as fearless another believes to be timid etc Finally sincepeople act upon their judgments seeking to foster what they judge to be good and destroy whatthey judge to be bad their differing judgments can result in actions that are in conflict with oneanother In short ldquoinsofar as they are assailed by passive emotions [people] can be contrary toone anotherrdquo

In Proposition 34 Spinoza gives an example of the contrariety caused by the passiveaffects Suppose Peter has sole possession of something Paul loves Deprivation of the loved

object causes sadness in Paul with the idea of Peter as its cause In accordance with Spinozarsquosdefinition of hatred Paul will hate Peter and therefore seek to injure or destroy him in order toremove the cause of his Paulrsquos sadness Spinoza says that this example may seem wrong becausePaul and Peter appear to be contrary to one another because of something they share ndash ie theirlove for the thing Peter possesses But that is not the case Paul has an image of himself aslacking the loved object while Peter has an image of himself as possessing the loved object Sothey in fact differ from one another by virtue of the different images they have rather than bypossessing something in common It is clear from the example that the root of this contrariety ndashie this enmity ndash between Paul and Peter is the fact that the object can be possessed by only oneof them so that what one has the other must lack The difficulty with private property is that it isexclusive to the one who possesses it which means that what I experience as possession othersexperience as deprivation It may seem that there is no problem if other people are indifferent tothe thing I possess However in accordance with Spinozarsquos theory of the imitation of affects themere fact that I love the thing I own other things being equal will cause you to love it as wellMy exclusive possession of the thing will therefore cause sadness in you that takes the form ofhatred or more precisely the kind of hatred called envy which involves pain at the good fortuneof another ldquohuman nature is in general so constituted that men pity the unfortunate and envy thefortunate in the latter case with a hatred proportionate to their love of what they think anotherpossessesrdquo

Common Possession Friendship and Philosophy

In the Ethics Spinoza does not follow his analysis of the antagonisms of private property

by considering the collective possession of material goods (although he does advocateredistribution of wealth to the poor in Part 4 as we have seen) But the theme of commonpossession figures large in the book anyway in his treatment of the intellectual love of God Inorder to understand the connection between common possession and amor Dei intellectualis itwill be necessary to engage in a detailed analysis of Spinozarsquos metaphysics We will begin thattask in earnest in the next chapter At this point we will simply introduce the theme byexamining the relationship between friendship and common possession in the letter to Jelles andsome related writings

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo unlike the similar passages fromActs has its provenance among philosophers Spinoza mistakenly attributes it to Thales but itoccurs in Platorsquos Phaedrus and Laws and is present though not in so many words in thediscussion in the Republic of common ownership of property by the guardian class Thetradition cited by Erasmus that traces the proverb back to Pythagoras is plausible when weconsider the influence the Pythagorean community in Sicily had on Plato in the aftermath ofSocratesrsquo death Erasmus sees the supposed use of a common fund by the Pythagoreans as ananticipation of the similar practice in Acts But Spinozarsquos approach is different What interestshim in the letter is common ownership not as a religious practice but as a matter of thephilosopherrsquos relation to the world Remember the deductive consequences of the proverb sinceall things are in common among friends everything belongs to the wise because the wise arefriends of the gods and all things belong to the gods But what does it mean to say that the wiseare friends of the gods

Although Spinoza uses the word ldquofriendshiprdquo often in his writings he never supplies aformal definition However we can reconstruct the wordrsquos meaning from the contexts in whichhe uses it So for example Proposition 35 of Part III of the Ethics reads

If anyone thinks that there is between the object of his love and another person the sameor a more intimate bond of friendship than there was between them when he alone usedto possess the object loved he will be affected with hatred toward the object loved andwill envy his rival

According to the proposition friendship is an intimate bond between a person and the

object he loves I hate an object of love that I alone once possessed when it wounds my vanity byloving someone else more than me So the object of love must be capable of loving whichmeans that the bond of friendship is a relation of reciprocal love between persons Nowaccording to Spinoza I love something when I have the idea of that thing as the cause of myexperience of joy Joy is an increase in conatus which Spinoza defines as the tendency to persistin being or equivalently the ability to exist and act So friendship is a relation in which Iidentify the other person as the cause of an increase in my conatus and the other personidentifies me as the cause of a similar increase in his or hers Two things each of which causesan increase in the ability to exist and act of the other are said by Spinoza to be in harmony Sincetwo entities in harmony have more combined power than either does singly it is to the advantageof each to be in harmony with the other There is even greater advantage in entering intoharmonious connection with a third individual and the greatest advantage in combining with asmany individuals as possible This is a universal metaphysical principle For example it pertainsjust as much to chemical combination or herding among animals as it does to social relationsbetween people In the case of human relationships it is the fundamental basis of politics orrather one of its two bases the other one being the tendency human beings have to conflict withone another When the state is functioning well it involves not a random collection ofindividuals and certainly not the war of each against all but a group whose members are boundto one another by friendship the human form of harmony Thus for Spinoza friendship is apolitical virtue as it was for Plato and Aristotle

The opposite of friendship is enmity That person is my enemy whom I regard as thecause of my sadness or pain which is the same as saying the cause of a decrease in my abilityto exist and act Like friendship enmity is a reciprocal relationship If I identify you as the causeof my sadness I will seek to injure or eliminate you But that means I will be identified in yourmind as the cause of your sadness Enmity is a relation of reciprocal hatred just as friendship is arelation of reciprocal love Just as there is harmony between friends there is discord betweenenemies The fundamental task of a rational politics is easy to state it is to extend and intensifyfriendship and to reduce and mollify enmity

We have already seen that Spinoza identifies solidarity (generositas) as one of the twoforms of strength of mind (fortitudo) which is the virtue that belongs to the exercise of theintellect Solidarity is the desire to assist others and foster friendship on the basis of reason aloneThe friendship fostered by solidarity is a bond of active love The love of friends for one anotheris active when each person who loves is the adequate cause of his or her love To say that theperson is the adequate cause means that the cause of love is internal to the person who feels it inother words that the love is self-generated Active love differs from passive love in that thecause of passive love is at least partially something that exists outside the person who has theemotion The problem with passive love is that it need not be constant If the bodily dispositionof the person changes in a particular way then the object of erstwhile love will have a differentemotional effect Passive love can change into boredom or indifference or even hatred This isnot possible in the case of active love because it is self-generated Since love involves theexperience of joy no one actively abandons it

There seems to be something odd about the idea of a love between persons that isinternally generated by each of the partners in the relationship Is it not the case that part of theessence of love is the fact that the object of my love is the cause of my love Without denyingthis Spinoza identifies two forms of love that are self-generated in the Ethics One is myintellectual love of God It is indeed true that God is the cause of my love but only insofar as myintellect is part of the infinite intellect of God Thus the object that causes my love - ie God - isinternal to my mind and conversely my mind is internal to it Such reciprocal internality ndash hardas it is to visualize ndash is what Spinoza means by immanence God he tells us is the immanentcause of everything that exists Nothing can exist apart from God while God expresses himselfin all of the things that exist My love of God and Gods love of himself are one and the samebecause Godrsquos intellect is immanent in mine The second form of self-generated love is the

friendship that exists between me and others who love God through the exercise of the intellectThe reason is that the joy I feel in loving God is by the imitation of affects augmented by thejoy you feel in loving God But your love as well as mine is joy caused by the same immanentbeing Another way of saying this is that your intellect and mine are parts (ie finiteexpressions) of the infinite intellect of God Thus the relationship between friends who are boundtogether by the common exercise of the intellect and the love of God that flows from it is basedon an internal bond an internal object and cause of love In this kind of love you and I as itwere discover one another internally You are inside of me and I am inside of you Thus whenyou augment my love and I augment yours it is Gods power as the intellect immanent in us boththat causes the augmentation even though we remain finite individual beings In this state ofaffairs which is admittedly difficult to grasp we can see the rational meaning of the command tolove God by loving the neighbor In intellectual love God not insofar as he is infinite butinsofar as he expresses himself in my finite intellect loves God as he expresses himself in yourfinite intellect

For Spinoza the exercise of the intellect is very different than our ordinary experience ofthe world In the course of ordinary experience we encounter objects in a way that appearshaphazard disordered and incomplete This is so first of all because our encounters are part ofan infinitely complex chain of natural causes and effects of which we know only very limitedparts In addition our experience of objects has as much to do with the condition our bodies arein when we encounter them as it does with the nature of the objects themselves By contrast inexercising the intellect we arrange our ideas in an intelligible pattern that is internal to the mindand entirely different than the images we accumulate through sensory experience The ideas arean expression of our power while the images result from our hapless deliverance to chanceEmotions caused by objects we encounter in the course of ordinary experience are externallydetermined and therefore passive while emotions caused by acts of intellectual comprehensionare internally generated and therefore active That is why love as an active emotion has its originin the exercise of the intellect and the most satisfying form of friendship is based on thereciprocal experience of such love In a letter to Willem van Blyenberg Spinoza provides themost complete description of this kind of friendship to be found in his writings

For my part of all things that are not under my control what I most value is to enterinto a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth For I believe that such a lovingrelationship affords us a serenity surpassing any other boon in the whole wide worldThe love that such men bear to one another grounded as it is in the love that each hasfor knowledge of truth is as unshakable as is the acceptance of truth once it has beenperceived It is moreover the highest source of happiness to be found in things notunder our command for truth more than anything else has the power to effect a closeunion between different sentiments and dispositions

Spinoza says that a friendship based on the love of truth is not under our control But how

can that be if intellectual friendship involves a form of love internally generated by each friendIt would seem that the love we generate through the exercise of the intellect is fully under ourcontrol Spinoza however is referring to the fact that we are able to become friends only withpeople we actually meet which is something that occurs in the course of ordinary haphazarddisordered experience To a large extent our friendships are a matter of chance By way ofillustrating this point it turned out that Spinoza decided his initial judgment of Blyenberg wasmistaken He broke off their correspondence when he realized that the infinite chain of causesand effects had brought his way not a lover of truth but a dogmatic worshipper of the ldquopaperand inkrdquo of the Bible

People create commonwealths because the power of each to exist and act is increased byall others who transfer their rights to the sovereign For reasons we have already considered thepolitical bond is one of friendship ldquoIt is of the first importance to men to establish closerelationships and to bind themselves together with such ties as may most effectively unite theminto one body and as an absolute rule to act in such a way as serves to strengthen friendshiprdquo If

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

Within the Anabaptist movement there was a broad range of beliefs and practices thatinvolved specific applications of the principle Omnia sunt communia We need to recognizetheir breadth in order to grasp just how subtle and variegated Anabaptist communism could beFor this purpose it is important to distinguish between communism as 1) a principle ofredistribution 2) a form of joint or communal property 3) a mode of the organization of workand 4) a kind of mutual aid In general all Anabaptist applications of Omnia sunt communia areintended to realize in different ways a communal and spiritual life in which all things arecommon We could say if we like that each of the four categories serves as a means for realizingthe end designated by that principle as long as we keep in mind that in this case the meanscannot be discarded once the end has been achieved Communism as a principle of redistributiona form of communal property a mode of the organization of work a kind of mutual aid ndash orsome combination of these ndash are the concrete ways in which communism as a mode ofcommunal and spiritual life is realized In this case the means are internal to the end That isbecause there can be no fellowship no community of the spirit unless those participating sharesomething ie have it in common Greek recognizes this internal relationship between acommon life and something shared in the word translated into English as fellowship κοινωνίαthe root of which is κοινός which means ldquocommonrdquo Its antonym ἴδιος means ldquobelonging toonerdquo It is the word κοινός that appears in the passages from Acts that refer to the practice ofsharing material wealth

244 ldquoAll who believed were together and had all things in common (Πάντες δὲ οἱπιστεύοντες ἦσαν ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτό καὶ εἶχον ἅπαντα κοινὰ)

432 ldquoThe multitude of believers were one in heart and soul (Τοῦ δὲ πλήθους τῶνπιστευσάντων ἦν καρδία καὶ ψυχὴ microία) and no one claimed anything as his ownpossession but to them all things were in common (καὶ οὐδὲ εἷς τι τῶν ὑπαρχόντωναὐτῷ ἔλεγεν ἴδιον εἶναι ἀλλrsquo ἦν αὐτοῖς ἅπαντα κοινά)

Both verses affirm an internal relationship between living a common life and things

being in common or people having things in common But this is true of any collectiveendeavor A chess club for example is only possible if the members have a common interest inplaying chess But the verses from Acts mean to assert more than this They affirm the intensityand universality of the common life experienced in the early Church (being ldquoone in heart andsoulrdquo) They indicate this by referring to the fact that in the Church in Jerusalem all things areheld in common (ἅπαντα κοινά) Although ldquoall thingsrdquo (ἅπαντα) is not limited to materialpossessions the succeeding verses in chapters 2 and 4 of Acts indicate the depth of thecommitment the early Christians had to sharing a common life by referring to the practice inwhich they enacted it

245 And they sold their possessions and goods and divided them among everyoneaccording to need (καὶ τὰ κτήmicroατα καὶ τὰς ὑπάρξεις ἐπίπρασκον καὶ διεmicroέριζον αὐτὰπᾶσιν καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

434 There was no one among them in need as many as owned land or houses soldthem and brought the values of what was sold (οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐνδεής τις ἦν ἐν αὐτοῖς ὅσοιγὰρ κτήτορες χωρίων ἢ οἰκιῶν ὑπῆρχον πωλοῦντες ἔφερον τὰς τιmicroὰς τῶνπιπρασκοmicroένων) 435 and laid them at the feet of the apostles and distribution wasmade to each in accordance with need (καὶ ἐτίθουν παρὰ τοὺς πόδας τῶν ἀποστόλωνδιεδίδετο δὲ ἑκάστῳ καθότι ἄν τις χρείαν εἶχεν)

The needs of others are what break the bonds of individual ownership allowing the

transition from the private (ἴδιος) to the common (κοινά) Acts refers to making material goods

common rather than for example communicating private knowledge publicly presumablybecause of the difficulty people experience parting with private property and the correlativesignificance of the act of doing so For material possessions are the means by which they satisfytheir basic needs ndash for food shelter clothing and so on ndash and when possible their desire forluxuries The act of handing over possessions has two consequences The first is that thedistinction between rich and poor wealthy and needy owner and propertyless is abolished andthe members of the community come to stand on level ground The second consequence involvesa more fundamental risk on the part of property-owners By handing over their property theymake a leap of faith that the community will henceforth satisfy their needs as well through thesame practice of redistribution When applied in this fashion the general principle of being incommon or having in common results in an example of the first category of communism asspecified above ie communism as a principle of redistribution

Redistribution of property by the apostles creates occasions for active sharing asexpressions of the new form of common life 246 says that the members of the Church inJerusalem ldquoalso broke bread in each otherrsquos homes and took their meals in exaltation andsimplicity of heartrdquo (κλῶντές τε κατrsquo ο ἴκον ἄρτον microετελάmicroβανον τροφῆς ἐν ἀγαλλιάσει καὶἀφελότητι καρδίας) The value of sharing meals lies not merely in the fact that everyone is fedbut also in the experience of exaltation or ecstatic delight (ἀγαλλιάσεις) and sincerity orsimplicity of heart (ἀφελότητι καρδίας) The experience in common of exaltation and sincerity isat least as important as the act of satisfying needs although the two can be distinguished onlynotionally

The experience has its meaning in relation to the power (δυνάmicroις) that brings together themembers of the new community and inspires them to share their property The gathering of JewsGreeks and those from other nations (the circumcised and the uncircumcised as Paul says)occurs in the period following Pentecost when the Holy Spirit is supposed to have descended incloven tongues of flame upon the twelve apostles endowing them with the ability to speak inevery language Pentecost in turn follows by several weeks the resurrection of Christ and hisbodily ascension into heaven The gift of being able to speak in every language permits theapostles to convey their message to all nations That message ndash confirmed by ldquosigns andwondersrdquo ndash is testimony of their own first-hand witness to the Resurrection It is accompanied bythe baptism of the new members of the Church which repeats the Pentecostal experience byfilling them with the grace and power of the Holy Spirit

433 ldquoAnd with great power the apostles were giving witness to the resurrection of theLord Jesus and abundant grace was upon them all (καὶ δυνάmicroει microεγάλῃ ἀπεδίδουν τὸmicroαρτύριον οἱ ἀπόστολοι τοῦ Κυρίου Ἰησοῦ τῆς ἀναστάσεως χάρις τε microεγάλη ἦν ἐπὶπάντας αὐτούς)

The ecstatic delight and simplicity of heart that the members of the Church in Jerusalem

experience by sharing a common life is their enjoyment of this ldquoabundant gracerdquo (χάρις τεmicroεγάλη) The new community is built upon faith in the apostlesrsquo testimony that Jesus triumphedover death and that his victory promises an eternal life to all who believe That is the gift of theHoly Spirit Yet the ldquospiritualrdquo (πνευmicroατικός) content of early Christian experience does not denyits simultaneously material character For the significance of the Resurrection and the Ascensioninto Heaven is precisely that they concern the physical body of Christ When he appears toThomas who doubts that he has returned Jesus invites his disciple to place his hands into thewounds received from the Crucifixion The point is to show not only that the man standing infront of Thomas is not an imposter but also that the risen Christ is no disembodied ghost Andwhen the apostles witness the Ascension what they see is the physical body of Jesus rising toheaven There is little suggestion of soul-body dualism in Acts The spirit (πνεῦmicroα) infuses andtransfigures the body it does not exist apart from it In this respect it is similar to the life-givingbreath to which the word πνεῦmicroα originally referred Dualism is the result of a Platonizinginterpretation of Christianity that comes later The bodily character of the Resurrection extends tothe promise of eternal life for believers as well The promise is not that their souls will exist apart

from their bodies but that their bodies will rise up from the grave like that of their Savior Giventhis early Christian materialism it is not surprising that commonality of material goods wouldserve as a fundamental expression of the new life of the believers

As we already know the project of the sixteenth-century Anabaptists was to restore theChurch to its original apostolic condition by undoing the corruption they believed had set inwhen it made its peace with worldly wealth and power under Constantine Given the nature ofthe Anabaptist project it would seem that making material things common as described in Actswould follow as a matter of course However there is a long tradition ndash one that began aroundthe middle of the sixteenth century ndash of denying that Anabaptism has anything to do withcommunism regarding it as an accusation brought against the Anabaptists by their enemies It isunderstandable that this should be so The Anabaptists were the victims of a ldquored scarerdquo thatgripped the ruling classes of Europe in the aftermath of the Peasant War and the Muumlnstercommune It is impossible to explain the horrendous tortures forced relocations andinnumerable executions Anabaptists faced on the basis of heretical belief alone Nothing of aremotely similar scale was visited upon other schismatics The fact that the Anabaptistschallenged prevailing property relations is what made them victims of near-genocide It was amatter of survival then to create some distance between themselves and the charge ofadvocating common ownership of goods that came from Luther Zwingli and those whoextracted the confession from Thomas Muumlntzer that he held to the principle of Omnia communiasunt Recent scholarship however has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that having thingsin common was indeed a basic and widespread principle of Anabaptism at its origin just as it hasdemonstrated the influence veterans of the Peasant War had among the early Anabaptists

The dominant form of communist practice in early Anabaptism was appropriatelymodeled on the description of redistribution in Acts In Switzerland where the movementoriginated converts were often asked or required to make contributions to a ldquocommon purserdquoafter receiving adult baptism Some especially pious initiates went so far as to sell their land andhouses for that purpose in accordance with the biblical precedent When necessary officialsdistributed the contents of the purse to members of the community who were in need

Both proponents and enemies of Anabaptist communism often confused the redistributionof wealth with joint or communal property However except for the taking of meals in commonthere is no indication in Acts that redistribution collectivized ownership of wealth in this fashionbut only that it transferred wealth from the better-off members of the community to the worse-off Nevertheless some Anabaptists took joint or communal property as a paradigm for newproperty relations For example the visionary writing of the Nuremberg printer Hans Hergotwho was executed for rebellion in 1527 includes the following passage

And everything that grows on the land belongs to the church and the people who livethere Everything is bestowed for common use so that the people will eat from one potdrink from one vesselhellip And all things will be used in common so that no one is betteroff than another

The ldquowar communismrdquo of the city of Muumlnster involved an ad hoc form of communal propertythrough the edict that the doors to all homes be left open and the owners take in anyone whowished to reside with them But the most significant successful and long-lasting attempt toimplement communal property was that of the Hutterites

The Hutterites took their name from the charismatic hat-maker and Anabaptist leaderJacob Hutter However at their origins they were influenced by the revolutionary bookbinderHans Hut Hut shared Thomas Muumlntzerrsquos sanguinary apocalyptic view of social change andadvocated community ownership of goods in accordance with his own understanding of ActsHe survived the battle of Frankenhausen in which the peasant rebels were finally defeated butwas tortured and executed a few years later In the aftermath and under the influence of JacobHutter the Hutterites adopted pacifism and a strategy of creating autonomous communities Inorder escape persecution thousands of the brethren emigrated from Switzerland and Germany to

the more tolerant Moravia where they created hundreds of Bruderhofs farms and vineyards inwhich land houses farm implements produce and even objects of personal use were ownedcollectively The center of Bruderhof life was a large communal house in which craft productionoccurred on the ground floor and couples lived in small apartments on the upper levels The menengaged in farm labor and craftwork while the women were limited to traditional domesticduties in spite of the fact that children were raised communally apart from their parents TheBruderhofs enjoyed great economic success for a number of reasons People worked hard andconsumed little resulting in a surplus that could be used to purchase additional land seed andtools The size of the communities and of their agricultural production also enabled them to sellcheaply and to pay for supplies at generous prices both of which made the communitieseconomic assets to the areas in which they were located The Hutterites also organized both farmlabor and craft production cooperatively including the education boys were given in thenecessary skills They were therefore practitioners of the second and third forms of communismwe have identified namely communal ownership and cooperative organization of work Whenthey were ultimately forced out of Moravia by the triumph of Catholic forces in the Thirty YearsWar the Hutterites migrated eastward many finally relocating to Canada and the United Stateswhere the Bruderhofs continue to exist to this day

Communism as a kind of mutual aid was the contribution of the other major form ofAnabaptism that of the Mennonites With great political intelligence and skill Menno Simonswas able to reformulate the meaning of Omnia communia sunt in such a way as to avoidthreatening the property interests of nobles and clerics He did this in his book A Humble andChristian Justification and Replication First he denied that Mennonites were advocates ofcommunal property

This accusation is false and without all truth We do not teach and practice communityof goods but we teach and testify the Word of the Lord that all true believers in Christare of one body (1 Corinthians 1213) partakers of one bread (1 Corinthians 1017)have one God and one Lord (Ephesians 4)

In his assertion that the believers are of one body and partakers of one bread Simons is affirmingwhat we have called the general principle of communism while denying that Mennonitesembrace it in the specific form of communal property But he goes further by denying thatMennonites advocate a contemporary version of the apostolic redistribution of wealth

For although we know that the apostolic church had this practice in the beginning ascan be seen in the Acts of the Apostles nevertheless we note from their epistles that itdisappeared in their time and was no longer practiced

Instead of communal property or centralized redistribution of wealth the Mennonites derivefrom the general principle of Christian communism an alternative practice

Seeing then that they are one as said it is Christian and reasonable that they also havedivine love among them and that one member cares for another for both the Scripturesand nature teach this They show mercy and love as much as is in them They do notsuffer a beggar among them They have pity on the wants of the saints They receive thewretched They take strangers into their houses They comfort the sad They lend to theneedy They clothe the naked They share their bread with the hungry They do not turntheir face from the poorhellip

In the subsequent history of Mennonism the practice Simons describes came to be calledldquomutual aidrdquo Note that it is different from charitable giving and this in two ways First thereferences to receiving the wretched taking in strangers sharing bread and so on indicate a farmore personal even intimate form of involvement than simple charitable donation Second

there is the suggestion of reciprocity or mutuality (ldquoone member cares for anotherrdquo) that tends todeny the difference in status between the charitable giver and the recipient of charity Thepractice Simons describes is similar to what some anthropologists have called ldquogeneralizedreciprocityrdquo in which my obligation to give to you when you are in need corresponds to yourobligation to give to me when I am in need In a sense this is a form of redistribution inaccordance with need but it is enacted directly between individual members of the communityrather than administered centrally through a common purse

In line with his political purpose Simons is careful to distinguish between mutual aid andthe expropriation of private property

This is the kind of brotherhood we teach and not that some should take over andpossess the land soil and properties of others as we are falsely maligned accused andlied about by many

In this way he detaches the Mennonite version of communism from any revolutionary intentionThat was the prerequisite for communal survival during the long counter-revolution thatfollowed the Peasant War Still Simons never abandons the general principle Omnia communiasunt nor does he even really reject the practice of the early Church

Since we do not find it a permanent practice with the apostles we have not taught orpracticed community of goods but we urge earnestly and zealously to practice liberalgiving love and mercy as the apostolic writings teach and testify abundantly Andeven if we had taught and practiced community of goods as we are falsely accused ofdoing we would still not be doing otherwise than the holy apostles full of the HolySpirit themselves did in the former church at Jerusalem in the beginning of the holyChristian Church although they stopped the practice as has been said

Like the Hutterites Mennonite communities prospered once they managed to survive the

bloody period of reaction In Holland the Mennonite population consisted largely in successfulmerchants along with a number of lawyers doctors and other professionals Most of thepeasant artisan and laborer families who had started as Mennonites in the sixteenth century hadlong since converted to the Reform Church which is one reason Spinoza faced the problem ofpolitical agency in the TPT Although the idea of mutual aid persisted among the DutchMennonites it took the form predominantly of organized international philanthropy in which thecommunity made contributions not only to Mennonites abroad but to other populations in needThere was no escaping the fact however that in this philanthropic form mutual aid becamehardly distinguishable from conventional charity

Jarig Jelles was born into the Dutch Mennonite community around a century afterSimmons wrote his book when this process of slippage was well underway But there is littledoubt that Jelles knew the Mennonite teaching on mutual aid and its origin in the generalprinciple of Christian communism Even if Jelles never read Erasmusrsquo Adages Spinozarsquosreference to the supposed communism of Thales was likely to resonate with him on the basis ofhis own religious tradition

We cannot be certain how much Spinoza knew in detail about the communist practices ofthe Anabaptists but it is probably not a coincidence that he recommends three of the four atvarious places in his writings In Part 4 of the Ethics ldquoOf Human Bondage or the Strength of theEmotionsrdquo he identifies the chief virtue of the intellect as ldquostrength of the mindrdquo (fortitudo)According to him it takes two forms one directed to the self and one directed to others He callsthe inwardly directed form ldquocouragerdquo defining it as ldquothe desire whereby every individualendeavors to preserve his own being according to the dictates of reason alonerdquo The outwardlydirected form is generositas which Shirley translates as ldquonobilityrdquo though ldquosolidarityrdquo is closerto what Spinoza is getting at He defines it as ldquothe desire whereby every individual according to

the dictates of reason alone endeavors to assist others and make friends of themrdquo When twopeople in contact with one another possess the virtue of generositas they will clearly exhibit itreciprocally in the form of mutual aid the fourth communist practice

In Part 4 of the Ethics Spinoza also formulates a version of the first communist practicethat of the redistribution of wealth in accordance with need

Again men are won over by generosity especially those who do not have thewherewithal to produce what is necessary to support life Yet it is far beyond the powerand resources of a private person to come to the assistance of everyone in need For thewealth of a private person is quite unequal to such a demand It is also a practicalimpossibility for one man to establish friendship with all Therefore the care of the poordevolves upon society as a whole and looks only to the common good

The fact that society as a whole has responsibility for meeting the needs of the poor makes thepractice Spinoza recommends in this passage a version of the centralized redistribution of wealthdescribed in the Acts of the Apostles and institutionalized in Anabaptist form as the ldquocommonpurserdquo More than that the fact that society as a whole must take on this responsibility ratherthan a church or other sub-community makes Spinoza an early advocate of what will becomethree centuries later the European welfare state In our own period as the welfare state is beingdismantled it is easy to see that what neoliberals object to concerning it is precisely its implicitcommunism ie its practice of distribution in accordance with need

Spinoza advocates a third communist practice in his unfinished final work the PoliticalTreatise The context is his discussion of a maximally democratic version of monarchy in whichthe entire citizen body is armed and the king forbidden from making any decision contrary to thewill of a massive council of ordinary citizens In such a state

The fields and the soil and if possible the houses as well should be public property thatis should belong to the sovereign by whom they should be let at an annual rent tocitizens whether townsmen or country-dwellers Apart from this all citizens should befree or exempt from any form of taxation in time of peace Of this rent part should beallocated to the defense works of the commonwealth part to the kings domestic needsFor in time of peace it is still necessary to fortify cities as for war and to have in a stateof readiness ships and other armaments

Ownership of land and buildings by the sovereign is a form of communal property first becausethe citizens of the commonwealth delegate to him or them the property they hold in commonand second because that delegation occurs with the understanding that the sovereign will use theproperty in service of the common good

Spinoza supplies an argument based on more than simple utility for the practice ofholding land and buildings in common

hellip in a state of Nature the one thing a man cannot appropriate to himself and make hisown is land and whatever is so fixed to the land that he cannot conceal it anywhere orcarry it away where he pleases Thus the land and whatever is fixed to it in the way wehave described is especially the public property of the commonwealth that is of allthose who by their united strength can claim it or of him to whom all have delegated thepower to claim it

To state the argument differently since rights are the same as powers no individual has a naturalright to appropriate privately the land or any of its fixed structures because none has the powernecessary to do so The only response an individual can make to incursions by a more powerfulperson or group of people is flight in which he must leave the land and its buildings behind It is

only by entering into a community in which the strength of each is combined for the purpose ofdefense that people can effectively possess fixed property but they do so as a members of thecommunity rather than as an separate individuals According to Spinozarsquos theory of rights onlythe community has the right to own the land and its structures because only the community hasthe required power

The communal ownership of land houses and other buildings is a version of the secondcommunist practice on our list of which Hutterite joint ownership is the most developedhistorical example When adopted by a polity rather than a small community though thepractice has an added advantage Under those circumstances communal possession of fixedproperty eliminates the need for taxes except in time of war What takes their place is ageneration of revenue pegged to wealth since the members of society who are able to rent themost expensive and largest amounts of communal property will obviously pay the most in rentIn this way the form of communal ownership of land and buildings that Spinoza recommendsalso acts as a mechanism for the redistribution of wealth

The only communist practice of the Anabaptists that does not find an equivalent inSpinozarsquos writings is that of the cooperative organization of work The absence is related toSpinozarsquos inability to resolve the problem of political agency in the TPT An attempt to mobilizethe multitude on behalf of democratic social change would need to address the organization ofwork in such a way as to alleviate the burden of toil Reducing the number of hours spent inonerous labor is the only way to provide the multitude with the free time necessary to participatein institutionalized democratic politics Along with the redistribution of wealth and thedevelopment of communal property the cooperative reorganization of work would need to beincorporated as a plank in the latent political program that makes its first democratic appearancein the TPT and is extended in a communist direction in the passages from the Ethics and thePolitical Treatise that we have just examined But that would constitute an explicit anddangerous appeal to the multitude as the agent of political and social transformation an appealthat Spinoza consistently rejects It would involve nothing less than the revival of therevolutionary energies of the Peasant War on a new seventeenth-century foundation

In spite of his radicalism Spinoza doubted that revolution was capable of reconstructingsociety and the state in the way revolutionaries wanted In Chapter 18 of the TPT he takes aposition that is at least on the surface opposed to revolution or any attempt to change the formof the state fundamentally The context is a discussion of the transition from the early Hebrewcommonwealth in which the people held sovereignty to the rule of kings Spinoza tells us thatthe first period saw only a single civil war and concluded with a compassion for the vanquishedthat resulted in lasting peace By contrast the period of kings was marred by multiple warswaged only for the glory of the rulers and involved the massacre of hundreds of thousandsDuring the first period few prophets arose to rebuke the Jews while a great many emergedduring the time of the monarchies From this example Spinoza reasons that it is fatal for peopleaccustomed to popular sovereignty and governed by settled laws to adopt a new monarchicalform of government On the one hand they will be unable to tolerate the arbitrary exercise ofpower by a single individual while on the other the new monarch will be compelled to abolishthe existing laws because they did not originate by his own authority But it is just as dangerousaccording to Spinoza for the subjects of a monarch to attempt his replacement with popular ruleThis is because a popular revolution must advance to the point where it annihilates the king thekingrsquos family and the friends of the king in order to prevent the restoration of royal power But inthe process the revolutionary authority must assume a power even more draconian then thatpreviously exercised by the king In addition having committed regicide the new popularauthority faces the danger that it will fall victim to its own precedent For this reason as well andin the interest of survival it must wield power more repressively than the deposed sovereignSpinoza illustrates his point with reference to the English revolution which eliminated themonarch Charles I only to replace him with the Lord Protector Cromwell who was monarch inall but name and more repressive than Charles

Spinozarsquos point seems unassailable especially since the pattern he describes in the caseof the English Revolution repeated itself over the course of the next three centuries in the French

and Russian Revolutions It is at least arguable that Napoleon if not Robespierre was a newLouis XVI and Stalin a new Tsar even if this understates the more fundamental social changesthat resulted form the two revolutions Still Spinoza does not absolutely proscribe therevolutionary overthrow of a tyrannical government but says instead that there is a great dangerin making the attempt Besides his analysis of the conditions necessary for retaining sovereigntydoes not leave the decision about whether to engage in revolution up to militants He argues thatno state can survive that creates mass indignation in its people and this is precisely theunavoidable result of tyrannical government Spinozarsquos real purpose in Chapter 18 is to opposethe Orangist-Calvinist project of replacing the Dutch Republic with a monarchy ldquoAs for theEstates of Hollandrdquo he writes ldquoas far as we know they never had kings but counts to whom theright of sovereignty was never transferredrdquo His point is that the Dutch War of Independenceagainst Spain was justified because it restored the sovereignty of the people against the attemptby the Spanish ldquocountrdquo (King Philip II) to abolish it However any attempt to replace theRepublic with a monarchy would change the form of the state disastrously by divesting thepeople of their former rights

When Spinoza wrote his treatise the only revolutionary forces that existed were on theRight The danger he warns about in Chapter 18 of the TPT did indeed come to pass only oneyear after his letter to Jelles In 1672 a Calvinist-Orangist mob hacked Johan De Witt and hisbrother Cornelius to death at a time when Holland was invaded by the French army Streetorators stirred up the mob by claiming that the invasion was the result of the brothersrsquo treason Inthe aftermath of the murders William III prince of Orange was elevated to the position ofstadtholder of Holland Although William went on to become King of England he stopped shortof claiming a Dutch throne However in actuality he substituted his own power for much of thatwhich had belonged to the Estates General while the Reformed Church gained considerableinfluence in Dutch government According to a story made famous by Spinozarsquos earliestbiographer Johannes Colerus when the De Witt brothers were murdered Spinozarsquos landlordthwarted his attempt to go the site of the assassinations where the bodies of the brothers werestill on gruesome display in order to plant a sign reading Ultimi Barbarorum (the ultimatebarbarians) In this way the landlord undoubtedly saved the philosopherrsquos life It was the onlytime we know of when the mature Spinoza gave in to his passive affects in a significant way

There is a passage in Chapter 18 of the TPT that uncannily anticipates the murders

Tyranny is most violent where individual beliefs which are unalienable rights areregarded as criminal Indeed in such circumstances the anger of the common people[plebis] is usually the greatest tyrant of allhellip the vilest hypocrites urged on by that samefury which they call zeal for Gods law have everywhere persecuted men whoseblameless character and distinguished qualities have excited the hostility of the commonpeople [plebi] publicly denouncing their beliefs and inflaming the savage multitudersquos[multitudinem] anger against them

Spinoza was the first political philosopher who grappled with the problem of a mass-

based politics of the Right The problem would occur again with the fascist movements of the1920s and 1930s and with the return of the rightwing religious fundamentalisms of our own dayndash Jewish Christian Muslim and Hindu It is not surprising that he failed to solve the problemdefinitively since it continues to remain unsolved The remarkable thing about Spinoza thoughis not that he was skeptical about the liberatory possibilities of revolution by the masses but thathe defended the idea of a popular democracy nonetheless And this he continued to do even inthe aftermath of the De Witt murders In his work on the Political Treatise in the final year of hislife Spinoza developed a powerful critique of the elitist claim that the multitude are incapable ofgoverning

Yet perhaps our [democratic] suggestions will be received with ridicule by those whorestrict to the common people the faults that are inherent in all mankind saying There

is no moderation in the mob they terrorize unless they are frightened and Thecommon people is either a humble servant or an arrogant master there is no truth orjudgment in itrdquo and the like But all men share in one and the same nature it is powerand culture that mislead us with the result that when two men do the same thing weoften say that it is permissible for the one to do it and not the other not because of anydifference in the thing done but in the doer hellipThen again There is no moderation inthe mob they terrorize unless they are frightened For freedom and slavery do not gowell together Finally that there is no truth or judgment in the common people is notsurprising since the important affairs of state are conducted without their knowledgeand from the little that cannot be concealed they can only make conjecturehellip Howeveras we have said all men have the same nature ndash all grow haughty with rule terrorizeunless they are frightened ndash and everywhere truth becomes a casualty through hostilityor servility especially when despotic power is in the hands of one or a few who in trialspay attention not to justice or truth but to the extent of a persons wealth

Surprisingly Spinoza develops this democratic argument while discussing the institutions

appropriate to a monarchy But the key point he makes in the discussion is that a condition ofeffective monarchical rule is expansion of the democratic element within the state in the form ofa sizeable legislative council whose members are drawn from the general population of citizensover the age of fifty On Spinozarsquos view the mistake those who oppose democracy make isassuming that the faults exhibited by the common people ndash such as poor judgment arroganceand hostility ndash belong only to them while they are in fact typical of human beings Actually it iselitist politics that magnifies these all-too-human faults by restricting political power to a limitednumber of people while democratic politics minimizes them through the principle of majorityrule among numerous decision-makers The reason as we already know is that passions pullpeople in different directions making it nearly impossible for the members of a large council toagree on a common position unless they make decisions based not on passion but an idea of thecommon good On Spinozarsquos view it is when government is in the hands of a single person oronly a few people that the dangers the critics of democracy attribute to the common people are infact the greatest

Spinoza also argues against the claim that the common people are not qualified to makepolitical decisions because they lack the necessary education or degree of intellect There is noone he says who has been engaged in an occupation until the age of fifty who lacksunderstanding of his sphere of work ldquoevery man is reasonably competent and sagacious inmatters in which he has been long and attentively engagedrdquo So each is qualified at least to giveadvice in the kingrsquos council concerning his own business especially if given the time necessaryto reflect on the matter under discussion

Most of all the plebs are the group best suited to serving on the council because theirinterest is that of society as a whole ldquoHence it follows that counselors must necessarily beappointed whose private fortune and advantage depend on the general welfare and the peace ofallrdquo For example Spinoza emphasizes the idea that the common people have the highest stake inavoiding war or concluding an existing war with a settlement that brings lasting peace Thereason is they are ones who bear the heaviest burdens of war Unlike the wealthy well-bornmembers of society it is the common person whose occupation is most likely to be interrupted itis his taxes that are raised to onerous levels and it is his son who dies Thus the common interestof society in peace is best served not by a wealthy or educated elite but rather by those whohave the most to lose from war

At the end of the long paragraph defending popular power quoted above Spinozaconnects the question of who holds power within the state to that of who owns property Truthand justice he says are casualties in states where power is held by one person or a handful ofpeople who conduct courtroom trials that favor the rich The implication is that elitist politicalpower and ownership of wealth are intrinsically connected One of the reasons Spinozarecommends public ownership of land and buildings in a monarchy is to prevent the rise of aclass of wealthy landowners with interests different than those of the rest of society Under the

conditions of common ownership ldquothe greatest part of the council will generally have one andthe same attitude of mind towards their common interests and peaceful activitieshelliprdquo And yethaving gone this far he has trouble imagining a state where fixed property is owned collectivelyin which the actually existing multitude holds power The peasants artisans and urban poor whoconstitute the common people of the United Provinces drop out of the picture in the democratic-communist monarchy he describes and nearly everyone makes his living by selling merchandiseor lending money to countrymen ldquoall will have to make a living by engaging in trade or bylending money to their fellow citizensrdquo He seems to assume that the collectivization of land andfixed property would eliminate the occupations of peasant and artisan leaving trade and loaningat interest the only remaining possibilities of work But that of course is not true The fact thatpeople would have to rent farm land would not prevent them from farming any more than theneed to rent workshops in the cities and towns would prevent artisans from plying their tradesBut Spinoza finds the idea of a commonwealth based on commercial enterprise politicallyappealing This is because he regards commercial occupations as contributing to harmony andpeace since he claims they establish connections between people that further the interests of allwhile those who engage in them prosper only in peacetime Both of these assumptions are asquestionable as the expectation that non-commercial occupations will die out After all even inSpinozarsquos day colonialism and the struggle for colonies between imperialist states led to warsbetween the great powers including the United Provinces not to mention the military and otherforms of violence involved in subjugating the colonies The East India Company was not exactlya force for peace What seems to be at work here instead is a failure of social imaginationthough one we may find understandable given the fact that the capitalist economy was still at anearly stage in its development However this may be there is no denying the fact that despite hispowerful arguments in favor of democratic rule and communal property it is still a bourgeoissociety and state that Spinoza envisions

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of what we should not hesitate to call Spinozarsquoscommunism is the critique of private ownership he develops in the Ethics based on his theory ofaffects For him there is a paradox involved in social and political life It stems from the fact thaton the one hand people can survive and develop their capacities only by joining with oneanother in societies and states But on the other hand the necessity of combining with oneanother does not prevent them from seeking their own advantage above that of their fellowsbeing quarrelsome or hateful and erecting obstacles to each otherrsquos happiness Spinoza identifiesthe reason for these deep-rooted problems of social coexistence in Part IV Proposition 35 of theEthics ldquoInsofar as men are assailed by emotions that are passive they can be contrary to oneanotherrdquo Emotions are states of the body characterized by a transition from a lower degree of thepower to exist and act (conatus) to a higher one or conversely from a higher degree to a lowerone The first transition is the affect of joy while the second is that of sadness Passive emotionsare caused by an object external to the body or more precisely external to its essential natureSpinoza conceives of that nature as a specific proportion of motion-and-rest that the parts of thebody exhibit in relation to one another While joy is an increase in our capacity to preserve theproportion of motion-and-rest essential to our body (ie to exist and act as we do) sadness is adecrease in that capacity The political problem created by the passive emotions is that evenwhen they are joyful they are not under the control of the person who experiences themMoreover different people are affected by the same external object in different ways because theparts of their bodies and their proportionate relations of motion-and rest-differ The same objectmay elicit anger in one person and pity in another or love in one and hatred in another and soon And because people differ in their emotional reactions to the same things they also differ inthe judgments they frame on the basis of these reactions What one person praises anotherperson blames what one regards as fearless another believes to be timid etc Finally sincepeople act upon their judgments seeking to foster what they judge to be good and destroy whatthey judge to be bad their differing judgments can result in actions that are in conflict with oneanother In short ldquoinsofar as they are assailed by passive emotions [people] can be contrary toone anotherrdquo

In Proposition 34 Spinoza gives an example of the contrariety caused by the passiveaffects Suppose Peter has sole possession of something Paul loves Deprivation of the loved

object causes sadness in Paul with the idea of Peter as its cause In accordance with Spinozarsquosdefinition of hatred Paul will hate Peter and therefore seek to injure or destroy him in order toremove the cause of his Paulrsquos sadness Spinoza says that this example may seem wrong becausePaul and Peter appear to be contrary to one another because of something they share ndash ie theirlove for the thing Peter possesses But that is not the case Paul has an image of himself aslacking the loved object while Peter has an image of himself as possessing the loved object Sothey in fact differ from one another by virtue of the different images they have rather than bypossessing something in common It is clear from the example that the root of this contrariety ndashie this enmity ndash between Paul and Peter is the fact that the object can be possessed by only oneof them so that what one has the other must lack The difficulty with private property is that it isexclusive to the one who possesses it which means that what I experience as possession othersexperience as deprivation It may seem that there is no problem if other people are indifferent tothe thing I possess However in accordance with Spinozarsquos theory of the imitation of affects themere fact that I love the thing I own other things being equal will cause you to love it as wellMy exclusive possession of the thing will therefore cause sadness in you that takes the form ofhatred or more precisely the kind of hatred called envy which involves pain at the good fortuneof another ldquohuman nature is in general so constituted that men pity the unfortunate and envy thefortunate in the latter case with a hatred proportionate to their love of what they think anotherpossessesrdquo

Common Possession Friendship and Philosophy

In the Ethics Spinoza does not follow his analysis of the antagonisms of private property

by considering the collective possession of material goods (although he does advocateredistribution of wealth to the poor in Part 4 as we have seen) But the theme of commonpossession figures large in the book anyway in his treatment of the intellectual love of God Inorder to understand the connection between common possession and amor Dei intellectualis itwill be necessary to engage in a detailed analysis of Spinozarsquos metaphysics We will begin thattask in earnest in the next chapter At this point we will simply introduce the theme byexamining the relationship between friendship and common possession in the letter to Jelles andsome related writings

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo unlike the similar passages fromActs has its provenance among philosophers Spinoza mistakenly attributes it to Thales but itoccurs in Platorsquos Phaedrus and Laws and is present though not in so many words in thediscussion in the Republic of common ownership of property by the guardian class Thetradition cited by Erasmus that traces the proverb back to Pythagoras is plausible when weconsider the influence the Pythagorean community in Sicily had on Plato in the aftermath ofSocratesrsquo death Erasmus sees the supposed use of a common fund by the Pythagoreans as ananticipation of the similar practice in Acts But Spinozarsquos approach is different What interestshim in the letter is common ownership not as a religious practice but as a matter of thephilosopherrsquos relation to the world Remember the deductive consequences of the proverb sinceall things are in common among friends everything belongs to the wise because the wise arefriends of the gods and all things belong to the gods But what does it mean to say that the wiseare friends of the gods

Although Spinoza uses the word ldquofriendshiprdquo often in his writings he never supplies aformal definition However we can reconstruct the wordrsquos meaning from the contexts in whichhe uses it So for example Proposition 35 of Part III of the Ethics reads

If anyone thinks that there is between the object of his love and another person the sameor a more intimate bond of friendship than there was between them when he alone usedto possess the object loved he will be affected with hatred toward the object loved andwill envy his rival

According to the proposition friendship is an intimate bond between a person and the

object he loves I hate an object of love that I alone once possessed when it wounds my vanity byloving someone else more than me So the object of love must be capable of loving whichmeans that the bond of friendship is a relation of reciprocal love between persons Nowaccording to Spinoza I love something when I have the idea of that thing as the cause of myexperience of joy Joy is an increase in conatus which Spinoza defines as the tendency to persistin being or equivalently the ability to exist and act So friendship is a relation in which Iidentify the other person as the cause of an increase in my conatus and the other personidentifies me as the cause of a similar increase in his or hers Two things each of which causesan increase in the ability to exist and act of the other are said by Spinoza to be in harmony Sincetwo entities in harmony have more combined power than either does singly it is to the advantageof each to be in harmony with the other There is even greater advantage in entering intoharmonious connection with a third individual and the greatest advantage in combining with asmany individuals as possible This is a universal metaphysical principle For example it pertainsjust as much to chemical combination or herding among animals as it does to social relationsbetween people In the case of human relationships it is the fundamental basis of politics orrather one of its two bases the other one being the tendency human beings have to conflict withone another When the state is functioning well it involves not a random collection ofindividuals and certainly not the war of each against all but a group whose members are boundto one another by friendship the human form of harmony Thus for Spinoza friendship is apolitical virtue as it was for Plato and Aristotle

The opposite of friendship is enmity That person is my enemy whom I regard as thecause of my sadness or pain which is the same as saying the cause of a decrease in my abilityto exist and act Like friendship enmity is a reciprocal relationship If I identify you as the causeof my sadness I will seek to injure or eliminate you But that means I will be identified in yourmind as the cause of your sadness Enmity is a relation of reciprocal hatred just as friendship is arelation of reciprocal love Just as there is harmony between friends there is discord betweenenemies The fundamental task of a rational politics is easy to state it is to extend and intensifyfriendship and to reduce and mollify enmity

We have already seen that Spinoza identifies solidarity (generositas) as one of the twoforms of strength of mind (fortitudo) which is the virtue that belongs to the exercise of theintellect Solidarity is the desire to assist others and foster friendship on the basis of reason aloneThe friendship fostered by solidarity is a bond of active love The love of friends for one anotheris active when each person who loves is the adequate cause of his or her love To say that theperson is the adequate cause means that the cause of love is internal to the person who feels it inother words that the love is self-generated Active love differs from passive love in that thecause of passive love is at least partially something that exists outside the person who has theemotion The problem with passive love is that it need not be constant If the bodily dispositionof the person changes in a particular way then the object of erstwhile love will have a differentemotional effect Passive love can change into boredom or indifference or even hatred This isnot possible in the case of active love because it is self-generated Since love involves theexperience of joy no one actively abandons it

There seems to be something odd about the idea of a love between persons that isinternally generated by each of the partners in the relationship Is it not the case that part of theessence of love is the fact that the object of my love is the cause of my love Without denyingthis Spinoza identifies two forms of love that are self-generated in the Ethics One is myintellectual love of God It is indeed true that God is the cause of my love but only insofar as myintellect is part of the infinite intellect of God Thus the object that causes my love - ie God - isinternal to my mind and conversely my mind is internal to it Such reciprocal internality ndash hardas it is to visualize ndash is what Spinoza means by immanence God he tells us is the immanentcause of everything that exists Nothing can exist apart from God while God expresses himselfin all of the things that exist My love of God and Gods love of himself are one and the samebecause Godrsquos intellect is immanent in mine The second form of self-generated love is the

friendship that exists between me and others who love God through the exercise of the intellectThe reason is that the joy I feel in loving God is by the imitation of affects augmented by thejoy you feel in loving God But your love as well as mine is joy caused by the same immanentbeing Another way of saying this is that your intellect and mine are parts (ie finiteexpressions) of the infinite intellect of God Thus the relationship between friends who are boundtogether by the common exercise of the intellect and the love of God that flows from it is basedon an internal bond an internal object and cause of love In this kind of love you and I as itwere discover one another internally You are inside of me and I am inside of you Thus whenyou augment my love and I augment yours it is Gods power as the intellect immanent in us boththat causes the augmentation even though we remain finite individual beings In this state ofaffairs which is admittedly difficult to grasp we can see the rational meaning of the command tolove God by loving the neighbor In intellectual love God not insofar as he is infinite butinsofar as he expresses himself in my finite intellect loves God as he expresses himself in yourfinite intellect

For Spinoza the exercise of the intellect is very different than our ordinary experience ofthe world In the course of ordinary experience we encounter objects in a way that appearshaphazard disordered and incomplete This is so first of all because our encounters are part ofan infinitely complex chain of natural causes and effects of which we know only very limitedparts In addition our experience of objects has as much to do with the condition our bodies arein when we encounter them as it does with the nature of the objects themselves By contrast inexercising the intellect we arrange our ideas in an intelligible pattern that is internal to the mindand entirely different than the images we accumulate through sensory experience The ideas arean expression of our power while the images result from our hapless deliverance to chanceEmotions caused by objects we encounter in the course of ordinary experience are externallydetermined and therefore passive while emotions caused by acts of intellectual comprehensionare internally generated and therefore active That is why love as an active emotion has its originin the exercise of the intellect and the most satisfying form of friendship is based on thereciprocal experience of such love In a letter to Willem van Blyenberg Spinoza provides themost complete description of this kind of friendship to be found in his writings

For my part of all things that are not under my control what I most value is to enterinto a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth For I believe that such a lovingrelationship affords us a serenity surpassing any other boon in the whole wide worldThe love that such men bear to one another grounded as it is in the love that each hasfor knowledge of truth is as unshakable as is the acceptance of truth once it has beenperceived It is moreover the highest source of happiness to be found in things notunder our command for truth more than anything else has the power to effect a closeunion between different sentiments and dispositions

Spinoza says that a friendship based on the love of truth is not under our control But how

can that be if intellectual friendship involves a form of love internally generated by each friendIt would seem that the love we generate through the exercise of the intellect is fully under ourcontrol Spinoza however is referring to the fact that we are able to become friends only withpeople we actually meet which is something that occurs in the course of ordinary haphazarddisordered experience To a large extent our friendships are a matter of chance By way ofillustrating this point it turned out that Spinoza decided his initial judgment of Blyenberg wasmistaken He broke off their correspondence when he realized that the infinite chain of causesand effects had brought his way not a lover of truth but a dogmatic worshipper of the ldquopaperand inkrdquo of the Bible

People create commonwealths because the power of each to exist and act is increased byall others who transfer their rights to the sovereign For reasons we have already considered thepolitical bond is one of friendship ldquoIt is of the first importance to men to establish closerelationships and to bind themselves together with such ties as may most effectively unite theminto one body and as an absolute rule to act in such a way as serves to strengthen friendshiprdquo If

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

common rather than for example communicating private knowledge publicly presumablybecause of the difficulty people experience parting with private property and the correlativesignificance of the act of doing so For material possessions are the means by which they satisfytheir basic needs ndash for food shelter clothing and so on ndash and when possible their desire forluxuries The act of handing over possessions has two consequences The first is that thedistinction between rich and poor wealthy and needy owner and propertyless is abolished andthe members of the community come to stand on level ground The second consequence involvesa more fundamental risk on the part of property-owners By handing over their property theymake a leap of faith that the community will henceforth satisfy their needs as well through thesame practice of redistribution When applied in this fashion the general principle of being incommon or having in common results in an example of the first category of communism asspecified above ie communism as a principle of redistribution

Redistribution of property by the apostles creates occasions for active sharing asexpressions of the new form of common life 246 says that the members of the Church inJerusalem ldquoalso broke bread in each otherrsquos homes and took their meals in exaltation andsimplicity of heartrdquo (κλῶντές τε κατrsquo ο ἴκον ἄρτον microετελάmicroβανον τροφῆς ἐν ἀγαλλιάσει καὶἀφελότητι καρδίας) The value of sharing meals lies not merely in the fact that everyone is fedbut also in the experience of exaltation or ecstatic delight (ἀγαλλιάσεις) and sincerity orsimplicity of heart (ἀφελότητι καρδίας) The experience in common of exaltation and sincerity isat least as important as the act of satisfying needs although the two can be distinguished onlynotionally

The experience has its meaning in relation to the power (δυνάmicroις) that brings together themembers of the new community and inspires them to share their property The gathering of JewsGreeks and those from other nations (the circumcised and the uncircumcised as Paul says)occurs in the period following Pentecost when the Holy Spirit is supposed to have descended incloven tongues of flame upon the twelve apostles endowing them with the ability to speak inevery language Pentecost in turn follows by several weeks the resurrection of Christ and hisbodily ascension into heaven The gift of being able to speak in every language permits theapostles to convey their message to all nations That message ndash confirmed by ldquosigns andwondersrdquo ndash is testimony of their own first-hand witness to the Resurrection It is accompanied bythe baptism of the new members of the Church which repeats the Pentecostal experience byfilling them with the grace and power of the Holy Spirit

433 ldquoAnd with great power the apostles were giving witness to the resurrection of theLord Jesus and abundant grace was upon them all (καὶ δυνάmicroει microεγάλῃ ἀπεδίδουν τὸmicroαρτύριον οἱ ἀπόστολοι τοῦ Κυρίου Ἰησοῦ τῆς ἀναστάσεως χάρις τε microεγάλη ἦν ἐπὶπάντας αὐτούς)

The ecstatic delight and simplicity of heart that the members of the Church in Jerusalem

experience by sharing a common life is their enjoyment of this ldquoabundant gracerdquo (χάρις τεmicroεγάλη) The new community is built upon faith in the apostlesrsquo testimony that Jesus triumphedover death and that his victory promises an eternal life to all who believe That is the gift of theHoly Spirit Yet the ldquospiritualrdquo (πνευmicroατικός) content of early Christian experience does not denyits simultaneously material character For the significance of the Resurrection and the Ascensioninto Heaven is precisely that they concern the physical body of Christ When he appears toThomas who doubts that he has returned Jesus invites his disciple to place his hands into thewounds received from the Crucifixion The point is to show not only that the man standing infront of Thomas is not an imposter but also that the risen Christ is no disembodied ghost Andwhen the apostles witness the Ascension what they see is the physical body of Jesus rising toheaven There is little suggestion of soul-body dualism in Acts The spirit (πνεῦmicroα) infuses andtransfigures the body it does not exist apart from it In this respect it is similar to the life-givingbreath to which the word πνεῦmicroα originally referred Dualism is the result of a Platonizinginterpretation of Christianity that comes later The bodily character of the Resurrection extends tothe promise of eternal life for believers as well The promise is not that their souls will exist apart

from their bodies but that their bodies will rise up from the grave like that of their Savior Giventhis early Christian materialism it is not surprising that commonality of material goods wouldserve as a fundamental expression of the new life of the believers

As we already know the project of the sixteenth-century Anabaptists was to restore theChurch to its original apostolic condition by undoing the corruption they believed had set inwhen it made its peace with worldly wealth and power under Constantine Given the nature ofthe Anabaptist project it would seem that making material things common as described in Actswould follow as a matter of course However there is a long tradition ndash one that began aroundthe middle of the sixteenth century ndash of denying that Anabaptism has anything to do withcommunism regarding it as an accusation brought against the Anabaptists by their enemies It isunderstandable that this should be so The Anabaptists were the victims of a ldquored scarerdquo thatgripped the ruling classes of Europe in the aftermath of the Peasant War and the Muumlnstercommune It is impossible to explain the horrendous tortures forced relocations andinnumerable executions Anabaptists faced on the basis of heretical belief alone Nothing of aremotely similar scale was visited upon other schismatics The fact that the Anabaptistschallenged prevailing property relations is what made them victims of near-genocide It was amatter of survival then to create some distance between themselves and the charge ofadvocating common ownership of goods that came from Luther Zwingli and those whoextracted the confession from Thomas Muumlntzer that he held to the principle of Omnia communiasunt Recent scholarship however has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that having thingsin common was indeed a basic and widespread principle of Anabaptism at its origin just as it hasdemonstrated the influence veterans of the Peasant War had among the early Anabaptists

The dominant form of communist practice in early Anabaptism was appropriatelymodeled on the description of redistribution in Acts In Switzerland where the movementoriginated converts were often asked or required to make contributions to a ldquocommon purserdquoafter receiving adult baptism Some especially pious initiates went so far as to sell their land andhouses for that purpose in accordance with the biblical precedent When necessary officialsdistributed the contents of the purse to members of the community who were in need

Both proponents and enemies of Anabaptist communism often confused the redistributionof wealth with joint or communal property However except for the taking of meals in commonthere is no indication in Acts that redistribution collectivized ownership of wealth in this fashionbut only that it transferred wealth from the better-off members of the community to the worse-off Nevertheless some Anabaptists took joint or communal property as a paradigm for newproperty relations For example the visionary writing of the Nuremberg printer Hans Hergotwho was executed for rebellion in 1527 includes the following passage

And everything that grows on the land belongs to the church and the people who livethere Everything is bestowed for common use so that the people will eat from one potdrink from one vesselhellip And all things will be used in common so that no one is betteroff than another

The ldquowar communismrdquo of the city of Muumlnster involved an ad hoc form of communal propertythrough the edict that the doors to all homes be left open and the owners take in anyone whowished to reside with them But the most significant successful and long-lasting attempt toimplement communal property was that of the Hutterites

The Hutterites took their name from the charismatic hat-maker and Anabaptist leaderJacob Hutter However at their origins they were influenced by the revolutionary bookbinderHans Hut Hut shared Thomas Muumlntzerrsquos sanguinary apocalyptic view of social change andadvocated community ownership of goods in accordance with his own understanding of ActsHe survived the battle of Frankenhausen in which the peasant rebels were finally defeated butwas tortured and executed a few years later In the aftermath and under the influence of JacobHutter the Hutterites adopted pacifism and a strategy of creating autonomous communities Inorder escape persecution thousands of the brethren emigrated from Switzerland and Germany to

the more tolerant Moravia where they created hundreds of Bruderhofs farms and vineyards inwhich land houses farm implements produce and even objects of personal use were ownedcollectively The center of Bruderhof life was a large communal house in which craft productionoccurred on the ground floor and couples lived in small apartments on the upper levels The menengaged in farm labor and craftwork while the women were limited to traditional domesticduties in spite of the fact that children were raised communally apart from their parents TheBruderhofs enjoyed great economic success for a number of reasons People worked hard andconsumed little resulting in a surplus that could be used to purchase additional land seed andtools The size of the communities and of their agricultural production also enabled them to sellcheaply and to pay for supplies at generous prices both of which made the communitieseconomic assets to the areas in which they were located The Hutterites also organized both farmlabor and craft production cooperatively including the education boys were given in thenecessary skills They were therefore practitioners of the second and third forms of communismwe have identified namely communal ownership and cooperative organization of work Whenthey were ultimately forced out of Moravia by the triumph of Catholic forces in the Thirty YearsWar the Hutterites migrated eastward many finally relocating to Canada and the United Stateswhere the Bruderhofs continue to exist to this day

Communism as a kind of mutual aid was the contribution of the other major form ofAnabaptism that of the Mennonites With great political intelligence and skill Menno Simonswas able to reformulate the meaning of Omnia communia sunt in such a way as to avoidthreatening the property interests of nobles and clerics He did this in his book A Humble andChristian Justification and Replication First he denied that Mennonites were advocates ofcommunal property

This accusation is false and without all truth We do not teach and practice communityof goods but we teach and testify the Word of the Lord that all true believers in Christare of one body (1 Corinthians 1213) partakers of one bread (1 Corinthians 1017)have one God and one Lord (Ephesians 4)

In his assertion that the believers are of one body and partakers of one bread Simons is affirmingwhat we have called the general principle of communism while denying that Mennonitesembrace it in the specific form of communal property But he goes further by denying thatMennonites advocate a contemporary version of the apostolic redistribution of wealth

For although we know that the apostolic church had this practice in the beginning ascan be seen in the Acts of the Apostles nevertheless we note from their epistles that itdisappeared in their time and was no longer practiced

Instead of communal property or centralized redistribution of wealth the Mennonites derivefrom the general principle of Christian communism an alternative practice

Seeing then that they are one as said it is Christian and reasonable that they also havedivine love among them and that one member cares for another for both the Scripturesand nature teach this They show mercy and love as much as is in them They do notsuffer a beggar among them They have pity on the wants of the saints They receive thewretched They take strangers into their houses They comfort the sad They lend to theneedy They clothe the naked They share their bread with the hungry They do not turntheir face from the poorhellip

In the subsequent history of Mennonism the practice Simons describes came to be calledldquomutual aidrdquo Note that it is different from charitable giving and this in two ways First thereferences to receiving the wretched taking in strangers sharing bread and so on indicate a farmore personal even intimate form of involvement than simple charitable donation Second

there is the suggestion of reciprocity or mutuality (ldquoone member cares for anotherrdquo) that tends todeny the difference in status between the charitable giver and the recipient of charity Thepractice Simons describes is similar to what some anthropologists have called ldquogeneralizedreciprocityrdquo in which my obligation to give to you when you are in need corresponds to yourobligation to give to me when I am in need In a sense this is a form of redistribution inaccordance with need but it is enacted directly between individual members of the communityrather than administered centrally through a common purse

In line with his political purpose Simons is careful to distinguish between mutual aid andthe expropriation of private property

This is the kind of brotherhood we teach and not that some should take over andpossess the land soil and properties of others as we are falsely maligned accused andlied about by many

In this way he detaches the Mennonite version of communism from any revolutionary intentionThat was the prerequisite for communal survival during the long counter-revolution thatfollowed the Peasant War Still Simons never abandons the general principle Omnia communiasunt nor does he even really reject the practice of the early Church

Since we do not find it a permanent practice with the apostles we have not taught orpracticed community of goods but we urge earnestly and zealously to practice liberalgiving love and mercy as the apostolic writings teach and testify abundantly Andeven if we had taught and practiced community of goods as we are falsely accused ofdoing we would still not be doing otherwise than the holy apostles full of the HolySpirit themselves did in the former church at Jerusalem in the beginning of the holyChristian Church although they stopped the practice as has been said

Like the Hutterites Mennonite communities prospered once they managed to survive the

bloody period of reaction In Holland the Mennonite population consisted largely in successfulmerchants along with a number of lawyers doctors and other professionals Most of thepeasant artisan and laborer families who had started as Mennonites in the sixteenth century hadlong since converted to the Reform Church which is one reason Spinoza faced the problem ofpolitical agency in the TPT Although the idea of mutual aid persisted among the DutchMennonites it took the form predominantly of organized international philanthropy in which thecommunity made contributions not only to Mennonites abroad but to other populations in needThere was no escaping the fact however that in this philanthropic form mutual aid becamehardly distinguishable from conventional charity

Jarig Jelles was born into the Dutch Mennonite community around a century afterSimmons wrote his book when this process of slippage was well underway But there is littledoubt that Jelles knew the Mennonite teaching on mutual aid and its origin in the generalprinciple of Christian communism Even if Jelles never read Erasmusrsquo Adages Spinozarsquosreference to the supposed communism of Thales was likely to resonate with him on the basis ofhis own religious tradition

We cannot be certain how much Spinoza knew in detail about the communist practices ofthe Anabaptists but it is probably not a coincidence that he recommends three of the four atvarious places in his writings In Part 4 of the Ethics ldquoOf Human Bondage or the Strength of theEmotionsrdquo he identifies the chief virtue of the intellect as ldquostrength of the mindrdquo (fortitudo)According to him it takes two forms one directed to the self and one directed to others He callsthe inwardly directed form ldquocouragerdquo defining it as ldquothe desire whereby every individualendeavors to preserve his own being according to the dictates of reason alonerdquo The outwardlydirected form is generositas which Shirley translates as ldquonobilityrdquo though ldquosolidarityrdquo is closerto what Spinoza is getting at He defines it as ldquothe desire whereby every individual according to

the dictates of reason alone endeavors to assist others and make friends of themrdquo When twopeople in contact with one another possess the virtue of generositas they will clearly exhibit itreciprocally in the form of mutual aid the fourth communist practice

In Part 4 of the Ethics Spinoza also formulates a version of the first communist practicethat of the redistribution of wealth in accordance with need

Again men are won over by generosity especially those who do not have thewherewithal to produce what is necessary to support life Yet it is far beyond the powerand resources of a private person to come to the assistance of everyone in need For thewealth of a private person is quite unequal to such a demand It is also a practicalimpossibility for one man to establish friendship with all Therefore the care of the poordevolves upon society as a whole and looks only to the common good

The fact that society as a whole has responsibility for meeting the needs of the poor makes thepractice Spinoza recommends in this passage a version of the centralized redistribution of wealthdescribed in the Acts of the Apostles and institutionalized in Anabaptist form as the ldquocommonpurserdquo More than that the fact that society as a whole must take on this responsibility ratherthan a church or other sub-community makes Spinoza an early advocate of what will becomethree centuries later the European welfare state In our own period as the welfare state is beingdismantled it is easy to see that what neoliberals object to concerning it is precisely its implicitcommunism ie its practice of distribution in accordance with need

Spinoza advocates a third communist practice in his unfinished final work the PoliticalTreatise The context is his discussion of a maximally democratic version of monarchy in whichthe entire citizen body is armed and the king forbidden from making any decision contrary to thewill of a massive council of ordinary citizens In such a state

The fields and the soil and if possible the houses as well should be public property thatis should belong to the sovereign by whom they should be let at an annual rent tocitizens whether townsmen or country-dwellers Apart from this all citizens should befree or exempt from any form of taxation in time of peace Of this rent part should beallocated to the defense works of the commonwealth part to the kings domestic needsFor in time of peace it is still necessary to fortify cities as for war and to have in a stateof readiness ships and other armaments

Ownership of land and buildings by the sovereign is a form of communal property first becausethe citizens of the commonwealth delegate to him or them the property they hold in commonand second because that delegation occurs with the understanding that the sovereign will use theproperty in service of the common good

Spinoza supplies an argument based on more than simple utility for the practice ofholding land and buildings in common

hellip in a state of Nature the one thing a man cannot appropriate to himself and make hisown is land and whatever is so fixed to the land that he cannot conceal it anywhere orcarry it away where he pleases Thus the land and whatever is fixed to it in the way wehave described is especially the public property of the commonwealth that is of allthose who by their united strength can claim it or of him to whom all have delegated thepower to claim it

To state the argument differently since rights are the same as powers no individual has a naturalright to appropriate privately the land or any of its fixed structures because none has the powernecessary to do so The only response an individual can make to incursions by a more powerfulperson or group of people is flight in which he must leave the land and its buildings behind It is

only by entering into a community in which the strength of each is combined for the purpose ofdefense that people can effectively possess fixed property but they do so as a members of thecommunity rather than as an separate individuals According to Spinozarsquos theory of rights onlythe community has the right to own the land and its structures because only the community hasthe required power

The communal ownership of land houses and other buildings is a version of the secondcommunist practice on our list of which Hutterite joint ownership is the most developedhistorical example When adopted by a polity rather than a small community though thepractice has an added advantage Under those circumstances communal possession of fixedproperty eliminates the need for taxes except in time of war What takes their place is ageneration of revenue pegged to wealth since the members of society who are able to rent themost expensive and largest amounts of communal property will obviously pay the most in rentIn this way the form of communal ownership of land and buildings that Spinoza recommendsalso acts as a mechanism for the redistribution of wealth

The only communist practice of the Anabaptists that does not find an equivalent inSpinozarsquos writings is that of the cooperative organization of work The absence is related toSpinozarsquos inability to resolve the problem of political agency in the TPT An attempt to mobilizethe multitude on behalf of democratic social change would need to address the organization ofwork in such a way as to alleviate the burden of toil Reducing the number of hours spent inonerous labor is the only way to provide the multitude with the free time necessary to participatein institutionalized democratic politics Along with the redistribution of wealth and thedevelopment of communal property the cooperative reorganization of work would need to beincorporated as a plank in the latent political program that makes its first democratic appearancein the TPT and is extended in a communist direction in the passages from the Ethics and thePolitical Treatise that we have just examined But that would constitute an explicit anddangerous appeal to the multitude as the agent of political and social transformation an appealthat Spinoza consistently rejects It would involve nothing less than the revival of therevolutionary energies of the Peasant War on a new seventeenth-century foundation

In spite of his radicalism Spinoza doubted that revolution was capable of reconstructingsociety and the state in the way revolutionaries wanted In Chapter 18 of the TPT he takes aposition that is at least on the surface opposed to revolution or any attempt to change the formof the state fundamentally The context is a discussion of the transition from the early Hebrewcommonwealth in which the people held sovereignty to the rule of kings Spinoza tells us thatthe first period saw only a single civil war and concluded with a compassion for the vanquishedthat resulted in lasting peace By contrast the period of kings was marred by multiple warswaged only for the glory of the rulers and involved the massacre of hundreds of thousandsDuring the first period few prophets arose to rebuke the Jews while a great many emergedduring the time of the monarchies From this example Spinoza reasons that it is fatal for peopleaccustomed to popular sovereignty and governed by settled laws to adopt a new monarchicalform of government On the one hand they will be unable to tolerate the arbitrary exercise ofpower by a single individual while on the other the new monarch will be compelled to abolishthe existing laws because they did not originate by his own authority But it is just as dangerousaccording to Spinoza for the subjects of a monarch to attempt his replacement with popular ruleThis is because a popular revolution must advance to the point where it annihilates the king thekingrsquos family and the friends of the king in order to prevent the restoration of royal power But inthe process the revolutionary authority must assume a power even more draconian then thatpreviously exercised by the king In addition having committed regicide the new popularauthority faces the danger that it will fall victim to its own precedent For this reason as well andin the interest of survival it must wield power more repressively than the deposed sovereignSpinoza illustrates his point with reference to the English revolution which eliminated themonarch Charles I only to replace him with the Lord Protector Cromwell who was monarch inall but name and more repressive than Charles

Spinozarsquos point seems unassailable especially since the pattern he describes in the caseof the English Revolution repeated itself over the course of the next three centuries in the French

and Russian Revolutions It is at least arguable that Napoleon if not Robespierre was a newLouis XVI and Stalin a new Tsar even if this understates the more fundamental social changesthat resulted form the two revolutions Still Spinoza does not absolutely proscribe therevolutionary overthrow of a tyrannical government but says instead that there is a great dangerin making the attempt Besides his analysis of the conditions necessary for retaining sovereigntydoes not leave the decision about whether to engage in revolution up to militants He argues thatno state can survive that creates mass indignation in its people and this is precisely theunavoidable result of tyrannical government Spinozarsquos real purpose in Chapter 18 is to opposethe Orangist-Calvinist project of replacing the Dutch Republic with a monarchy ldquoAs for theEstates of Hollandrdquo he writes ldquoas far as we know they never had kings but counts to whom theright of sovereignty was never transferredrdquo His point is that the Dutch War of Independenceagainst Spain was justified because it restored the sovereignty of the people against the attemptby the Spanish ldquocountrdquo (King Philip II) to abolish it However any attempt to replace theRepublic with a monarchy would change the form of the state disastrously by divesting thepeople of their former rights

When Spinoza wrote his treatise the only revolutionary forces that existed were on theRight The danger he warns about in Chapter 18 of the TPT did indeed come to pass only oneyear after his letter to Jelles In 1672 a Calvinist-Orangist mob hacked Johan De Witt and hisbrother Cornelius to death at a time when Holland was invaded by the French army Streetorators stirred up the mob by claiming that the invasion was the result of the brothersrsquo treason Inthe aftermath of the murders William III prince of Orange was elevated to the position ofstadtholder of Holland Although William went on to become King of England he stopped shortof claiming a Dutch throne However in actuality he substituted his own power for much of thatwhich had belonged to the Estates General while the Reformed Church gained considerableinfluence in Dutch government According to a story made famous by Spinozarsquos earliestbiographer Johannes Colerus when the De Witt brothers were murdered Spinozarsquos landlordthwarted his attempt to go the site of the assassinations where the bodies of the brothers werestill on gruesome display in order to plant a sign reading Ultimi Barbarorum (the ultimatebarbarians) In this way the landlord undoubtedly saved the philosopherrsquos life It was the onlytime we know of when the mature Spinoza gave in to his passive affects in a significant way

There is a passage in Chapter 18 of the TPT that uncannily anticipates the murders

Tyranny is most violent where individual beliefs which are unalienable rights areregarded as criminal Indeed in such circumstances the anger of the common people[plebis] is usually the greatest tyrant of allhellip the vilest hypocrites urged on by that samefury which they call zeal for Gods law have everywhere persecuted men whoseblameless character and distinguished qualities have excited the hostility of the commonpeople [plebi] publicly denouncing their beliefs and inflaming the savage multitudersquos[multitudinem] anger against them

Spinoza was the first political philosopher who grappled with the problem of a mass-

based politics of the Right The problem would occur again with the fascist movements of the1920s and 1930s and with the return of the rightwing religious fundamentalisms of our own dayndash Jewish Christian Muslim and Hindu It is not surprising that he failed to solve the problemdefinitively since it continues to remain unsolved The remarkable thing about Spinoza thoughis not that he was skeptical about the liberatory possibilities of revolution by the masses but thathe defended the idea of a popular democracy nonetheless And this he continued to do even inthe aftermath of the De Witt murders In his work on the Political Treatise in the final year of hislife Spinoza developed a powerful critique of the elitist claim that the multitude are incapable ofgoverning

Yet perhaps our [democratic] suggestions will be received with ridicule by those whorestrict to the common people the faults that are inherent in all mankind saying There

is no moderation in the mob they terrorize unless they are frightened and Thecommon people is either a humble servant or an arrogant master there is no truth orjudgment in itrdquo and the like But all men share in one and the same nature it is powerand culture that mislead us with the result that when two men do the same thing weoften say that it is permissible for the one to do it and not the other not because of anydifference in the thing done but in the doer hellipThen again There is no moderation inthe mob they terrorize unless they are frightened For freedom and slavery do not gowell together Finally that there is no truth or judgment in the common people is notsurprising since the important affairs of state are conducted without their knowledgeand from the little that cannot be concealed they can only make conjecturehellip Howeveras we have said all men have the same nature ndash all grow haughty with rule terrorizeunless they are frightened ndash and everywhere truth becomes a casualty through hostilityor servility especially when despotic power is in the hands of one or a few who in trialspay attention not to justice or truth but to the extent of a persons wealth

Surprisingly Spinoza develops this democratic argument while discussing the institutions

appropriate to a monarchy But the key point he makes in the discussion is that a condition ofeffective monarchical rule is expansion of the democratic element within the state in the form ofa sizeable legislative council whose members are drawn from the general population of citizensover the age of fifty On Spinozarsquos view the mistake those who oppose democracy make isassuming that the faults exhibited by the common people ndash such as poor judgment arroganceand hostility ndash belong only to them while they are in fact typical of human beings Actually it iselitist politics that magnifies these all-too-human faults by restricting political power to a limitednumber of people while democratic politics minimizes them through the principle of majorityrule among numerous decision-makers The reason as we already know is that passions pullpeople in different directions making it nearly impossible for the members of a large council toagree on a common position unless they make decisions based not on passion but an idea of thecommon good On Spinozarsquos view it is when government is in the hands of a single person oronly a few people that the dangers the critics of democracy attribute to the common people are infact the greatest

Spinoza also argues against the claim that the common people are not qualified to makepolitical decisions because they lack the necessary education or degree of intellect There is noone he says who has been engaged in an occupation until the age of fifty who lacksunderstanding of his sphere of work ldquoevery man is reasonably competent and sagacious inmatters in which he has been long and attentively engagedrdquo So each is qualified at least to giveadvice in the kingrsquos council concerning his own business especially if given the time necessaryto reflect on the matter under discussion

Most of all the plebs are the group best suited to serving on the council because theirinterest is that of society as a whole ldquoHence it follows that counselors must necessarily beappointed whose private fortune and advantage depend on the general welfare and the peace ofallrdquo For example Spinoza emphasizes the idea that the common people have the highest stake inavoiding war or concluding an existing war with a settlement that brings lasting peace Thereason is they are ones who bear the heaviest burdens of war Unlike the wealthy well-bornmembers of society it is the common person whose occupation is most likely to be interrupted itis his taxes that are raised to onerous levels and it is his son who dies Thus the common interestof society in peace is best served not by a wealthy or educated elite but rather by those whohave the most to lose from war

At the end of the long paragraph defending popular power quoted above Spinozaconnects the question of who holds power within the state to that of who owns property Truthand justice he says are casualties in states where power is held by one person or a handful ofpeople who conduct courtroom trials that favor the rich The implication is that elitist politicalpower and ownership of wealth are intrinsically connected One of the reasons Spinozarecommends public ownership of land and buildings in a monarchy is to prevent the rise of aclass of wealthy landowners with interests different than those of the rest of society Under the

conditions of common ownership ldquothe greatest part of the council will generally have one andthe same attitude of mind towards their common interests and peaceful activitieshelliprdquo And yethaving gone this far he has trouble imagining a state where fixed property is owned collectivelyin which the actually existing multitude holds power The peasants artisans and urban poor whoconstitute the common people of the United Provinces drop out of the picture in the democratic-communist monarchy he describes and nearly everyone makes his living by selling merchandiseor lending money to countrymen ldquoall will have to make a living by engaging in trade or bylending money to their fellow citizensrdquo He seems to assume that the collectivization of land andfixed property would eliminate the occupations of peasant and artisan leaving trade and loaningat interest the only remaining possibilities of work But that of course is not true The fact thatpeople would have to rent farm land would not prevent them from farming any more than theneed to rent workshops in the cities and towns would prevent artisans from plying their tradesBut Spinoza finds the idea of a commonwealth based on commercial enterprise politicallyappealing This is because he regards commercial occupations as contributing to harmony andpeace since he claims they establish connections between people that further the interests of allwhile those who engage in them prosper only in peacetime Both of these assumptions are asquestionable as the expectation that non-commercial occupations will die out After all even inSpinozarsquos day colonialism and the struggle for colonies between imperialist states led to warsbetween the great powers including the United Provinces not to mention the military and otherforms of violence involved in subjugating the colonies The East India Company was not exactlya force for peace What seems to be at work here instead is a failure of social imaginationthough one we may find understandable given the fact that the capitalist economy was still at anearly stage in its development However this may be there is no denying the fact that despite hispowerful arguments in favor of democratic rule and communal property it is still a bourgeoissociety and state that Spinoza envisions

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of what we should not hesitate to call Spinozarsquoscommunism is the critique of private ownership he develops in the Ethics based on his theory ofaffects For him there is a paradox involved in social and political life It stems from the fact thaton the one hand people can survive and develop their capacities only by joining with oneanother in societies and states But on the other hand the necessity of combining with oneanother does not prevent them from seeking their own advantage above that of their fellowsbeing quarrelsome or hateful and erecting obstacles to each otherrsquos happiness Spinoza identifiesthe reason for these deep-rooted problems of social coexistence in Part IV Proposition 35 of theEthics ldquoInsofar as men are assailed by emotions that are passive they can be contrary to oneanotherrdquo Emotions are states of the body characterized by a transition from a lower degree of thepower to exist and act (conatus) to a higher one or conversely from a higher degree to a lowerone The first transition is the affect of joy while the second is that of sadness Passive emotionsare caused by an object external to the body or more precisely external to its essential natureSpinoza conceives of that nature as a specific proportion of motion-and-rest that the parts of thebody exhibit in relation to one another While joy is an increase in our capacity to preserve theproportion of motion-and-rest essential to our body (ie to exist and act as we do) sadness is adecrease in that capacity The political problem created by the passive emotions is that evenwhen they are joyful they are not under the control of the person who experiences themMoreover different people are affected by the same external object in different ways because theparts of their bodies and their proportionate relations of motion-and rest-differ The same objectmay elicit anger in one person and pity in another or love in one and hatred in another and soon And because people differ in their emotional reactions to the same things they also differ inthe judgments they frame on the basis of these reactions What one person praises anotherperson blames what one regards as fearless another believes to be timid etc Finally sincepeople act upon their judgments seeking to foster what they judge to be good and destroy whatthey judge to be bad their differing judgments can result in actions that are in conflict with oneanother In short ldquoinsofar as they are assailed by passive emotions [people] can be contrary toone anotherrdquo

In Proposition 34 Spinoza gives an example of the contrariety caused by the passiveaffects Suppose Peter has sole possession of something Paul loves Deprivation of the loved

object causes sadness in Paul with the idea of Peter as its cause In accordance with Spinozarsquosdefinition of hatred Paul will hate Peter and therefore seek to injure or destroy him in order toremove the cause of his Paulrsquos sadness Spinoza says that this example may seem wrong becausePaul and Peter appear to be contrary to one another because of something they share ndash ie theirlove for the thing Peter possesses But that is not the case Paul has an image of himself aslacking the loved object while Peter has an image of himself as possessing the loved object Sothey in fact differ from one another by virtue of the different images they have rather than bypossessing something in common It is clear from the example that the root of this contrariety ndashie this enmity ndash between Paul and Peter is the fact that the object can be possessed by only oneof them so that what one has the other must lack The difficulty with private property is that it isexclusive to the one who possesses it which means that what I experience as possession othersexperience as deprivation It may seem that there is no problem if other people are indifferent tothe thing I possess However in accordance with Spinozarsquos theory of the imitation of affects themere fact that I love the thing I own other things being equal will cause you to love it as wellMy exclusive possession of the thing will therefore cause sadness in you that takes the form ofhatred or more precisely the kind of hatred called envy which involves pain at the good fortuneof another ldquohuman nature is in general so constituted that men pity the unfortunate and envy thefortunate in the latter case with a hatred proportionate to their love of what they think anotherpossessesrdquo

Common Possession Friendship and Philosophy

In the Ethics Spinoza does not follow his analysis of the antagonisms of private property

by considering the collective possession of material goods (although he does advocateredistribution of wealth to the poor in Part 4 as we have seen) But the theme of commonpossession figures large in the book anyway in his treatment of the intellectual love of God Inorder to understand the connection between common possession and amor Dei intellectualis itwill be necessary to engage in a detailed analysis of Spinozarsquos metaphysics We will begin thattask in earnest in the next chapter At this point we will simply introduce the theme byexamining the relationship between friendship and common possession in the letter to Jelles andsome related writings

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo unlike the similar passages fromActs has its provenance among philosophers Spinoza mistakenly attributes it to Thales but itoccurs in Platorsquos Phaedrus and Laws and is present though not in so many words in thediscussion in the Republic of common ownership of property by the guardian class Thetradition cited by Erasmus that traces the proverb back to Pythagoras is plausible when weconsider the influence the Pythagorean community in Sicily had on Plato in the aftermath ofSocratesrsquo death Erasmus sees the supposed use of a common fund by the Pythagoreans as ananticipation of the similar practice in Acts But Spinozarsquos approach is different What interestshim in the letter is common ownership not as a religious practice but as a matter of thephilosopherrsquos relation to the world Remember the deductive consequences of the proverb sinceall things are in common among friends everything belongs to the wise because the wise arefriends of the gods and all things belong to the gods But what does it mean to say that the wiseare friends of the gods

Although Spinoza uses the word ldquofriendshiprdquo often in his writings he never supplies aformal definition However we can reconstruct the wordrsquos meaning from the contexts in whichhe uses it So for example Proposition 35 of Part III of the Ethics reads

If anyone thinks that there is between the object of his love and another person the sameor a more intimate bond of friendship than there was between them when he alone usedto possess the object loved he will be affected with hatred toward the object loved andwill envy his rival

According to the proposition friendship is an intimate bond between a person and the

object he loves I hate an object of love that I alone once possessed when it wounds my vanity byloving someone else more than me So the object of love must be capable of loving whichmeans that the bond of friendship is a relation of reciprocal love between persons Nowaccording to Spinoza I love something when I have the idea of that thing as the cause of myexperience of joy Joy is an increase in conatus which Spinoza defines as the tendency to persistin being or equivalently the ability to exist and act So friendship is a relation in which Iidentify the other person as the cause of an increase in my conatus and the other personidentifies me as the cause of a similar increase in his or hers Two things each of which causesan increase in the ability to exist and act of the other are said by Spinoza to be in harmony Sincetwo entities in harmony have more combined power than either does singly it is to the advantageof each to be in harmony with the other There is even greater advantage in entering intoharmonious connection with a third individual and the greatest advantage in combining with asmany individuals as possible This is a universal metaphysical principle For example it pertainsjust as much to chemical combination or herding among animals as it does to social relationsbetween people In the case of human relationships it is the fundamental basis of politics orrather one of its two bases the other one being the tendency human beings have to conflict withone another When the state is functioning well it involves not a random collection ofindividuals and certainly not the war of each against all but a group whose members are boundto one another by friendship the human form of harmony Thus for Spinoza friendship is apolitical virtue as it was for Plato and Aristotle

The opposite of friendship is enmity That person is my enemy whom I regard as thecause of my sadness or pain which is the same as saying the cause of a decrease in my abilityto exist and act Like friendship enmity is a reciprocal relationship If I identify you as the causeof my sadness I will seek to injure or eliminate you But that means I will be identified in yourmind as the cause of your sadness Enmity is a relation of reciprocal hatred just as friendship is arelation of reciprocal love Just as there is harmony between friends there is discord betweenenemies The fundamental task of a rational politics is easy to state it is to extend and intensifyfriendship and to reduce and mollify enmity

We have already seen that Spinoza identifies solidarity (generositas) as one of the twoforms of strength of mind (fortitudo) which is the virtue that belongs to the exercise of theintellect Solidarity is the desire to assist others and foster friendship on the basis of reason aloneThe friendship fostered by solidarity is a bond of active love The love of friends for one anotheris active when each person who loves is the adequate cause of his or her love To say that theperson is the adequate cause means that the cause of love is internal to the person who feels it inother words that the love is self-generated Active love differs from passive love in that thecause of passive love is at least partially something that exists outside the person who has theemotion The problem with passive love is that it need not be constant If the bodily dispositionof the person changes in a particular way then the object of erstwhile love will have a differentemotional effect Passive love can change into boredom or indifference or even hatred This isnot possible in the case of active love because it is self-generated Since love involves theexperience of joy no one actively abandons it

There seems to be something odd about the idea of a love between persons that isinternally generated by each of the partners in the relationship Is it not the case that part of theessence of love is the fact that the object of my love is the cause of my love Without denyingthis Spinoza identifies two forms of love that are self-generated in the Ethics One is myintellectual love of God It is indeed true that God is the cause of my love but only insofar as myintellect is part of the infinite intellect of God Thus the object that causes my love - ie God - isinternal to my mind and conversely my mind is internal to it Such reciprocal internality ndash hardas it is to visualize ndash is what Spinoza means by immanence God he tells us is the immanentcause of everything that exists Nothing can exist apart from God while God expresses himselfin all of the things that exist My love of God and Gods love of himself are one and the samebecause Godrsquos intellect is immanent in mine The second form of self-generated love is the

friendship that exists between me and others who love God through the exercise of the intellectThe reason is that the joy I feel in loving God is by the imitation of affects augmented by thejoy you feel in loving God But your love as well as mine is joy caused by the same immanentbeing Another way of saying this is that your intellect and mine are parts (ie finiteexpressions) of the infinite intellect of God Thus the relationship between friends who are boundtogether by the common exercise of the intellect and the love of God that flows from it is basedon an internal bond an internal object and cause of love In this kind of love you and I as itwere discover one another internally You are inside of me and I am inside of you Thus whenyou augment my love and I augment yours it is Gods power as the intellect immanent in us boththat causes the augmentation even though we remain finite individual beings In this state ofaffairs which is admittedly difficult to grasp we can see the rational meaning of the command tolove God by loving the neighbor In intellectual love God not insofar as he is infinite butinsofar as he expresses himself in my finite intellect loves God as he expresses himself in yourfinite intellect

For Spinoza the exercise of the intellect is very different than our ordinary experience ofthe world In the course of ordinary experience we encounter objects in a way that appearshaphazard disordered and incomplete This is so first of all because our encounters are part ofan infinitely complex chain of natural causes and effects of which we know only very limitedparts In addition our experience of objects has as much to do with the condition our bodies arein when we encounter them as it does with the nature of the objects themselves By contrast inexercising the intellect we arrange our ideas in an intelligible pattern that is internal to the mindand entirely different than the images we accumulate through sensory experience The ideas arean expression of our power while the images result from our hapless deliverance to chanceEmotions caused by objects we encounter in the course of ordinary experience are externallydetermined and therefore passive while emotions caused by acts of intellectual comprehensionare internally generated and therefore active That is why love as an active emotion has its originin the exercise of the intellect and the most satisfying form of friendship is based on thereciprocal experience of such love In a letter to Willem van Blyenberg Spinoza provides themost complete description of this kind of friendship to be found in his writings

For my part of all things that are not under my control what I most value is to enterinto a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth For I believe that such a lovingrelationship affords us a serenity surpassing any other boon in the whole wide worldThe love that such men bear to one another grounded as it is in the love that each hasfor knowledge of truth is as unshakable as is the acceptance of truth once it has beenperceived It is moreover the highest source of happiness to be found in things notunder our command for truth more than anything else has the power to effect a closeunion between different sentiments and dispositions

Spinoza says that a friendship based on the love of truth is not under our control But how

can that be if intellectual friendship involves a form of love internally generated by each friendIt would seem that the love we generate through the exercise of the intellect is fully under ourcontrol Spinoza however is referring to the fact that we are able to become friends only withpeople we actually meet which is something that occurs in the course of ordinary haphazarddisordered experience To a large extent our friendships are a matter of chance By way ofillustrating this point it turned out that Spinoza decided his initial judgment of Blyenberg wasmistaken He broke off their correspondence when he realized that the infinite chain of causesand effects had brought his way not a lover of truth but a dogmatic worshipper of the ldquopaperand inkrdquo of the Bible

People create commonwealths because the power of each to exist and act is increased byall others who transfer their rights to the sovereign For reasons we have already considered thepolitical bond is one of friendship ldquoIt is of the first importance to men to establish closerelationships and to bind themselves together with such ties as may most effectively unite theminto one body and as an absolute rule to act in such a way as serves to strengthen friendshiprdquo If

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

from their bodies but that their bodies will rise up from the grave like that of their Savior Giventhis early Christian materialism it is not surprising that commonality of material goods wouldserve as a fundamental expression of the new life of the believers

As we already know the project of the sixteenth-century Anabaptists was to restore theChurch to its original apostolic condition by undoing the corruption they believed had set inwhen it made its peace with worldly wealth and power under Constantine Given the nature ofthe Anabaptist project it would seem that making material things common as described in Actswould follow as a matter of course However there is a long tradition ndash one that began aroundthe middle of the sixteenth century ndash of denying that Anabaptism has anything to do withcommunism regarding it as an accusation brought against the Anabaptists by their enemies It isunderstandable that this should be so The Anabaptists were the victims of a ldquored scarerdquo thatgripped the ruling classes of Europe in the aftermath of the Peasant War and the Muumlnstercommune It is impossible to explain the horrendous tortures forced relocations andinnumerable executions Anabaptists faced on the basis of heretical belief alone Nothing of aremotely similar scale was visited upon other schismatics The fact that the Anabaptistschallenged prevailing property relations is what made them victims of near-genocide It was amatter of survival then to create some distance between themselves and the charge ofadvocating common ownership of goods that came from Luther Zwingli and those whoextracted the confession from Thomas Muumlntzer that he held to the principle of Omnia communiasunt Recent scholarship however has demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that having thingsin common was indeed a basic and widespread principle of Anabaptism at its origin just as it hasdemonstrated the influence veterans of the Peasant War had among the early Anabaptists

The dominant form of communist practice in early Anabaptism was appropriatelymodeled on the description of redistribution in Acts In Switzerland where the movementoriginated converts were often asked or required to make contributions to a ldquocommon purserdquoafter receiving adult baptism Some especially pious initiates went so far as to sell their land andhouses for that purpose in accordance with the biblical precedent When necessary officialsdistributed the contents of the purse to members of the community who were in need

Both proponents and enemies of Anabaptist communism often confused the redistributionof wealth with joint or communal property However except for the taking of meals in commonthere is no indication in Acts that redistribution collectivized ownership of wealth in this fashionbut only that it transferred wealth from the better-off members of the community to the worse-off Nevertheless some Anabaptists took joint or communal property as a paradigm for newproperty relations For example the visionary writing of the Nuremberg printer Hans Hergotwho was executed for rebellion in 1527 includes the following passage

And everything that grows on the land belongs to the church and the people who livethere Everything is bestowed for common use so that the people will eat from one potdrink from one vesselhellip And all things will be used in common so that no one is betteroff than another

The ldquowar communismrdquo of the city of Muumlnster involved an ad hoc form of communal propertythrough the edict that the doors to all homes be left open and the owners take in anyone whowished to reside with them But the most significant successful and long-lasting attempt toimplement communal property was that of the Hutterites

The Hutterites took their name from the charismatic hat-maker and Anabaptist leaderJacob Hutter However at their origins they were influenced by the revolutionary bookbinderHans Hut Hut shared Thomas Muumlntzerrsquos sanguinary apocalyptic view of social change andadvocated community ownership of goods in accordance with his own understanding of ActsHe survived the battle of Frankenhausen in which the peasant rebels were finally defeated butwas tortured and executed a few years later In the aftermath and under the influence of JacobHutter the Hutterites adopted pacifism and a strategy of creating autonomous communities Inorder escape persecution thousands of the brethren emigrated from Switzerland and Germany to

the more tolerant Moravia where they created hundreds of Bruderhofs farms and vineyards inwhich land houses farm implements produce and even objects of personal use were ownedcollectively The center of Bruderhof life was a large communal house in which craft productionoccurred on the ground floor and couples lived in small apartments on the upper levels The menengaged in farm labor and craftwork while the women were limited to traditional domesticduties in spite of the fact that children were raised communally apart from their parents TheBruderhofs enjoyed great economic success for a number of reasons People worked hard andconsumed little resulting in a surplus that could be used to purchase additional land seed andtools The size of the communities and of their agricultural production also enabled them to sellcheaply and to pay for supplies at generous prices both of which made the communitieseconomic assets to the areas in which they were located The Hutterites also organized both farmlabor and craft production cooperatively including the education boys were given in thenecessary skills They were therefore practitioners of the second and third forms of communismwe have identified namely communal ownership and cooperative organization of work Whenthey were ultimately forced out of Moravia by the triumph of Catholic forces in the Thirty YearsWar the Hutterites migrated eastward many finally relocating to Canada and the United Stateswhere the Bruderhofs continue to exist to this day

Communism as a kind of mutual aid was the contribution of the other major form ofAnabaptism that of the Mennonites With great political intelligence and skill Menno Simonswas able to reformulate the meaning of Omnia communia sunt in such a way as to avoidthreatening the property interests of nobles and clerics He did this in his book A Humble andChristian Justification and Replication First he denied that Mennonites were advocates ofcommunal property

This accusation is false and without all truth We do not teach and practice communityof goods but we teach and testify the Word of the Lord that all true believers in Christare of one body (1 Corinthians 1213) partakers of one bread (1 Corinthians 1017)have one God and one Lord (Ephesians 4)

In his assertion that the believers are of one body and partakers of one bread Simons is affirmingwhat we have called the general principle of communism while denying that Mennonitesembrace it in the specific form of communal property But he goes further by denying thatMennonites advocate a contemporary version of the apostolic redistribution of wealth

For although we know that the apostolic church had this practice in the beginning ascan be seen in the Acts of the Apostles nevertheless we note from their epistles that itdisappeared in their time and was no longer practiced

Instead of communal property or centralized redistribution of wealth the Mennonites derivefrom the general principle of Christian communism an alternative practice

Seeing then that they are one as said it is Christian and reasonable that they also havedivine love among them and that one member cares for another for both the Scripturesand nature teach this They show mercy and love as much as is in them They do notsuffer a beggar among them They have pity on the wants of the saints They receive thewretched They take strangers into their houses They comfort the sad They lend to theneedy They clothe the naked They share their bread with the hungry They do not turntheir face from the poorhellip

In the subsequent history of Mennonism the practice Simons describes came to be calledldquomutual aidrdquo Note that it is different from charitable giving and this in two ways First thereferences to receiving the wretched taking in strangers sharing bread and so on indicate a farmore personal even intimate form of involvement than simple charitable donation Second

there is the suggestion of reciprocity or mutuality (ldquoone member cares for anotherrdquo) that tends todeny the difference in status between the charitable giver and the recipient of charity Thepractice Simons describes is similar to what some anthropologists have called ldquogeneralizedreciprocityrdquo in which my obligation to give to you when you are in need corresponds to yourobligation to give to me when I am in need In a sense this is a form of redistribution inaccordance with need but it is enacted directly between individual members of the communityrather than administered centrally through a common purse

In line with his political purpose Simons is careful to distinguish between mutual aid andthe expropriation of private property

This is the kind of brotherhood we teach and not that some should take over andpossess the land soil and properties of others as we are falsely maligned accused andlied about by many

In this way he detaches the Mennonite version of communism from any revolutionary intentionThat was the prerequisite for communal survival during the long counter-revolution thatfollowed the Peasant War Still Simons never abandons the general principle Omnia communiasunt nor does he even really reject the practice of the early Church

Since we do not find it a permanent practice with the apostles we have not taught orpracticed community of goods but we urge earnestly and zealously to practice liberalgiving love and mercy as the apostolic writings teach and testify abundantly Andeven if we had taught and practiced community of goods as we are falsely accused ofdoing we would still not be doing otherwise than the holy apostles full of the HolySpirit themselves did in the former church at Jerusalem in the beginning of the holyChristian Church although they stopped the practice as has been said

Like the Hutterites Mennonite communities prospered once they managed to survive the

bloody period of reaction In Holland the Mennonite population consisted largely in successfulmerchants along with a number of lawyers doctors and other professionals Most of thepeasant artisan and laborer families who had started as Mennonites in the sixteenth century hadlong since converted to the Reform Church which is one reason Spinoza faced the problem ofpolitical agency in the TPT Although the idea of mutual aid persisted among the DutchMennonites it took the form predominantly of organized international philanthropy in which thecommunity made contributions not only to Mennonites abroad but to other populations in needThere was no escaping the fact however that in this philanthropic form mutual aid becamehardly distinguishable from conventional charity

Jarig Jelles was born into the Dutch Mennonite community around a century afterSimmons wrote his book when this process of slippage was well underway But there is littledoubt that Jelles knew the Mennonite teaching on mutual aid and its origin in the generalprinciple of Christian communism Even if Jelles never read Erasmusrsquo Adages Spinozarsquosreference to the supposed communism of Thales was likely to resonate with him on the basis ofhis own religious tradition

We cannot be certain how much Spinoza knew in detail about the communist practices ofthe Anabaptists but it is probably not a coincidence that he recommends three of the four atvarious places in his writings In Part 4 of the Ethics ldquoOf Human Bondage or the Strength of theEmotionsrdquo he identifies the chief virtue of the intellect as ldquostrength of the mindrdquo (fortitudo)According to him it takes two forms one directed to the self and one directed to others He callsthe inwardly directed form ldquocouragerdquo defining it as ldquothe desire whereby every individualendeavors to preserve his own being according to the dictates of reason alonerdquo The outwardlydirected form is generositas which Shirley translates as ldquonobilityrdquo though ldquosolidarityrdquo is closerto what Spinoza is getting at He defines it as ldquothe desire whereby every individual according to

the dictates of reason alone endeavors to assist others and make friends of themrdquo When twopeople in contact with one another possess the virtue of generositas they will clearly exhibit itreciprocally in the form of mutual aid the fourth communist practice

In Part 4 of the Ethics Spinoza also formulates a version of the first communist practicethat of the redistribution of wealth in accordance with need

Again men are won over by generosity especially those who do not have thewherewithal to produce what is necessary to support life Yet it is far beyond the powerand resources of a private person to come to the assistance of everyone in need For thewealth of a private person is quite unequal to such a demand It is also a practicalimpossibility for one man to establish friendship with all Therefore the care of the poordevolves upon society as a whole and looks only to the common good

The fact that society as a whole has responsibility for meeting the needs of the poor makes thepractice Spinoza recommends in this passage a version of the centralized redistribution of wealthdescribed in the Acts of the Apostles and institutionalized in Anabaptist form as the ldquocommonpurserdquo More than that the fact that society as a whole must take on this responsibility ratherthan a church or other sub-community makes Spinoza an early advocate of what will becomethree centuries later the European welfare state In our own period as the welfare state is beingdismantled it is easy to see that what neoliberals object to concerning it is precisely its implicitcommunism ie its practice of distribution in accordance with need

Spinoza advocates a third communist practice in his unfinished final work the PoliticalTreatise The context is his discussion of a maximally democratic version of monarchy in whichthe entire citizen body is armed and the king forbidden from making any decision contrary to thewill of a massive council of ordinary citizens In such a state

The fields and the soil and if possible the houses as well should be public property thatis should belong to the sovereign by whom they should be let at an annual rent tocitizens whether townsmen or country-dwellers Apart from this all citizens should befree or exempt from any form of taxation in time of peace Of this rent part should beallocated to the defense works of the commonwealth part to the kings domestic needsFor in time of peace it is still necessary to fortify cities as for war and to have in a stateof readiness ships and other armaments

Ownership of land and buildings by the sovereign is a form of communal property first becausethe citizens of the commonwealth delegate to him or them the property they hold in commonand second because that delegation occurs with the understanding that the sovereign will use theproperty in service of the common good

Spinoza supplies an argument based on more than simple utility for the practice ofholding land and buildings in common

hellip in a state of Nature the one thing a man cannot appropriate to himself and make hisown is land and whatever is so fixed to the land that he cannot conceal it anywhere orcarry it away where he pleases Thus the land and whatever is fixed to it in the way wehave described is especially the public property of the commonwealth that is of allthose who by their united strength can claim it or of him to whom all have delegated thepower to claim it

To state the argument differently since rights are the same as powers no individual has a naturalright to appropriate privately the land or any of its fixed structures because none has the powernecessary to do so The only response an individual can make to incursions by a more powerfulperson or group of people is flight in which he must leave the land and its buildings behind It is

only by entering into a community in which the strength of each is combined for the purpose ofdefense that people can effectively possess fixed property but they do so as a members of thecommunity rather than as an separate individuals According to Spinozarsquos theory of rights onlythe community has the right to own the land and its structures because only the community hasthe required power

The communal ownership of land houses and other buildings is a version of the secondcommunist practice on our list of which Hutterite joint ownership is the most developedhistorical example When adopted by a polity rather than a small community though thepractice has an added advantage Under those circumstances communal possession of fixedproperty eliminates the need for taxes except in time of war What takes their place is ageneration of revenue pegged to wealth since the members of society who are able to rent themost expensive and largest amounts of communal property will obviously pay the most in rentIn this way the form of communal ownership of land and buildings that Spinoza recommendsalso acts as a mechanism for the redistribution of wealth

The only communist practice of the Anabaptists that does not find an equivalent inSpinozarsquos writings is that of the cooperative organization of work The absence is related toSpinozarsquos inability to resolve the problem of political agency in the TPT An attempt to mobilizethe multitude on behalf of democratic social change would need to address the organization ofwork in such a way as to alleviate the burden of toil Reducing the number of hours spent inonerous labor is the only way to provide the multitude with the free time necessary to participatein institutionalized democratic politics Along with the redistribution of wealth and thedevelopment of communal property the cooperative reorganization of work would need to beincorporated as a plank in the latent political program that makes its first democratic appearancein the TPT and is extended in a communist direction in the passages from the Ethics and thePolitical Treatise that we have just examined But that would constitute an explicit anddangerous appeal to the multitude as the agent of political and social transformation an appealthat Spinoza consistently rejects It would involve nothing less than the revival of therevolutionary energies of the Peasant War on a new seventeenth-century foundation

In spite of his radicalism Spinoza doubted that revolution was capable of reconstructingsociety and the state in the way revolutionaries wanted In Chapter 18 of the TPT he takes aposition that is at least on the surface opposed to revolution or any attempt to change the formof the state fundamentally The context is a discussion of the transition from the early Hebrewcommonwealth in which the people held sovereignty to the rule of kings Spinoza tells us thatthe first period saw only a single civil war and concluded with a compassion for the vanquishedthat resulted in lasting peace By contrast the period of kings was marred by multiple warswaged only for the glory of the rulers and involved the massacre of hundreds of thousandsDuring the first period few prophets arose to rebuke the Jews while a great many emergedduring the time of the monarchies From this example Spinoza reasons that it is fatal for peopleaccustomed to popular sovereignty and governed by settled laws to adopt a new monarchicalform of government On the one hand they will be unable to tolerate the arbitrary exercise ofpower by a single individual while on the other the new monarch will be compelled to abolishthe existing laws because they did not originate by his own authority But it is just as dangerousaccording to Spinoza for the subjects of a monarch to attempt his replacement with popular ruleThis is because a popular revolution must advance to the point where it annihilates the king thekingrsquos family and the friends of the king in order to prevent the restoration of royal power But inthe process the revolutionary authority must assume a power even more draconian then thatpreviously exercised by the king In addition having committed regicide the new popularauthority faces the danger that it will fall victim to its own precedent For this reason as well andin the interest of survival it must wield power more repressively than the deposed sovereignSpinoza illustrates his point with reference to the English revolution which eliminated themonarch Charles I only to replace him with the Lord Protector Cromwell who was monarch inall but name and more repressive than Charles

Spinozarsquos point seems unassailable especially since the pattern he describes in the caseof the English Revolution repeated itself over the course of the next three centuries in the French

and Russian Revolutions It is at least arguable that Napoleon if not Robespierre was a newLouis XVI and Stalin a new Tsar even if this understates the more fundamental social changesthat resulted form the two revolutions Still Spinoza does not absolutely proscribe therevolutionary overthrow of a tyrannical government but says instead that there is a great dangerin making the attempt Besides his analysis of the conditions necessary for retaining sovereigntydoes not leave the decision about whether to engage in revolution up to militants He argues thatno state can survive that creates mass indignation in its people and this is precisely theunavoidable result of tyrannical government Spinozarsquos real purpose in Chapter 18 is to opposethe Orangist-Calvinist project of replacing the Dutch Republic with a monarchy ldquoAs for theEstates of Hollandrdquo he writes ldquoas far as we know they never had kings but counts to whom theright of sovereignty was never transferredrdquo His point is that the Dutch War of Independenceagainst Spain was justified because it restored the sovereignty of the people against the attemptby the Spanish ldquocountrdquo (King Philip II) to abolish it However any attempt to replace theRepublic with a monarchy would change the form of the state disastrously by divesting thepeople of their former rights

When Spinoza wrote his treatise the only revolutionary forces that existed were on theRight The danger he warns about in Chapter 18 of the TPT did indeed come to pass only oneyear after his letter to Jelles In 1672 a Calvinist-Orangist mob hacked Johan De Witt and hisbrother Cornelius to death at a time when Holland was invaded by the French army Streetorators stirred up the mob by claiming that the invasion was the result of the brothersrsquo treason Inthe aftermath of the murders William III prince of Orange was elevated to the position ofstadtholder of Holland Although William went on to become King of England he stopped shortof claiming a Dutch throne However in actuality he substituted his own power for much of thatwhich had belonged to the Estates General while the Reformed Church gained considerableinfluence in Dutch government According to a story made famous by Spinozarsquos earliestbiographer Johannes Colerus when the De Witt brothers were murdered Spinozarsquos landlordthwarted his attempt to go the site of the assassinations where the bodies of the brothers werestill on gruesome display in order to plant a sign reading Ultimi Barbarorum (the ultimatebarbarians) In this way the landlord undoubtedly saved the philosopherrsquos life It was the onlytime we know of when the mature Spinoza gave in to his passive affects in a significant way

There is a passage in Chapter 18 of the TPT that uncannily anticipates the murders

Tyranny is most violent where individual beliefs which are unalienable rights areregarded as criminal Indeed in such circumstances the anger of the common people[plebis] is usually the greatest tyrant of allhellip the vilest hypocrites urged on by that samefury which they call zeal for Gods law have everywhere persecuted men whoseblameless character and distinguished qualities have excited the hostility of the commonpeople [plebi] publicly denouncing their beliefs and inflaming the savage multitudersquos[multitudinem] anger against them

Spinoza was the first political philosopher who grappled with the problem of a mass-

based politics of the Right The problem would occur again with the fascist movements of the1920s and 1930s and with the return of the rightwing religious fundamentalisms of our own dayndash Jewish Christian Muslim and Hindu It is not surprising that he failed to solve the problemdefinitively since it continues to remain unsolved The remarkable thing about Spinoza thoughis not that he was skeptical about the liberatory possibilities of revolution by the masses but thathe defended the idea of a popular democracy nonetheless And this he continued to do even inthe aftermath of the De Witt murders In his work on the Political Treatise in the final year of hislife Spinoza developed a powerful critique of the elitist claim that the multitude are incapable ofgoverning

Yet perhaps our [democratic] suggestions will be received with ridicule by those whorestrict to the common people the faults that are inherent in all mankind saying There

is no moderation in the mob they terrorize unless they are frightened and Thecommon people is either a humble servant or an arrogant master there is no truth orjudgment in itrdquo and the like But all men share in one and the same nature it is powerand culture that mislead us with the result that when two men do the same thing weoften say that it is permissible for the one to do it and not the other not because of anydifference in the thing done but in the doer hellipThen again There is no moderation inthe mob they terrorize unless they are frightened For freedom and slavery do not gowell together Finally that there is no truth or judgment in the common people is notsurprising since the important affairs of state are conducted without their knowledgeand from the little that cannot be concealed they can only make conjecturehellip Howeveras we have said all men have the same nature ndash all grow haughty with rule terrorizeunless they are frightened ndash and everywhere truth becomes a casualty through hostilityor servility especially when despotic power is in the hands of one or a few who in trialspay attention not to justice or truth but to the extent of a persons wealth

Surprisingly Spinoza develops this democratic argument while discussing the institutions

appropriate to a monarchy But the key point he makes in the discussion is that a condition ofeffective monarchical rule is expansion of the democratic element within the state in the form ofa sizeable legislative council whose members are drawn from the general population of citizensover the age of fifty On Spinozarsquos view the mistake those who oppose democracy make isassuming that the faults exhibited by the common people ndash such as poor judgment arroganceand hostility ndash belong only to them while they are in fact typical of human beings Actually it iselitist politics that magnifies these all-too-human faults by restricting political power to a limitednumber of people while democratic politics minimizes them through the principle of majorityrule among numerous decision-makers The reason as we already know is that passions pullpeople in different directions making it nearly impossible for the members of a large council toagree on a common position unless they make decisions based not on passion but an idea of thecommon good On Spinozarsquos view it is when government is in the hands of a single person oronly a few people that the dangers the critics of democracy attribute to the common people are infact the greatest

Spinoza also argues against the claim that the common people are not qualified to makepolitical decisions because they lack the necessary education or degree of intellect There is noone he says who has been engaged in an occupation until the age of fifty who lacksunderstanding of his sphere of work ldquoevery man is reasonably competent and sagacious inmatters in which he has been long and attentively engagedrdquo So each is qualified at least to giveadvice in the kingrsquos council concerning his own business especially if given the time necessaryto reflect on the matter under discussion

Most of all the plebs are the group best suited to serving on the council because theirinterest is that of society as a whole ldquoHence it follows that counselors must necessarily beappointed whose private fortune and advantage depend on the general welfare and the peace ofallrdquo For example Spinoza emphasizes the idea that the common people have the highest stake inavoiding war or concluding an existing war with a settlement that brings lasting peace Thereason is they are ones who bear the heaviest burdens of war Unlike the wealthy well-bornmembers of society it is the common person whose occupation is most likely to be interrupted itis his taxes that are raised to onerous levels and it is his son who dies Thus the common interestof society in peace is best served not by a wealthy or educated elite but rather by those whohave the most to lose from war

At the end of the long paragraph defending popular power quoted above Spinozaconnects the question of who holds power within the state to that of who owns property Truthand justice he says are casualties in states where power is held by one person or a handful ofpeople who conduct courtroom trials that favor the rich The implication is that elitist politicalpower and ownership of wealth are intrinsically connected One of the reasons Spinozarecommends public ownership of land and buildings in a monarchy is to prevent the rise of aclass of wealthy landowners with interests different than those of the rest of society Under the

conditions of common ownership ldquothe greatest part of the council will generally have one andthe same attitude of mind towards their common interests and peaceful activitieshelliprdquo And yethaving gone this far he has trouble imagining a state where fixed property is owned collectivelyin which the actually existing multitude holds power The peasants artisans and urban poor whoconstitute the common people of the United Provinces drop out of the picture in the democratic-communist monarchy he describes and nearly everyone makes his living by selling merchandiseor lending money to countrymen ldquoall will have to make a living by engaging in trade or bylending money to their fellow citizensrdquo He seems to assume that the collectivization of land andfixed property would eliminate the occupations of peasant and artisan leaving trade and loaningat interest the only remaining possibilities of work But that of course is not true The fact thatpeople would have to rent farm land would not prevent them from farming any more than theneed to rent workshops in the cities and towns would prevent artisans from plying their tradesBut Spinoza finds the idea of a commonwealth based on commercial enterprise politicallyappealing This is because he regards commercial occupations as contributing to harmony andpeace since he claims they establish connections between people that further the interests of allwhile those who engage in them prosper only in peacetime Both of these assumptions are asquestionable as the expectation that non-commercial occupations will die out After all even inSpinozarsquos day colonialism and the struggle for colonies between imperialist states led to warsbetween the great powers including the United Provinces not to mention the military and otherforms of violence involved in subjugating the colonies The East India Company was not exactlya force for peace What seems to be at work here instead is a failure of social imaginationthough one we may find understandable given the fact that the capitalist economy was still at anearly stage in its development However this may be there is no denying the fact that despite hispowerful arguments in favor of democratic rule and communal property it is still a bourgeoissociety and state that Spinoza envisions

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of what we should not hesitate to call Spinozarsquoscommunism is the critique of private ownership he develops in the Ethics based on his theory ofaffects For him there is a paradox involved in social and political life It stems from the fact thaton the one hand people can survive and develop their capacities only by joining with oneanother in societies and states But on the other hand the necessity of combining with oneanother does not prevent them from seeking their own advantage above that of their fellowsbeing quarrelsome or hateful and erecting obstacles to each otherrsquos happiness Spinoza identifiesthe reason for these deep-rooted problems of social coexistence in Part IV Proposition 35 of theEthics ldquoInsofar as men are assailed by emotions that are passive they can be contrary to oneanotherrdquo Emotions are states of the body characterized by a transition from a lower degree of thepower to exist and act (conatus) to a higher one or conversely from a higher degree to a lowerone The first transition is the affect of joy while the second is that of sadness Passive emotionsare caused by an object external to the body or more precisely external to its essential natureSpinoza conceives of that nature as a specific proportion of motion-and-rest that the parts of thebody exhibit in relation to one another While joy is an increase in our capacity to preserve theproportion of motion-and-rest essential to our body (ie to exist and act as we do) sadness is adecrease in that capacity The political problem created by the passive emotions is that evenwhen they are joyful they are not under the control of the person who experiences themMoreover different people are affected by the same external object in different ways because theparts of their bodies and their proportionate relations of motion-and rest-differ The same objectmay elicit anger in one person and pity in another or love in one and hatred in another and soon And because people differ in their emotional reactions to the same things they also differ inthe judgments they frame on the basis of these reactions What one person praises anotherperson blames what one regards as fearless another believes to be timid etc Finally sincepeople act upon their judgments seeking to foster what they judge to be good and destroy whatthey judge to be bad their differing judgments can result in actions that are in conflict with oneanother In short ldquoinsofar as they are assailed by passive emotions [people] can be contrary toone anotherrdquo

In Proposition 34 Spinoza gives an example of the contrariety caused by the passiveaffects Suppose Peter has sole possession of something Paul loves Deprivation of the loved

object causes sadness in Paul with the idea of Peter as its cause In accordance with Spinozarsquosdefinition of hatred Paul will hate Peter and therefore seek to injure or destroy him in order toremove the cause of his Paulrsquos sadness Spinoza says that this example may seem wrong becausePaul and Peter appear to be contrary to one another because of something they share ndash ie theirlove for the thing Peter possesses But that is not the case Paul has an image of himself aslacking the loved object while Peter has an image of himself as possessing the loved object Sothey in fact differ from one another by virtue of the different images they have rather than bypossessing something in common It is clear from the example that the root of this contrariety ndashie this enmity ndash between Paul and Peter is the fact that the object can be possessed by only oneof them so that what one has the other must lack The difficulty with private property is that it isexclusive to the one who possesses it which means that what I experience as possession othersexperience as deprivation It may seem that there is no problem if other people are indifferent tothe thing I possess However in accordance with Spinozarsquos theory of the imitation of affects themere fact that I love the thing I own other things being equal will cause you to love it as wellMy exclusive possession of the thing will therefore cause sadness in you that takes the form ofhatred or more precisely the kind of hatred called envy which involves pain at the good fortuneof another ldquohuman nature is in general so constituted that men pity the unfortunate and envy thefortunate in the latter case with a hatred proportionate to their love of what they think anotherpossessesrdquo

Common Possession Friendship and Philosophy

In the Ethics Spinoza does not follow his analysis of the antagonisms of private property

by considering the collective possession of material goods (although he does advocateredistribution of wealth to the poor in Part 4 as we have seen) But the theme of commonpossession figures large in the book anyway in his treatment of the intellectual love of God Inorder to understand the connection between common possession and amor Dei intellectualis itwill be necessary to engage in a detailed analysis of Spinozarsquos metaphysics We will begin thattask in earnest in the next chapter At this point we will simply introduce the theme byexamining the relationship between friendship and common possession in the letter to Jelles andsome related writings

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo unlike the similar passages fromActs has its provenance among philosophers Spinoza mistakenly attributes it to Thales but itoccurs in Platorsquos Phaedrus and Laws and is present though not in so many words in thediscussion in the Republic of common ownership of property by the guardian class Thetradition cited by Erasmus that traces the proverb back to Pythagoras is plausible when weconsider the influence the Pythagorean community in Sicily had on Plato in the aftermath ofSocratesrsquo death Erasmus sees the supposed use of a common fund by the Pythagoreans as ananticipation of the similar practice in Acts But Spinozarsquos approach is different What interestshim in the letter is common ownership not as a religious practice but as a matter of thephilosopherrsquos relation to the world Remember the deductive consequences of the proverb sinceall things are in common among friends everything belongs to the wise because the wise arefriends of the gods and all things belong to the gods But what does it mean to say that the wiseare friends of the gods

Although Spinoza uses the word ldquofriendshiprdquo often in his writings he never supplies aformal definition However we can reconstruct the wordrsquos meaning from the contexts in whichhe uses it So for example Proposition 35 of Part III of the Ethics reads

If anyone thinks that there is between the object of his love and another person the sameor a more intimate bond of friendship than there was between them when he alone usedto possess the object loved he will be affected with hatred toward the object loved andwill envy his rival

According to the proposition friendship is an intimate bond between a person and the

object he loves I hate an object of love that I alone once possessed when it wounds my vanity byloving someone else more than me So the object of love must be capable of loving whichmeans that the bond of friendship is a relation of reciprocal love between persons Nowaccording to Spinoza I love something when I have the idea of that thing as the cause of myexperience of joy Joy is an increase in conatus which Spinoza defines as the tendency to persistin being or equivalently the ability to exist and act So friendship is a relation in which Iidentify the other person as the cause of an increase in my conatus and the other personidentifies me as the cause of a similar increase in his or hers Two things each of which causesan increase in the ability to exist and act of the other are said by Spinoza to be in harmony Sincetwo entities in harmony have more combined power than either does singly it is to the advantageof each to be in harmony with the other There is even greater advantage in entering intoharmonious connection with a third individual and the greatest advantage in combining with asmany individuals as possible This is a universal metaphysical principle For example it pertainsjust as much to chemical combination or herding among animals as it does to social relationsbetween people In the case of human relationships it is the fundamental basis of politics orrather one of its two bases the other one being the tendency human beings have to conflict withone another When the state is functioning well it involves not a random collection ofindividuals and certainly not the war of each against all but a group whose members are boundto one another by friendship the human form of harmony Thus for Spinoza friendship is apolitical virtue as it was for Plato and Aristotle

The opposite of friendship is enmity That person is my enemy whom I regard as thecause of my sadness or pain which is the same as saying the cause of a decrease in my abilityto exist and act Like friendship enmity is a reciprocal relationship If I identify you as the causeof my sadness I will seek to injure or eliminate you But that means I will be identified in yourmind as the cause of your sadness Enmity is a relation of reciprocal hatred just as friendship is arelation of reciprocal love Just as there is harmony between friends there is discord betweenenemies The fundamental task of a rational politics is easy to state it is to extend and intensifyfriendship and to reduce and mollify enmity

We have already seen that Spinoza identifies solidarity (generositas) as one of the twoforms of strength of mind (fortitudo) which is the virtue that belongs to the exercise of theintellect Solidarity is the desire to assist others and foster friendship on the basis of reason aloneThe friendship fostered by solidarity is a bond of active love The love of friends for one anotheris active when each person who loves is the adequate cause of his or her love To say that theperson is the adequate cause means that the cause of love is internal to the person who feels it inother words that the love is self-generated Active love differs from passive love in that thecause of passive love is at least partially something that exists outside the person who has theemotion The problem with passive love is that it need not be constant If the bodily dispositionof the person changes in a particular way then the object of erstwhile love will have a differentemotional effect Passive love can change into boredom or indifference or even hatred This isnot possible in the case of active love because it is self-generated Since love involves theexperience of joy no one actively abandons it

There seems to be something odd about the idea of a love between persons that isinternally generated by each of the partners in the relationship Is it not the case that part of theessence of love is the fact that the object of my love is the cause of my love Without denyingthis Spinoza identifies two forms of love that are self-generated in the Ethics One is myintellectual love of God It is indeed true that God is the cause of my love but only insofar as myintellect is part of the infinite intellect of God Thus the object that causes my love - ie God - isinternal to my mind and conversely my mind is internal to it Such reciprocal internality ndash hardas it is to visualize ndash is what Spinoza means by immanence God he tells us is the immanentcause of everything that exists Nothing can exist apart from God while God expresses himselfin all of the things that exist My love of God and Gods love of himself are one and the samebecause Godrsquos intellect is immanent in mine The second form of self-generated love is the

friendship that exists between me and others who love God through the exercise of the intellectThe reason is that the joy I feel in loving God is by the imitation of affects augmented by thejoy you feel in loving God But your love as well as mine is joy caused by the same immanentbeing Another way of saying this is that your intellect and mine are parts (ie finiteexpressions) of the infinite intellect of God Thus the relationship between friends who are boundtogether by the common exercise of the intellect and the love of God that flows from it is basedon an internal bond an internal object and cause of love In this kind of love you and I as itwere discover one another internally You are inside of me and I am inside of you Thus whenyou augment my love and I augment yours it is Gods power as the intellect immanent in us boththat causes the augmentation even though we remain finite individual beings In this state ofaffairs which is admittedly difficult to grasp we can see the rational meaning of the command tolove God by loving the neighbor In intellectual love God not insofar as he is infinite butinsofar as he expresses himself in my finite intellect loves God as he expresses himself in yourfinite intellect

For Spinoza the exercise of the intellect is very different than our ordinary experience ofthe world In the course of ordinary experience we encounter objects in a way that appearshaphazard disordered and incomplete This is so first of all because our encounters are part ofan infinitely complex chain of natural causes and effects of which we know only very limitedparts In addition our experience of objects has as much to do with the condition our bodies arein when we encounter them as it does with the nature of the objects themselves By contrast inexercising the intellect we arrange our ideas in an intelligible pattern that is internal to the mindand entirely different than the images we accumulate through sensory experience The ideas arean expression of our power while the images result from our hapless deliverance to chanceEmotions caused by objects we encounter in the course of ordinary experience are externallydetermined and therefore passive while emotions caused by acts of intellectual comprehensionare internally generated and therefore active That is why love as an active emotion has its originin the exercise of the intellect and the most satisfying form of friendship is based on thereciprocal experience of such love In a letter to Willem van Blyenberg Spinoza provides themost complete description of this kind of friendship to be found in his writings

For my part of all things that are not under my control what I most value is to enterinto a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth For I believe that such a lovingrelationship affords us a serenity surpassing any other boon in the whole wide worldThe love that such men bear to one another grounded as it is in the love that each hasfor knowledge of truth is as unshakable as is the acceptance of truth once it has beenperceived It is moreover the highest source of happiness to be found in things notunder our command for truth more than anything else has the power to effect a closeunion between different sentiments and dispositions

Spinoza says that a friendship based on the love of truth is not under our control But how

can that be if intellectual friendship involves a form of love internally generated by each friendIt would seem that the love we generate through the exercise of the intellect is fully under ourcontrol Spinoza however is referring to the fact that we are able to become friends only withpeople we actually meet which is something that occurs in the course of ordinary haphazarddisordered experience To a large extent our friendships are a matter of chance By way ofillustrating this point it turned out that Spinoza decided his initial judgment of Blyenberg wasmistaken He broke off their correspondence when he realized that the infinite chain of causesand effects had brought his way not a lover of truth but a dogmatic worshipper of the ldquopaperand inkrdquo of the Bible

People create commonwealths because the power of each to exist and act is increased byall others who transfer their rights to the sovereign For reasons we have already considered thepolitical bond is one of friendship ldquoIt is of the first importance to men to establish closerelationships and to bind themselves together with such ties as may most effectively unite theminto one body and as an absolute rule to act in such a way as serves to strengthen friendshiprdquo If

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

the more tolerant Moravia where they created hundreds of Bruderhofs farms and vineyards inwhich land houses farm implements produce and even objects of personal use were ownedcollectively The center of Bruderhof life was a large communal house in which craft productionoccurred on the ground floor and couples lived in small apartments on the upper levels The menengaged in farm labor and craftwork while the women were limited to traditional domesticduties in spite of the fact that children were raised communally apart from their parents TheBruderhofs enjoyed great economic success for a number of reasons People worked hard andconsumed little resulting in a surplus that could be used to purchase additional land seed andtools The size of the communities and of their agricultural production also enabled them to sellcheaply and to pay for supplies at generous prices both of which made the communitieseconomic assets to the areas in which they were located The Hutterites also organized both farmlabor and craft production cooperatively including the education boys were given in thenecessary skills They were therefore practitioners of the second and third forms of communismwe have identified namely communal ownership and cooperative organization of work Whenthey were ultimately forced out of Moravia by the triumph of Catholic forces in the Thirty YearsWar the Hutterites migrated eastward many finally relocating to Canada and the United Stateswhere the Bruderhofs continue to exist to this day

Communism as a kind of mutual aid was the contribution of the other major form ofAnabaptism that of the Mennonites With great political intelligence and skill Menno Simonswas able to reformulate the meaning of Omnia communia sunt in such a way as to avoidthreatening the property interests of nobles and clerics He did this in his book A Humble andChristian Justification and Replication First he denied that Mennonites were advocates ofcommunal property

This accusation is false and without all truth We do not teach and practice communityof goods but we teach and testify the Word of the Lord that all true believers in Christare of one body (1 Corinthians 1213) partakers of one bread (1 Corinthians 1017)have one God and one Lord (Ephesians 4)

In his assertion that the believers are of one body and partakers of one bread Simons is affirmingwhat we have called the general principle of communism while denying that Mennonitesembrace it in the specific form of communal property But he goes further by denying thatMennonites advocate a contemporary version of the apostolic redistribution of wealth

For although we know that the apostolic church had this practice in the beginning ascan be seen in the Acts of the Apostles nevertheless we note from their epistles that itdisappeared in their time and was no longer practiced

Instead of communal property or centralized redistribution of wealth the Mennonites derivefrom the general principle of Christian communism an alternative practice

Seeing then that they are one as said it is Christian and reasonable that they also havedivine love among them and that one member cares for another for both the Scripturesand nature teach this They show mercy and love as much as is in them They do notsuffer a beggar among them They have pity on the wants of the saints They receive thewretched They take strangers into their houses They comfort the sad They lend to theneedy They clothe the naked They share their bread with the hungry They do not turntheir face from the poorhellip

In the subsequent history of Mennonism the practice Simons describes came to be calledldquomutual aidrdquo Note that it is different from charitable giving and this in two ways First thereferences to receiving the wretched taking in strangers sharing bread and so on indicate a farmore personal even intimate form of involvement than simple charitable donation Second

there is the suggestion of reciprocity or mutuality (ldquoone member cares for anotherrdquo) that tends todeny the difference in status between the charitable giver and the recipient of charity Thepractice Simons describes is similar to what some anthropologists have called ldquogeneralizedreciprocityrdquo in which my obligation to give to you when you are in need corresponds to yourobligation to give to me when I am in need In a sense this is a form of redistribution inaccordance with need but it is enacted directly between individual members of the communityrather than administered centrally through a common purse

In line with his political purpose Simons is careful to distinguish between mutual aid andthe expropriation of private property

This is the kind of brotherhood we teach and not that some should take over andpossess the land soil and properties of others as we are falsely maligned accused andlied about by many

In this way he detaches the Mennonite version of communism from any revolutionary intentionThat was the prerequisite for communal survival during the long counter-revolution thatfollowed the Peasant War Still Simons never abandons the general principle Omnia communiasunt nor does he even really reject the practice of the early Church

Since we do not find it a permanent practice with the apostles we have not taught orpracticed community of goods but we urge earnestly and zealously to practice liberalgiving love and mercy as the apostolic writings teach and testify abundantly Andeven if we had taught and practiced community of goods as we are falsely accused ofdoing we would still not be doing otherwise than the holy apostles full of the HolySpirit themselves did in the former church at Jerusalem in the beginning of the holyChristian Church although they stopped the practice as has been said

Like the Hutterites Mennonite communities prospered once they managed to survive the

bloody period of reaction In Holland the Mennonite population consisted largely in successfulmerchants along with a number of lawyers doctors and other professionals Most of thepeasant artisan and laborer families who had started as Mennonites in the sixteenth century hadlong since converted to the Reform Church which is one reason Spinoza faced the problem ofpolitical agency in the TPT Although the idea of mutual aid persisted among the DutchMennonites it took the form predominantly of organized international philanthropy in which thecommunity made contributions not only to Mennonites abroad but to other populations in needThere was no escaping the fact however that in this philanthropic form mutual aid becamehardly distinguishable from conventional charity

Jarig Jelles was born into the Dutch Mennonite community around a century afterSimmons wrote his book when this process of slippage was well underway But there is littledoubt that Jelles knew the Mennonite teaching on mutual aid and its origin in the generalprinciple of Christian communism Even if Jelles never read Erasmusrsquo Adages Spinozarsquosreference to the supposed communism of Thales was likely to resonate with him on the basis ofhis own religious tradition

We cannot be certain how much Spinoza knew in detail about the communist practices ofthe Anabaptists but it is probably not a coincidence that he recommends three of the four atvarious places in his writings In Part 4 of the Ethics ldquoOf Human Bondage or the Strength of theEmotionsrdquo he identifies the chief virtue of the intellect as ldquostrength of the mindrdquo (fortitudo)According to him it takes two forms one directed to the self and one directed to others He callsthe inwardly directed form ldquocouragerdquo defining it as ldquothe desire whereby every individualendeavors to preserve his own being according to the dictates of reason alonerdquo The outwardlydirected form is generositas which Shirley translates as ldquonobilityrdquo though ldquosolidarityrdquo is closerto what Spinoza is getting at He defines it as ldquothe desire whereby every individual according to

the dictates of reason alone endeavors to assist others and make friends of themrdquo When twopeople in contact with one another possess the virtue of generositas they will clearly exhibit itreciprocally in the form of mutual aid the fourth communist practice

In Part 4 of the Ethics Spinoza also formulates a version of the first communist practicethat of the redistribution of wealth in accordance with need

Again men are won over by generosity especially those who do not have thewherewithal to produce what is necessary to support life Yet it is far beyond the powerand resources of a private person to come to the assistance of everyone in need For thewealth of a private person is quite unequal to such a demand It is also a practicalimpossibility for one man to establish friendship with all Therefore the care of the poordevolves upon society as a whole and looks only to the common good

The fact that society as a whole has responsibility for meeting the needs of the poor makes thepractice Spinoza recommends in this passage a version of the centralized redistribution of wealthdescribed in the Acts of the Apostles and institutionalized in Anabaptist form as the ldquocommonpurserdquo More than that the fact that society as a whole must take on this responsibility ratherthan a church or other sub-community makes Spinoza an early advocate of what will becomethree centuries later the European welfare state In our own period as the welfare state is beingdismantled it is easy to see that what neoliberals object to concerning it is precisely its implicitcommunism ie its practice of distribution in accordance with need

Spinoza advocates a third communist practice in his unfinished final work the PoliticalTreatise The context is his discussion of a maximally democratic version of monarchy in whichthe entire citizen body is armed and the king forbidden from making any decision contrary to thewill of a massive council of ordinary citizens In such a state

The fields and the soil and if possible the houses as well should be public property thatis should belong to the sovereign by whom they should be let at an annual rent tocitizens whether townsmen or country-dwellers Apart from this all citizens should befree or exempt from any form of taxation in time of peace Of this rent part should beallocated to the defense works of the commonwealth part to the kings domestic needsFor in time of peace it is still necessary to fortify cities as for war and to have in a stateof readiness ships and other armaments

Ownership of land and buildings by the sovereign is a form of communal property first becausethe citizens of the commonwealth delegate to him or them the property they hold in commonand second because that delegation occurs with the understanding that the sovereign will use theproperty in service of the common good

Spinoza supplies an argument based on more than simple utility for the practice ofholding land and buildings in common

hellip in a state of Nature the one thing a man cannot appropriate to himself and make hisown is land and whatever is so fixed to the land that he cannot conceal it anywhere orcarry it away where he pleases Thus the land and whatever is fixed to it in the way wehave described is especially the public property of the commonwealth that is of allthose who by their united strength can claim it or of him to whom all have delegated thepower to claim it

To state the argument differently since rights are the same as powers no individual has a naturalright to appropriate privately the land or any of its fixed structures because none has the powernecessary to do so The only response an individual can make to incursions by a more powerfulperson or group of people is flight in which he must leave the land and its buildings behind It is

only by entering into a community in which the strength of each is combined for the purpose ofdefense that people can effectively possess fixed property but they do so as a members of thecommunity rather than as an separate individuals According to Spinozarsquos theory of rights onlythe community has the right to own the land and its structures because only the community hasthe required power

The communal ownership of land houses and other buildings is a version of the secondcommunist practice on our list of which Hutterite joint ownership is the most developedhistorical example When adopted by a polity rather than a small community though thepractice has an added advantage Under those circumstances communal possession of fixedproperty eliminates the need for taxes except in time of war What takes their place is ageneration of revenue pegged to wealth since the members of society who are able to rent themost expensive and largest amounts of communal property will obviously pay the most in rentIn this way the form of communal ownership of land and buildings that Spinoza recommendsalso acts as a mechanism for the redistribution of wealth

The only communist practice of the Anabaptists that does not find an equivalent inSpinozarsquos writings is that of the cooperative organization of work The absence is related toSpinozarsquos inability to resolve the problem of political agency in the TPT An attempt to mobilizethe multitude on behalf of democratic social change would need to address the organization ofwork in such a way as to alleviate the burden of toil Reducing the number of hours spent inonerous labor is the only way to provide the multitude with the free time necessary to participatein institutionalized democratic politics Along with the redistribution of wealth and thedevelopment of communal property the cooperative reorganization of work would need to beincorporated as a plank in the latent political program that makes its first democratic appearancein the TPT and is extended in a communist direction in the passages from the Ethics and thePolitical Treatise that we have just examined But that would constitute an explicit anddangerous appeal to the multitude as the agent of political and social transformation an appealthat Spinoza consistently rejects It would involve nothing less than the revival of therevolutionary energies of the Peasant War on a new seventeenth-century foundation

In spite of his radicalism Spinoza doubted that revolution was capable of reconstructingsociety and the state in the way revolutionaries wanted In Chapter 18 of the TPT he takes aposition that is at least on the surface opposed to revolution or any attempt to change the formof the state fundamentally The context is a discussion of the transition from the early Hebrewcommonwealth in which the people held sovereignty to the rule of kings Spinoza tells us thatthe first period saw only a single civil war and concluded with a compassion for the vanquishedthat resulted in lasting peace By contrast the period of kings was marred by multiple warswaged only for the glory of the rulers and involved the massacre of hundreds of thousandsDuring the first period few prophets arose to rebuke the Jews while a great many emergedduring the time of the monarchies From this example Spinoza reasons that it is fatal for peopleaccustomed to popular sovereignty and governed by settled laws to adopt a new monarchicalform of government On the one hand they will be unable to tolerate the arbitrary exercise ofpower by a single individual while on the other the new monarch will be compelled to abolishthe existing laws because they did not originate by his own authority But it is just as dangerousaccording to Spinoza for the subjects of a monarch to attempt his replacement with popular ruleThis is because a popular revolution must advance to the point where it annihilates the king thekingrsquos family and the friends of the king in order to prevent the restoration of royal power But inthe process the revolutionary authority must assume a power even more draconian then thatpreviously exercised by the king In addition having committed regicide the new popularauthority faces the danger that it will fall victim to its own precedent For this reason as well andin the interest of survival it must wield power more repressively than the deposed sovereignSpinoza illustrates his point with reference to the English revolution which eliminated themonarch Charles I only to replace him with the Lord Protector Cromwell who was monarch inall but name and more repressive than Charles

Spinozarsquos point seems unassailable especially since the pattern he describes in the caseof the English Revolution repeated itself over the course of the next three centuries in the French

and Russian Revolutions It is at least arguable that Napoleon if not Robespierre was a newLouis XVI and Stalin a new Tsar even if this understates the more fundamental social changesthat resulted form the two revolutions Still Spinoza does not absolutely proscribe therevolutionary overthrow of a tyrannical government but says instead that there is a great dangerin making the attempt Besides his analysis of the conditions necessary for retaining sovereigntydoes not leave the decision about whether to engage in revolution up to militants He argues thatno state can survive that creates mass indignation in its people and this is precisely theunavoidable result of tyrannical government Spinozarsquos real purpose in Chapter 18 is to opposethe Orangist-Calvinist project of replacing the Dutch Republic with a monarchy ldquoAs for theEstates of Hollandrdquo he writes ldquoas far as we know they never had kings but counts to whom theright of sovereignty was never transferredrdquo His point is that the Dutch War of Independenceagainst Spain was justified because it restored the sovereignty of the people against the attemptby the Spanish ldquocountrdquo (King Philip II) to abolish it However any attempt to replace theRepublic with a monarchy would change the form of the state disastrously by divesting thepeople of their former rights

When Spinoza wrote his treatise the only revolutionary forces that existed were on theRight The danger he warns about in Chapter 18 of the TPT did indeed come to pass only oneyear after his letter to Jelles In 1672 a Calvinist-Orangist mob hacked Johan De Witt and hisbrother Cornelius to death at a time when Holland was invaded by the French army Streetorators stirred up the mob by claiming that the invasion was the result of the brothersrsquo treason Inthe aftermath of the murders William III prince of Orange was elevated to the position ofstadtholder of Holland Although William went on to become King of England he stopped shortof claiming a Dutch throne However in actuality he substituted his own power for much of thatwhich had belonged to the Estates General while the Reformed Church gained considerableinfluence in Dutch government According to a story made famous by Spinozarsquos earliestbiographer Johannes Colerus when the De Witt brothers were murdered Spinozarsquos landlordthwarted his attempt to go the site of the assassinations where the bodies of the brothers werestill on gruesome display in order to plant a sign reading Ultimi Barbarorum (the ultimatebarbarians) In this way the landlord undoubtedly saved the philosopherrsquos life It was the onlytime we know of when the mature Spinoza gave in to his passive affects in a significant way

There is a passage in Chapter 18 of the TPT that uncannily anticipates the murders

Tyranny is most violent where individual beliefs which are unalienable rights areregarded as criminal Indeed in such circumstances the anger of the common people[plebis] is usually the greatest tyrant of allhellip the vilest hypocrites urged on by that samefury which they call zeal for Gods law have everywhere persecuted men whoseblameless character and distinguished qualities have excited the hostility of the commonpeople [plebi] publicly denouncing their beliefs and inflaming the savage multitudersquos[multitudinem] anger against them

Spinoza was the first political philosopher who grappled with the problem of a mass-

based politics of the Right The problem would occur again with the fascist movements of the1920s and 1930s and with the return of the rightwing religious fundamentalisms of our own dayndash Jewish Christian Muslim and Hindu It is not surprising that he failed to solve the problemdefinitively since it continues to remain unsolved The remarkable thing about Spinoza thoughis not that he was skeptical about the liberatory possibilities of revolution by the masses but thathe defended the idea of a popular democracy nonetheless And this he continued to do even inthe aftermath of the De Witt murders In his work on the Political Treatise in the final year of hislife Spinoza developed a powerful critique of the elitist claim that the multitude are incapable ofgoverning

Yet perhaps our [democratic] suggestions will be received with ridicule by those whorestrict to the common people the faults that are inherent in all mankind saying There

is no moderation in the mob they terrorize unless they are frightened and Thecommon people is either a humble servant or an arrogant master there is no truth orjudgment in itrdquo and the like But all men share in one and the same nature it is powerand culture that mislead us with the result that when two men do the same thing weoften say that it is permissible for the one to do it and not the other not because of anydifference in the thing done but in the doer hellipThen again There is no moderation inthe mob they terrorize unless they are frightened For freedom and slavery do not gowell together Finally that there is no truth or judgment in the common people is notsurprising since the important affairs of state are conducted without their knowledgeand from the little that cannot be concealed they can only make conjecturehellip Howeveras we have said all men have the same nature ndash all grow haughty with rule terrorizeunless they are frightened ndash and everywhere truth becomes a casualty through hostilityor servility especially when despotic power is in the hands of one or a few who in trialspay attention not to justice or truth but to the extent of a persons wealth

Surprisingly Spinoza develops this democratic argument while discussing the institutions

appropriate to a monarchy But the key point he makes in the discussion is that a condition ofeffective monarchical rule is expansion of the democratic element within the state in the form ofa sizeable legislative council whose members are drawn from the general population of citizensover the age of fifty On Spinozarsquos view the mistake those who oppose democracy make isassuming that the faults exhibited by the common people ndash such as poor judgment arroganceand hostility ndash belong only to them while they are in fact typical of human beings Actually it iselitist politics that magnifies these all-too-human faults by restricting political power to a limitednumber of people while democratic politics minimizes them through the principle of majorityrule among numerous decision-makers The reason as we already know is that passions pullpeople in different directions making it nearly impossible for the members of a large council toagree on a common position unless they make decisions based not on passion but an idea of thecommon good On Spinozarsquos view it is when government is in the hands of a single person oronly a few people that the dangers the critics of democracy attribute to the common people are infact the greatest

Spinoza also argues against the claim that the common people are not qualified to makepolitical decisions because they lack the necessary education or degree of intellect There is noone he says who has been engaged in an occupation until the age of fifty who lacksunderstanding of his sphere of work ldquoevery man is reasonably competent and sagacious inmatters in which he has been long and attentively engagedrdquo So each is qualified at least to giveadvice in the kingrsquos council concerning his own business especially if given the time necessaryto reflect on the matter under discussion

Most of all the plebs are the group best suited to serving on the council because theirinterest is that of society as a whole ldquoHence it follows that counselors must necessarily beappointed whose private fortune and advantage depend on the general welfare and the peace ofallrdquo For example Spinoza emphasizes the idea that the common people have the highest stake inavoiding war or concluding an existing war with a settlement that brings lasting peace Thereason is they are ones who bear the heaviest burdens of war Unlike the wealthy well-bornmembers of society it is the common person whose occupation is most likely to be interrupted itis his taxes that are raised to onerous levels and it is his son who dies Thus the common interestof society in peace is best served not by a wealthy or educated elite but rather by those whohave the most to lose from war

At the end of the long paragraph defending popular power quoted above Spinozaconnects the question of who holds power within the state to that of who owns property Truthand justice he says are casualties in states where power is held by one person or a handful ofpeople who conduct courtroom trials that favor the rich The implication is that elitist politicalpower and ownership of wealth are intrinsically connected One of the reasons Spinozarecommends public ownership of land and buildings in a monarchy is to prevent the rise of aclass of wealthy landowners with interests different than those of the rest of society Under the

conditions of common ownership ldquothe greatest part of the council will generally have one andthe same attitude of mind towards their common interests and peaceful activitieshelliprdquo And yethaving gone this far he has trouble imagining a state where fixed property is owned collectivelyin which the actually existing multitude holds power The peasants artisans and urban poor whoconstitute the common people of the United Provinces drop out of the picture in the democratic-communist monarchy he describes and nearly everyone makes his living by selling merchandiseor lending money to countrymen ldquoall will have to make a living by engaging in trade or bylending money to their fellow citizensrdquo He seems to assume that the collectivization of land andfixed property would eliminate the occupations of peasant and artisan leaving trade and loaningat interest the only remaining possibilities of work But that of course is not true The fact thatpeople would have to rent farm land would not prevent them from farming any more than theneed to rent workshops in the cities and towns would prevent artisans from plying their tradesBut Spinoza finds the idea of a commonwealth based on commercial enterprise politicallyappealing This is because he regards commercial occupations as contributing to harmony andpeace since he claims they establish connections between people that further the interests of allwhile those who engage in them prosper only in peacetime Both of these assumptions are asquestionable as the expectation that non-commercial occupations will die out After all even inSpinozarsquos day colonialism and the struggle for colonies between imperialist states led to warsbetween the great powers including the United Provinces not to mention the military and otherforms of violence involved in subjugating the colonies The East India Company was not exactlya force for peace What seems to be at work here instead is a failure of social imaginationthough one we may find understandable given the fact that the capitalist economy was still at anearly stage in its development However this may be there is no denying the fact that despite hispowerful arguments in favor of democratic rule and communal property it is still a bourgeoissociety and state that Spinoza envisions

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of what we should not hesitate to call Spinozarsquoscommunism is the critique of private ownership he develops in the Ethics based on his theory ofaffects For him there is a paradox involved in social and political life It stems from the fact thaton the one hand people can survive and develop their capacities only by joining with oneanother in societies and states But on the other hand the necessity of combining with oneanother does not prevent them from seeking their own advantage above that of their fellowsbeing quarrelsome or hateful and erecting obstacles to each otherrsquos happiness Spinoza identifiesthe reason for these deep-rooted problems of social coexistence in Part IV Proposition 35 of theEthics ldquoInsofar as men are assailed by emotions that are passive they can be contrary to oneanotherrdquo Emotions are states of the body characterized by a transition from a lower degree of thepower to exist and act (conatus) to a higher one or conversely from a higher degree to a lowerone The first transition is the affect of joy while the second is that of sadness Passive emotionsare caused by an object external to the body or more precisely external to its essential natureSpinoza conceives of that nature as a specific proportion of motion-and-rest that the parts of thebody exhibit in relation to one another While joy is an increase in our capacity to preserve theproportion of motion-and-rest essential to our body (ie to exist and act as we do) sadness is adecrease in that capacity The political problem created by the passive emotions is that evenwhen they are joyful they are not under the control of the person who experiences themMoreover different people are affected by the same external object in different ways because theparts of their bodies and their proportionate relations of motion-and rest-differ The same objectmay elicit anger in one person and pity in another or love in one and hatred in another and soon And because people differ in their emotional reactions to the same things they also differ inthe judgments they frame on the basis of these reactions What one person praises anotherperson blames what one regards as fearless another believes to be timid etc Finally sincepeople act upon their judgments seeking to foster what they judge to be good and destroy whatthey judge to be bad their differing judgments can result in actions that are in conflict with oneanother In short ldquoinsofar as they are assailed by passive emotions [people] can be contrary toone anotherrdquo

In Proposition 34 Spinoza gives an example of the contrariety caused by the passiveaffects Suppose Peter has sole possession of something Paul loves Deprivation of the loved

object causes sadness in Paul with the idea of Peter as its cause In accordance with Spinozarsquosdefinition of hatred Paul will hate Peter and therefore seek to injure or destroy him in order toremove the cause of his Paulrsquos sadness Spinoza says that this example may seem wrong becausePaul and Peter appear to be contrary to one another because of something they share ndash ie theirlove for the thing Peter possesses But that is not the case Paul has an image of himself aslacking the loved object while Peter has an image of himself as possessing the loved object Sothey in fact differ from one another by virtue of the different images they have rather than bypossessing something in common It is clear from the example that the root of this contrariety ndashie this enmity ndash between Paul and Peter is the fact that the object can be possessed by only oneof them so that what one has the other must lack The difficulty with private property is that it isexclusive to the one who possesses it which means that what I experience as possession othersexperience as deprivation It may seem that there is no problem if other people are indifferent tothe thing I possess However in accordance with Spinozarsquos theory of the imitation of affects themere fact that I love the thing I own other things being equal will cause you to love it as wellMy exclusive possession of the thing will therefore cause sadness in you that takes the form ofhatred or more precisely the kind of hatred called envy which involves pain at the good fortuneof another ldquohuman nature is in general so constituted that men pity the unfortunate and envy thefortunate in the latter case with a hatred proportionate to their love of what they think anotherpossessesrdquo

Common Possession Friendship and Philosophy

In the Ethics Spinoza does not follow his analysis of the antagonisms of private property

by considering the collective possession of material goods (although he does advocateredistribution of wealth to the poor in Part 4 as we have seen) But the theme of commonpossession figures large in the book anyway in his treatment of the intellectual love of God Inorder to understand the connection between common possession and amor Dei intellectualis itwill be necessary to engage in a detailed analysis of Spinozarsquos metaphysics We will begin thattask in earnest in the next chapter At this point we will simply introduce the theme byexamining the relationship between friendship and common possession in the letter to Jelles andsome related writings

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo unlike the similar passages fromActs has its provenance among philosophers Spinoza mistakenly attributes it to Thales but itoccurs in Platorsquos Phaedrus and Laws and is present though not in so many words in thediscussion in the Republic of common ownership of property by the guardian class Thetradition cited by Erasmus that traces the proverb back to Pythagoras is plausible when weconsider the influence the Pythagorean community in Sicily had on Plato in the aftermath ofSocratesrsquo death Erasmus sees the supposed use of a common fund by the Pythagoreans as ananticipation of the similar practice in Acts But Spinozarsquos approach is different What interestshim in the letter is common ownership not as a religious practice but as a matter of thephilosopherrsquos relation to the world Remember the deductive consequences of the proverb sinceall things are in common among friends everything belongs to the wise because the wise arefriends of the gods and all things belong to the gods But what does it mean to say that the wiseare friends of the gods

Although Spinoza uses the word ldquofriendshiprdquo often in his writings he never supplies aformal definition However we can reconstruct the wordrsquos meaning from the contexts in whichhe uses it So for example Proposition 35 of Part III of the Ethics reads

If anyone thinks that there is between the object of his love and another person the sameor a more intimate bond of friendship than there was between them when he alone usedto possess the object loved he will be affected with hatred toward the object loved andwill envy his rival

According to the proposition friendship is an intimate bond between a person and the

object he loves I hate an object of love that I alone once possessed when it wounds my vanity byloving someone else more than me So the object of love must be capable of loving whichmeans that the bond of friendship is a relation of reciprocal love between persons Nowaccording to Spinoza I love something when I have the idea of that thing as the cause of myexperience of joy Joy is an increase in conatus which Spinoza defines as the tendency to persistin being or equivalently the ability to exist and act So friendship is a relation in which Iidentify the other person as the cause of an increase in my conatus and the other personidentifies me as the cause of a similar increase in his or hers Two things each of which causesan increase in the ability to exist and act of the other are said by Spinoza to be in harmony Sincetwo entities in harmony have more combined power than either does singly it is to the advantageof each to be in harmony with the other There is even greater advantage in entering intoharmonious connection with a third individual and the greatest advantage in combining with asmany individuals as possible This is a universal metaphysical principle For example it pertainsjust as much to chemical combination or herding among animals as it does to social relationsbetween people In the case of human relationships it is the fundamental basis of politics orrather one of its two bases the other one being the tendency human beings have to conflict withone another When the state is functioning well it involves not a random collection ofindividuals and certainly not the war of each against all but a group whose members are boundto one another by friendship the human form of harmony Thus for Spinoza friendship is apolitical virtue as it was for Plato and Aristotle

The opposite of friendship is enmity That person is my enemy whom I regard as thecause of my sadness or pain which is the same as saying the cause of a decrease in my abilityto exist and act Like friendship enmity is a reciprocal relationship If I identify you as the causeof my sadness I will seek to injure or eliminate you But that means I will be identified in yourmind as the cause of your sadness Enmity is a relation of reciprocal hatred just as friendship is arelation of reciprocal love Just as there is harmony between friends there is discord betweenenemies The fundamental task of a rational politics is easy to state it is to extend and intensifyfriendship and to reduce and mollify enmity

We have already seen that Spinoza identifies solidarity (generositas) as one of the twoforms of strength of mind (fortitudo) which is the virtue that belongs to the exercise of theintellect Solidarity is the desire to assist others and foster friendship on the basis of reason aloneThe friendship fostered by solidarity is a bond of active love The love of friends for one anotheris active when each person who loves is the adequate cause of his or her love To say that theperson is the adequate cause means that the cause of love is internal to the person who feels it inother words that the love is self-generated Active love differs from passive love in that thecause of passive love is at least partially something that exists outside the person who has theemotion The problem with passive love is that it need not be constant If the bodily dispositionof the person changes in a particular way then the object of erstwhile love will have a differentemotional effect Passive love can change into boredom or indifference or even hatred This isnot possible in the case of active love because it is self-generated Since love involves theexperience of joy no one actively abandons it

There seems to be something odd about the idea of a love between persons that isinternally generated by each of the partners in the relationship Is it not the case that part of theessence of love is the fact that the object of my love is the cause of my love Without denyingthis Spinoza identifies two forms of love that are self-generated in the Ethics One is myintellectual love of God It is indeed true that God is the cause of my love but only insofar as myintellect is part of the infinite intellect of God Thus the object that causes my love - ie God - isinternal to my mind and conversely my mind is internal to it Such reciprocal internality ndash hardas it is to visualize ndash is what Spinoza means by immanence God he tells us is the immanentcause of everything that exists Nothing can exist apart from God while God expresses himselfin all of the things that exist My love of God and Gods love of himself are one and the samebecause Godrsquos intellect is immanent in mine The second form of self-generated love is the

friendship that exists between me and others who love God through the exercise of the intellectThe reason is that the joy I feel in loving God is by the imitation of affects augmented by thejoy you feel in loving God But your love as well as mine is joy caused by the same immanentbeing Another way of saying this is that your intellect and mine are parts (ie finiteexpressions) of the infinite intellect of God Thus the relationship between friends who are boundtogether by the common exercise of the intellect and the love of God that flows from it is basedon an internal bond an internal object and cause of love In this kind of love you and I as itwere discover one another internally You are inside of me and I am inside of you Thus whenyou augment my love and I augment yours it is Gods power as the intellect immanent in us boththat causes the augmentation even though we remain finite individual beings In this state ofaffairs which is admittedly difficult to grasp we can see the rational meaning of the command tolove God by loving the neighbor In intellectual love God not insofar as he is infinite butinsofar as he expresses himself in my finite intellect loves God as he expresses himself in yourfinite intellect

For Spinoza the exercise of the intellect is very different than our ordinary experience ofthe world In the course of ordinary experience we encounter objects in a way that appearshaphazard disordered and incomplete This is so first of all because our encounters are part ofan infinitely complex chain of natural causes and effects of which we know only very limitedparts In addition our experience of objects has as much to do with the condition our bodies arein when we encounter them as it does with the nature of the objects themselves By contrast inexercising the intellect we arrange our ideas in an intelligible pattern that is internal to the mindand entirely different than the images we accumulate through sensory experience The ideas arean expression of our power while the images result from our hapless deliverance to chanceEmotions caused by objects we encounter in the course of ordinary experience are externallydetermined and therefore passive while emotions caused by acts of intellectual comprehensionare internally generated and therefore active That is why love as an active emotion has its originin the exercise of the intellect and the most satisfying form of friendship is based on thereciprocal experience of such love In a letter to Willem van Blyenberg Spinoza provides themost complete description of this kind of friendship to be found in his writings

For my part of all things that are not under my control what I most value is to enterinto a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth For I believe that such a lovingrelationship affords us a serenity surpassing any other boon in the whole wide worldThe love that such men bear to one another grounded as it is in the love that each hasfor knowledge of truth is as unshakable as is the acceptance of truth once it has beenperceived It is moreover the highest source of happiness to be found in things notunder our command for truth more than anything else has the power to effect a closeunion between different sentiments and dispositions

Spinoza says that a friendship based on the love of truth is not under our control But how

can that be if intellectual friendship involves a form of love internally generated by each friendIt would seem that the love we generate through the exercise of the intellect is fully under ourcontrol Spinoza however is referring to the fact that we are able to become friends only withpeople we actually meet which is something that occurs in the course of ordinary haphazarddisordered experience To a large extent our friendships are a matter of chance By way ofillustrating this point it turned out that Spinoza decided his initial judgment of Blyenberg wasmistaken He broke off their correspondence when he realized that the infinite chain of causesand effects had brought his way not a lover of truth but a dogmatic worshipper of the ldquopaperand inkrdquo of the Bible

People create commonwealths because the power of each to exist and act is increased byall others who transfer their rights to the sovereign For reasons we have already considered thepolitical bond is one of friendship ldquoIt is of the first importance to men to establish closerelationships and to bind themselves together with such ties as may most effectively unite theminto one body and as an absolute rule to act in such a way as serves to strengthen friendshiprdquo If

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

there is the suggestion of reciprocity or mutuality (ldquoone member cares for anotherrdquo) that tends todeny the difference in status between the charitable giver and the recipient of charity Thepractice Simons describes is similar to what some anthropologists have called ldquogeneralizedreciprocityrdquo in which my obligation to give to you when you are in need corresponds to yourobligation to give to me when I am in need In a sense this is a form of redistribution inaccordance with need but it is enacted directly between individual members of the communityrather than administered centrally through a common purse

In line with his political purpose Simons is careful to distinguish between mutual aid andthe expropriation of private property

This is the kind of brotherhood we teach and not that some should take over andpossess the land soil and properties of others as we are falsely maligned accused andlied about by many

In this way he detaches the Mennonite version of communism from any revolutionary intentionThat was the prerequisite for communal survival during the long counter-revolution thatfollowed the Peasant War Still Simons never abandons the general principle Omnia communiasunt nor does he even really reject the practice of the early Church

Since we do not find it a permanent practice with the apostles we have not taught orpracticed community of goods but we urge earnestly and zealously to practice liberalgiving love and mercy as the apostolic writings teach and testify abundantly Andeven if we had taught and practiced community of goods as we are falsely accused ofdoing we would still not be doing otherwise than the holy apostles full of the HolySpirit themselves did in the former church at Jerusalem in the beginning of the holyChristian Church although they stopped the practice as has been said

Like the Hutterites Mennonite communities prospered once they managed to survive the

bloody period of reaction In Holland the Mennonite population consisted largely in successfulmerchants along with a number of lawyers doctors and other professionals Most of thepeasant artisan and laborer families who had started as Mennonites in the sixteenth century hadlong since converted to the Reform Church which is one reason Spinoza faced the problem ofpolitical agency in the TPT Although the idea of mutual aid persisted among the DutchMennonites it took the form predominantly of organized international philanthropy in which thecommunity made contributions not only to Mennonites abroad but to other populations in needThere was no escaping the fact however that in this philanthropic form mutual aid becamehardly distinguishable from conventional charity

Jarig Jelles was born into the Dutch Mennonite community around a century afterSimmons wrote his book when this process of slippage was well underway But there is littledoubt that Jelles knew the Mennonite teaching on mutual aid and its origin in the generalprinciple of Christian communism Even if Jelles never read Erasmusrsquo Adages Spinozarsquosreference to the supposed communism of Thales was likely to resonate with him on the basis ofhis own religious tradition

We cannot be certain how much Spinoza knew in detail about the communist practices ofthe Anabaptists but it is probably not a coincidence that he recommends three of the four atvarious places in his writings In Part 4 of the Ethics ldquoOf Human Bondage or the Strength of theEmotionsrdquo he identifies the chief virtue of the intellect as ldquostrength of the mindrdquo (fortitudo)According to him it takes two forms one directed to the self and one directed to others He callsthe inwardly directed form ldquocouragerdquo defining it as ldquothe desire whereby every individualendeavors to preserve his own being according to the dictates of reason alonerdquo The outwardlydirected form is generositas which Shirley translates as ldquonobilityrdquo though ldquosolidarityrdquo is closerto what Spinoza is getting at He defines it as ldquothe desire whereby every individual according to

the dictates of reason alone endeavors to assist others and make friends of themrdquo When twopeople in contact with one another possess the virtue of generositas they will clearly exhibit itreciprocally in the form of mutual aid the fourth communist practice

In Part 4 of the Ethics Spinoza also formulates a version of the first communist practicethat of the redistribution of wealth in accordance with need

Again men are won over by generosity especially those who do not have thewherewithal to produce what is necessary to support life Yet it is far beyond the powerand resources of a private person to come to the assistance of everyone in need For thewealth of a private person is quite unequal to such a demand It is also a practicalimpossibility for one man to establish friendship with all Therefore the care of the poordevolves upon society as a whole and looks only to the common good

The fact that society as a whole has responsibility for meeting the needs of the poor makes thepractice Spinoza recommends in this passage a version of the centralized redistribution of wealthdescribed in the Acts of the Apostles and institutionalized in Anabaptist form as the ldquocommonpurserdquo More than that the fact that society as a whole must take on this responsibility ratherthan a church or other sub-community makes Spinoza an early advocate of what will becomethree centuries later the European welfare state In our own period as the welfare state is beingdismantled it is easy to see that what neoliberals object to concerning it is precisely its implicitcommunism ie its practice of distribution in accordance with need

Spinoza advocates a third communist practice in his unfinished final work the PoliticalTreatise The context is his discussion of a maximally democratic version of monarchy in whichthe entire citizen body is armed and the king forbidden from making any decision contrary to thewill of a massive council of ordinary citizens In such a state

The fields and the soil and if possible the houses as well should be public property thatis should belong to the sovereign by whom they should be let at an annual rent tocitizens whether townsmen or country-dwellers Apart from this all citizens should befree or exempt from any form of taxation in time of peace Of this rent part should beallocated to the defense works of the commonwealth part to the kings domestic needsFor in time of peace it is still necessary to fortify cities as for war and to have in a stateof readiness ships and other armaments

Ownership of land and buildings by the sovereign is a form of communal property first becausethe citizens of the commonwealth delegate to him or them the property they hold in commonand second because that delegation occurs with the understanding that the sovereign will use theproperty in service of the common good

Spinoza supplies an argument based on more than simple utility for the practice ofholding land and buildings in common

hellip in a state of Nature the one thing a man cannot appropriate to himself and make hisown is land and whatever is so fixed to the land that he cannot conceal it anywhere orcarry it away where he pleases Thus the land and whatever is fixed to it in the way wehave described is especially the public property of the commonwealth that is of allthose who by their united strength can claim it or of him to whom all have delegated thepower to claim it

To state the argument differently since rights are the same as powers no individual has a naturalright to appropriate privately the land or any of its fixed structures because none has the powernecessary to do so The only response an individual can make to incursions by a more powerfulperson or group of people is flight in which he must leave the land and its buildings behind It is

only by entering into a community in which the strength of each is combined for the purpose ofdefense that people can effectively possess fixed property but they do so as a members of thecommunity rather than as an separate individuals According to Spinozarsquos theory of rights onlythe community has the right to own the land and its structures because only the community hasthe required power

The communal ownership of land houses and other buildings is a version of the secondcommunist practice on our list of which Hutterite joint ownership is the most developedhistorical example When adopted by a polity rather than a small community though thepractice has an added advantage Under those circumstances communal possession of fixedproperty eliminates the need for taxes except in time of war What takes their place is ageneration of revenue pegged to wealth since the members of society who are able to rent themost expensive and largest amounts of communal property will obviously pay the most in rentIn this way the form of communal ownership of land and buildings that Spinoza recommendsalso acts as a mechanism for the redistribution of wealth

The only communist practice of the Anabaptists that does not find an equivalent inSpinozarsquos writings is that of the cooperative organization of work The absence is related toSpinozarsquos inability to resolve the problem of political agency in the TPT An attempt to mobilizethe multitude on behalf of democratic social change would need to address the organization ofwork in such a way as to alleviate the burden of toil Reducing the number of hours spent inonerous labor is the only way to provide the multitude with the free time necessary to participatein institutionalized democratic politics Along with the redistribution of wealth and thedevelopment of communal property the cooperative reorganization of work would need to beincorporated as a plank in the latent political program that makes its first democratic appearancein the TPT and is extended in a communist direction in the passages from the Ethics and thePolitical Treatise that we have just examined But that would constitute an explicit anddangerous appeal to the multitude as the agent of political and social transformation an appealthat Spinoza consistently rejects It would involve nothing less than the revival of therevolutionary energies of the Peasant War on a new seventeenth-century foundation

In spite of his radicalism Spinoza doubted that revolution was capable of reconstructingsociety and the state in the way revolutionaries wanted In Chapter 18 of the TPT he takes aposition that is at least on the surface opposed to revolution or any attempt to change the formof the state fundamentally The context is a discussion of the transition from the early Hebrewcommonwealth in which the people held sovereignty to the rule of kings Spinoza tells us thatthe first period saw only a single civil war and concluded with a compassion for the vanquishedthat resulted in lasting peace By contrast the period of kings was marred by multiple warswaged only for the glory of the rulers and involved the massacre of hundreds of thousandsDuring the first period few prophets arose to rebuke the Jews while a great many emergedduring the time of the monarchies From this example Spinoza reasons that it is fatal for peopleaccustomed to popular sovereignty and governed by settled laws to adopt a new monarchicalform of government On the one hand they will be unable to tolerate the arbitrary exercise ofpower by a single individual while on the other the new monarch will be compelled to abolishthe existing laws because they did not originate by his own authority But it is just as dangerousaccording to Spinoza for the subjects of a monarch to attempt his replacement with popular ruleThis is because a popular revolution must advance to the point where it annihilates the king thekingrsquos family and the friends of the king in order to prevent the restoration of royal power But inthe process the revolutionary authority must assume a power even more draconian then thatpreviously exercised by the king In addition having committed regicide the new popularauthority faces the danger that it will fall victim to its own precedent For this reason as well andin the interest of survival it must wield power more repressively than the deposed sovereignSpinoza illustrates his point with reference to the English revolution which eliminated themonarch Charles I only to replace him with the Lord Protector Cromwell who was monarch inall but name and more repressive than Charles

Spinozarsquos point seems unassailable especially since the pattern he describes in the caseof the English Revolution repeated itself over the course of the next three centuries in the French

and Russian Revolutions It is at least arguable that Napoleon if not Robespierre was a newLouis XVI and Stalin a new Tsar even if this understates the more fundamental social changesthat resulted form the two revolutions Still Spinoza does not absolutely proscribe therevolutionary overthrow of a tyrannical government but says instead that there is a great dangerin making the attempt Besides his analysis of the conditions necessary for retaining sovereigntydoes not leave the decision about whether to engage in revolution up to militants He argues thatno state can survive that creates mass indignation in its people and this is precisely theunavoidable result of tyrannical government Spinozarsquos real purpose in Chapter 18 is to opposethe Orangist-Calvinist project of replacing the Dutch Republic with a monarchy ldquoAs for theEstates of Hollandrdquo he writes ldquoas far as we know they never had kings but counts to whom theright of sovereignty was never transferredrdquo His point is that the Dutch War of Independenceagainst Spain was justified because it restored the sovereignty of the people against the attemptby the Spanish ldquocountrdquo (King Philip II) to abolish it However any attempt to replace theRepublic with a monarchy would change the form of the state disastrously by divesting thepeople of their former rights

When Spinoza wrote his treatise the only revolutionary forces that existed were on theRight The danger he warns about in Chapter 18 of the TPT did indeed come to pass only oneyear after his letter to Jelles In 1672 a Calvinist-Orangist mob hacked Johan De Witt and hisbrother Cornelius to death at a time when Holland was invaded by the French army Streetorators stirred up the mob by claiming that the invasion was the result of the brothersrsquo treason Inthe aftermath of the murders William III prince of Orange was elevated to the position ofstadtholder of Holland Although William went on to become King of England he stopped shortof claiming a Dutch throne However in actuality he substituted his own power for much of thatwhich had belonged to the Estates General while the Reformed Church gained considerableinfluence in Dutch government According to a story made famous by Spinozarsquos earliestbiographer Johannes Colerus when the De Witt brothers were murdered Spinozarsquos landlordthwarted his attempt to go the site of the assassinations where the bodies of the brothers werestill on gruesome display in order to plant a sign reading Ultimi Barbarorum (the ultimatebarbarians) In this way the landlord undoubtedly saved the philosopherrsquos life It was the onlytime we know of when the mature Spinoza gave in to his passive affects in a significant way

There is a passage in Chapter 18 of the TPT that uncannily anticipates the murders

Tyranny is most violent where individual beliefs which are unalienable rights areregarded as criminal Indeed in such circumstances the anger of the common people[plebis] is usually the greatest tyrant of allhellip the vilest hypocrites urged on by that samefury which they call zeal for Gods law have everywhere persecuted men whoseblameless character and distinguished qualities have excited the hostility of the commonpeople [plebi] publicly denouncing their beliefs and inflaming the savage multitudersquos[multitudinem] anger against them

Spinoza was the first political philosopher who grappled with the problem of a mass-

based politics of the Right The problem would occur again with the fascist movements of the1920s and 1930s and with the return of the rightwing religious fundamentalisms of our own dayndash Jewish Christian Muslim and Hindu It is not surprising that he failed to solve the problemdefinitively since it continues to remain unsolved The remarkable thing about Spinoza thoughis not that he was skeptical about the liberatory possibilities of revolution by the masses but thathe defended the idea of a popular democracy nonetheless And this he continued to do even inthe aftermath of the De Witt murders In his work on the Political Treatise in the final year of hislife Spinoza developed a powerful critique of the elitist claim that the multitude are incapable ofgoverning

Yet perhaps our [democratic] suggestions will be received with ridicule by those whorestrict to the common people the faults that are inherent in all mankind saying There

is no moderation in the mob they terrorize unless they are frightened and Thecommon people is either a humble servant or an arrogant master there is no truth orjudgment in itrdquo and the like But all men share in one and the same nature it is powerand culture that mislead us with the result that when two men do the same thing weoften say that it is permissible for the one to do it and not the other not because of anydifference in the thing done but in the doer hellipThen again There is no moderation inthe mob they terrorize unless they are frightened For freedom and slavery do not gowell together Finally that there is no truth or judgment in the common people is notsurprising since the important affairs of state are conducted without their knowledgeand from the little that cannot be concealed they can only make conjecturehellip Howeveras we have said all men have the same nature ndash all grow haughty with rule terrorizeunless they are frightened ndash and everywhere truth becomes a casualty through hostilityor servility especially when despotic power is in the hands of one or a few who in trialspay attention not to justice or truth but to the extent of a persons wealth

Surprisingly Spinoza develops this democratic argument while discussing the institutions

appropriate to a monarchy But the key point he makes in the discussion is that a condition ofeffective monarchical rule is expansion of the democratic element within the state in the form ofa sizeable legislative council whose members are drawn from the general population of citizensover the age of fifty On Spinozarsquos view the mistake those who oppose democracy make isassuming that the faults exhibited by the common people ndash such as poor judgment arroganceand hostility ndash belong only to them while they are in fact typical of human beings Actually it iselitist politics that magnifies these all-too-human faults by restricting political power to a limitednumber of people while democratic politics minimizes them through the principle of majorityrule among numerous decision-makers The reason as we already know is that passions pullpeople in different directions making it nearly impossible for the members of a large council toagree on a common position unless they make decisions based not on passion but an idea of thecommon good On Spinozarsquos view it is when government is in the hands of a single person oronly a few people that the dangers the critics of democracy attribute to the common people are infact the greatest

Spinoza also argues against the claim that the common people are not qualified to makepolitical decisions because they lack the necessary education or degree of intellect There is noone he says who has been engaged in an occupation until the age of fifty who lacksunderstanding of his sphere of work ldquoevery man is reasonably competent and sagacious inmatters in which he has been long and attentively engagedrdquo So each is qualified at least to giveadvice in the kingrsquos council concerning his own business especially if given the time necessaryto reflect on the matter under discussion

Most of all the plebs are the group best suited to serving on the council because theirinterest is that of society as a whole ldquoHence it follows that counselors must necessarily beappointed whose private fortune and advantage depend on the general welfare and the peace ofallrdquo For example Spinoza emphasizes the idea that the common people have the highest stake inavoiding war or concluding an existing war with a settlement that brings lasting peace Thereason is they are ones who bear the heaviest burdens of war Unlike the wealthy well-bornmembers of society it is the common person whose occupation is most likely to be interrupted itis his taxes that are raised to onerous levels and it is his son who dies Thus the common interestof society in peace is best served not by a wealthy or educated elite but rather by those whohave the most to lose from war

At the end of the long paragraph defending popular power quoted above Spinozaconnects the question of who holds power within the state to that of who owns property Truthand justice he says are casualties in states where power is held by one person or a handful ofpeople who conduct courtroom trials that favor the rich The implication is that elitist politicalpower and ownership of wealth are intrinsically connected One of the reasons Spinozarecommends public ownership of land and buildings in a monarchy is to prevent the rise of aclass of wealthy landowners with interests different than those of the rest of society Under the

conditions of common ownership ldquothe greatest part of the council will generally have one andthe same attitude of mind towards their common interests and peaceful activitieshelliprdquo And yethaving gone this far he has trouble imagining a state where fixed property is owned collectivelyin which the actually existing multitude holds power The peasants artisans and urban poor whoconstitute the common people of the United Provinces drop out of the picture in the democratic-communist monarchy he describes and nearly everyone makes his living by selling merchandiseor lending money to countrymen ldquoall will have to make a living by engaging in trade or bylending money to their fellow citizensrdquo He seems to assume that the collectivization of land andfixed property would eliminate the occupations of peasant and artisan leaving trade and loaningat interest the only remaining possibilities of work But that of course is not true The fact thatpeople would have to rent farm land would not prevent them from farming any more than theneed to rent workshops in the cities and towns would prevent artisans from plying their tradesBut Spinoza finds the idea of a commonwealth based on commercial enterprise politicallyappealing This is because he regards commercial occupations as contributing to harmony andpeace since he claims they establish connections between people that further the interests of allwhile those who engage in them prosper only in peacetime Both of these assumptions are asquestionable as the expectation that non-commercial occupations will die out After all even inSpinozarsquos day colonialism and the struggle for colonies between imperialist states led to warsbetween the great powers including the United Provinces not to mention the military and otherforms of violence involved in subjugating the colonies The East India Company was not exactlya force for peace What seems to be at work here instead is a failure of social imaginationthough one we may find understandable given the fact that the capitalist economy was still at anearly stage in its development However this may be there is no denying the fact that despite hispowerful arguments in favor of democratic rule and communal property it is still a bourgeoissociety and state that Spinoza envisions

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of what we should not hesitate to call Spinozarsquoscommunism is the critique of private ownership he develops in the Ethics based on his theory ofaffects For him there is a paradox involved in social and political life It stems from the fact thaton the one hand people can survive and develop their capacities only by joining with oneanother in societies and states But on the other hand the necessity of combining with oneanother does not prevent them from seeking their own advantage above that of their fellowsbeing quarrelsome or hateful and erecting obstacles to each otherrsquos happiness Spinoza identifiesthe reason for these deep-rooted problems of social coexistence in Part IV Proposition 35 of theEthics ldquoInsofar as men are assailed by emotions that are passive they can be contrary to oneanotherrdquo Emotions are states of the body characterized by a transition from a lower degree of thepower to exist and act (conatus) to a higher one or conversely from a higher degree to a lowerone The first transition is the affect of joy while the second is that of sadness Passive emotionsare caused by an object external to the body or more precisely external to its essential natureSpinoza conceives of that nature as a specific proportion of motion-and-rest that the parts of thebody exhibit in relation to one another While joy is an increase in our capacity to preserve theproportion of motion-and-rest essential to our body (ie to exist and act as we do) sadness is adecrease in that capacity The political problem created by the passive emotions is that evenwhen they are joyful they are not under the control of the person who experiences themMoreover different people are affected by the same external object in different ways because theparts of their bodies and their proportionate relations of motion-and rest-differ The same objectmay elicit anger in one person and pity in another or love in one and hatred in another and soon And because people differ in their emotional reactions to the same things they also differ inthe judgments they frame on the basis of these reactions What one person praises anotherperson blames what one regards as fearless another believes to be timid etc Finally sincepeople act upon their judgments seeking to foster what they judge to be good and destroy whatthey judge to be bad their differing judgments can result in actions that are in conflict with oneanother In short ldquoinsofar as they are assailed by passive emotions [people] can be contrary toone anotherrdquo

In Proposition 34 Spinoza gives an example of the contrariety caused by the passiveaffects Suppose Peter has sole possession of something Paul loves Deprivation of the loved

object causes sadness in Paul with the idea of Peter as its cause In accordance with Spinozarsquosdefinition of hatred Paul will hate Peter and therefore seek to injure or destroy him in order toremove the cause of his Paulrsquos sadness Spinoza says that this example may seem wrong becausePaul and Peter appear to be contrary to one another because of something they share ndash ie theirlove for the thing Peter possesses But that is not the case Paul has an image of himself aslacking the loved object while Peter has an image of himself as possessing the loved object Sothey in fact differ from one another by virtue of the different images they have rather than bypossessing something in common It is clear from the example that the root of this contrariety ndashie this enmity ndash between Paul and Peter is the fact that the object can be possessed by only oneof them so that what one has the other must lack The difficulty with private property is that it isexclusive to the one who possesses it which means that what I experience as possession othersexperience as deprivation It may seem that there is no problem if other people are indifferent tothe thing I possess However in accordance with Spinozarsquos theory of the imitation of affects themere fact that I love the thing I own other things being equal will cause you to love it as wellMy exclusive possession of the thing will therefore cause sadness in you that takes the form ofhatred or more precisely the kind of hatred called envy which involves pain at the good fortuneof another ldquohuman nature is in general so constituted that men pity the unfortunate and envy thefortunate in the latter case with a hatred proportionate to their love of what they think anotherpossessesrdquo

Common Possession Friendship and Philosophy

In the Ethics Spinoza does not follow his analysis of the antagonisms of private property

by considering the collective possession of material goods (although he does advocateredistribution of wealth to the poor in Part 4 as we have seen) But the theme of commonpossession figures large in the book anyway in his treatment of the intellectual love of God Inorder to understand the connection between common possession and amor Dei intellectualis itwill be necessary to engage in a detailed analysis of Spinozarsquos metaphysics We will begin thattask in earnest in the next chapter At this point we will simply introduce the theme byexamining the relationship between friendship and common possession in the letter to Jelles andsome related writings

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo unlike the similar passages fromActs has its provenance among philosophers Spinoza mistakenly attributes it to Thales but itoccurs in Platorsquos Phaedrus and Laws and is present though not in so many words in thediscussion in the Republic of common ownership of property by the guardian class Thetradition cited by Erasmus that traces the proverb back to Pythagoras is plausible when weconsider the influence the Pythagorean community in Sicily had on Plato in the aftermath ofSocratesrsquo death Erasmus sees the supposed use of a common fund by the Pythagoreans as ananticipation of the similar practice in Acts But Spinozarsquos approach is different What interestshim in the letter is common ownership not as a religious practice but as a matter of thephilosopherrsquos relation to the world Remember the deductive consequences of the proverb sinceall things are in common among friends everything belongs to the wise because the wise arefriends of the gods and all things belong to the gods But what does it mean to say that the wiseare friends of the gods

Although Spinoza uses the word ldquofriendshiprdquo often in his writings he never supplies aformal definition However we can reconstruct the wordrsquos meaning from the contexts in whichhe uses it So for example Proposition 35 of Part III of the Ethics reads

If anyone thinks that there is between the object of his love and another person the sameor a more intimate bond of friendship than there was between them when he alone usedto possess the object loved he will be affected with hatred toward the object loved andwill envy his rival

According to the proposition friendship is an intimate bond between a person and the

object he loves I hate an object of love that I alone once possessed when it wounds my vanity byloving someone else more than me So the object of love must be capable of loving whichmeans that the bond of friendship is a relation of reciprocal love between persons Nowaccording to Spinoza I love something when I have the idea of that thing as the cause of myexperience of joy Joy is an increase in conatus which Spinoza defines as the tendency to persistin being or equivalently the ability to exist and act So friendship is a relation in which Iidentify the other person as the cause of an increase in my conatus and the other personidentifies me as the cause of a similar increase in his or hers Two things each of which causesan increase in the ability to exist and act of the other are said by Spinoza to be in harmony Sincetwo entities in harmony have more combined power than either does singly it is to the advantageof each to be in harmony with the other There is even greater advantage in entering intoharmonious connection with a third individual and the greatest advantage in combining with asmany individuals as possible This is a universal metaphysical principle For example it pertainsjust as much to chemical combination or herding among animals as it does to social relationsbetween people In the case of human relationships it is the fundamental basis of politics orrather one of its two bases the other one being the tendency human beings have to conflict withone another When the state is functioning well it involves not a random collection ofindividuals and certainly not the war of each against all but a group whose members are boundto one another by friendship the human form of harmony Thus for Spinoza friendship is apolitical virtue as it was for Plato and Aristotle

The opposite of friendship is enmity That person is my enemy whom I regard as thecause of my sadness or pain which is the same as saying the cause of a decrease in my abilityto exist and act Like friendship enmity is a reciprocal relationship If I identify you as the causeof my sadness I will seek to injure or eliminate you But that means I will be identified in yourmind as the cause of your sadness Enmity is a relation of reciprocal hatred just as friendship is arelation of reciprocal love Just as there is harmony between friends there is discord betweenenemies The fundamental task of a rational politics is easy to state it is to extend and intensifyfriendship and to reduce and mollify enmity

We have already seen that Spinoza identifies solidarity (generositas) as one of the twoforms of strength of mind (fortitudo) which is the virtue that belongs to the exercise of theintellect Solidarity is the desire to assist others and foster friendship on the basis of reason aloneThe friendship fostered by solidarity is a bond of active love The love of friends for one anotheris active when each person who loves is the adequate cause of his or her love To say that theperson is the adequate cause means that the cause of love is internal to the person who feels it inother words that the love is self-generated Active love differs from passive love in that thecause of passive love is at least partially something that exists outside the person who has theemotion The problem with passive love is that it need not be constant If the bodily dispositionof the person changes in a particular way then the object of erstwhile love will have a differentemotional effect Passive love can change into boredom or indifference or even hatred This isnot possible in the case of active love because it is self-generated Since love involves theexperience of joy no one actively abandons it

There seems to be something odd about the idea of a love between persons that isinternally generated by each of the partners in the relationship Is it not the case that part of theessence of love is the fact that the object of my love is the cause of my love Without denyingthis Spinoza identifies two forms of love that are self-generated in the Ethics One is myintellectual love of God It is indeed true that God is the cause of my love but only insofar as myintellect is part of the infinite intellect of God Thus the object that causes my love - ie God - isinternal to my mind and conversely my mind is internal to it Such reciprocal internality ndash hardas it is to visualize ndash is what Spinoza means by immanence God he tells us is the immanentcause of everything that exists Nothing can exist apart from God while God expresses himselfin all of the things that exist My love of God and Gods love of himself are one and the samebecause Godrsquos intellect is immanent in mine The second form of self-generated love is the

friendship that exists between me and others who love God through the exercise of the intellectThe reason is that the joy I feel in loving God is by the imitation of affects augmented by thejoy you feel in loving God But your love as well as mine is joy caused by the same immanentbeing Another way of saying this is that your intellect and mine are parts (ie finiteexpressions) of the infinite intellect of God Thus the relationship between friends who are boundtogether by the common exercise of the intellect and the love of God that flows from it is basedon an internal bond an internal object and cause of love In this kind of love you and I as itwere discover one another internally You are inside of me and I am inside of you Thus whenyou augment my love and I augment yours it is Gods power as the intellect immanent in us boththat causes the augmentation even though we remain finite individual beings In this state ofaffairs which is admittedly difficult to grasp we can see the rational meaning of the command tolove God by loving the neighbor In intellectual love God not insofar as he is infinite butinsofar as he expresses himself in my finite intellect loves God as he expresses himself in yourfinite intellect

For Spinoza the exercise of the intellect is very different than our ordinary experience ofthe world In the course of ordinary experience we encounter objects in a way that appearshaphazard disordered and incomplete This is so first of all because our encounters are part ofan infinitely complex chain of natural causes and effects of which we know only very limitedparts In addition our experience of objects has as much to do with the condition our bodies arein when we encounter them as it does with the nature of the objects themselves By contrast inexercising the intellect we arrange our ideas in an intelligible pattern that is internal to the mindand entirely different than the images we accumulate through sensory experience The ideas arean expression of our power while the images result from our hapless deliverance to chanceEmotions caused by objects we encounter in the course of ordinary experience are externallydetermined and therefore passive while emotions caused by acts of intellectual comprehensionare internally generated and therefore active That is why love as an active emotion has its originin the exercise of the intellect and the most satisfying form of friendship is based on thereciprocal experience of such love In a letter to Willem van Blyenberg Spinoza provides themost complete description of this kind of friendship to be found in his writings

For my part of all things that are not under my control what I most value is to enterinto a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth For I believe that such a lovingrelationship affords us a serenity surpassing any other boon in the whole wide worldThe love that such men bear to one another grounded as it is in the love that each hasfor knowledge of truth is as unshakable as is the acceptance of truth once it has beenperceived It is moreover the highest source of happiness to be found in things notunder our command for truth more than anything else has the power to effect a closeunion between different sentiments and dispositions

Spinoza says that a friendship based on the love of truth is not under our control But how

can that be if intellectual friendship involves a form of love internally generated by each friendIt would seem that the love we generate through the exercise of the intellect is fully under ourcontrol Spinoza however is referring to the fact that we are able to become friends only withpeople we actually meet which is something that occurs in the course of ordinary haphazarddisordered experience To a large extent our friendships are a matter of chance By way ofillustrating this point it turned out that Spinoza decided his initial judgment of Blyenberg wasmistaken He broke off their correspondence when he realized that the infinite chain of causesand effects had brought his way not a lover of truth but a dogmatic worshipper of the ldquopaperand inkrdquo of the Bible

People create commonwealths because the power of each to exist and act is increased byall others who transfer their rights to the sovereign For reasons we have already considered thepolitical bond is one of friendship ldquoIt is of the first importance to men to establish closerelationships and to bind themselves together with such ties as may most effectively unite theminto one body and as an absolute rule to act in such a way as serves to strengthen friendshiprdquo If

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

the dictates of reason alone endeavors to assist others and make friends of themrdquo When twopeople in contact with one another possess the virtue of generositas they will clearly exhibit itreciprocally in the form of mutual aid the fourth communist practice

In Part 4 of the Ethics Spinoza also formulates a version of the first communist practicethat of the redistribution of wealth in accordance with need

Again men are won over by generosity especially those who do not have thewherewithal to produce what is necessary to support life Yet it is far beyond the powerand resources of a private person to come to the assistance of everyone in need For thewealth of a private person is quite unequal to such a demand It is also a practicalimpossibility for one man to establish friendship with all Therefore the care of the poordevolves upon society as a whole and looks only to the common good

The fact that society as a whole has responsibility for meeting the needs of the poor makes thepractice Spinoza recommends in this passage a version of the centralized redistribution of wealthdescribed in the Acts of the Apostles and institutionalized in Anabaptist form as the ldquocommonpurserdquo More than that the fact that society as a whole must take on this responsibility ratherthan a church or other sub-community makes Spinoza an early advocate of what will becomethree centuries later the European welfare state In our own period as the welfare state is beingdismantled it is easy to see that what neoliberals object to concerning it is precisely its implicitcommunism ie its practice of distribution in accordance with need

Spinoza advocates a third communist practice in his unfinished final work the PoliticalTreatise The context is his discussion of a maximally democratic version of monarchy in whichthe entire citizen body is armed and the king forbidden from making any decision contrary to thewill of a massive council of ordinary citizens In such a state

The fields and the soil and if possible the houses as well should be public property thatis should belong to the sovereign by whom they should be let at an annual rent tocitizens whether townsmen or country-dwellers Apart from this all citizens should befree or exempt from any form of taxation in time of peace Of this rent part should beallocated to the defense works of the commonwealth part to the kings domestic needsFor in time of peace it is still necessary to fortify cities as for war and to have in a stateof readiness ships and other armaments

Ownership of land and buildings by the sovereign is a form of communal property first becausethe citizens of the commonwealth delegate to him or them the property they hold in commonand second because that delegation occurs with the understanding that the sovereign will use theproperty in service of the common good

Spinoza supplies an argument based on more than simple utility for the practice ofholding land and buildings in common

hellip in a state of Nature the one thing a man cannot appropriate to himself and make hisown is land and whatever is so fixed to the land that he cannot conceal it anywhere orcarry it away where he pleases Thus the land and whatever is fixed to it in the way wehave described is especially the public property of the commonwealth that is of allthose who by their united strength can claim it or of him to whom all have delegated thepower to claim it

To state the argument differently since rights are the same as powers no individual has a naturalright to appropriate privately the land or any of its fixed structures because none has the powernecessary to do so The only response an individual can make to incursions by a more powerfulperson or group of people is flight in which he must leave the land and its buildings behind It is

only by entering into a community in which the strength of each is combined for the purpose ofdefense that people can effectively possess fixed property but they do so as a members of thecommunity rather than as an separate individuals According to Spinozarsquos theory of rights onlythe community has the right to own the land and its structures because only the community hasthe required power

The communal ownership of land houses and other buildings is a version of the secondcommunist practice on our list of which Hutterite joint ownership is the most developedhistorical example When adopted by a polity rather than a small community though thepractice has an added advantage Under those circumstances communal possession of fixedproperty eliminates the need for taxes except in time of war What takes their place is ageneration of revenue pegged to wealth since the members of society who are able to rent themost expensive and largest amounts of communal property will obviously pay the most in rentIn this way the form of communal ownership of land and buildings that Spinoza recommendsalso acts as a mechanism for the redistribution of wealth

The only communist practice of the Anabaptists that does not find an equivalent inSpinozarsquos writings is that of the cooperative organization of work The absence is related toSpinozarsquos inability to resolve the problem of political agency in the TPT An attempt to mobilizethe multitude on behalf of democratic social change would need to address the organization ofwork in such a way as to alleviate the burden of toil Reducing the number of hours spent inonerous labor is the only way to provide the multitude with the free time necessary to participatein institutionalized democratic politics Along with the redistribution of wealth and thedevelopment of communal property the cooperative reorganization of work would need to beincorporated as a plank in the latent political program that makes its first democratic appearancein the TPT and is extended in a communist direction in the passages from the Ethics and thePolitical Treatise that we have just examined But that would constitute an explicit anddangerous appeal to the multitude as the agent of political and social transformation an appealthat Spinoza consistently rejects It would involve nothing less than the revival of therevolutionary energies of the Peasant War on a new seventeenth-century foundation

In spite of his radicalism Spinoza doubted that revolution was capable of reconstructingsociety and the state in the way revolutionaries wanted In Chapter 18 of the TPT he takes aposition that is at least on the surface opposed to revolution or any attempt to change the formof the state fundamentally The context is a discussion of the transition from the early Hebrewcommonwealth in which the people held sovereignty to the rule of kings Spinoza tells us thatthe first period saw only a single civil war and concluded with a compassion for the vanquishedthat resulted in lasting peace By contrast the period of kings was marred by multiple warswaged only for the glory of the rulers and involved the massacre of hundreds of thousandsDuring the first period few prophets arose to rebuke the Jews while a great many emergedduring the time of the monarchies From this example Spinoza reasons that it is fatal for peopleaccustomed to popular sovereignty and governed by settled laws to adopt a new monarchicalform of government On the one hand they will be unable to tolerate the arbitrary exercise ofpower by a single individual while on the other the new monarch will be compelled to abolishthe existing laws because they did not originate by his own authority But it is just as dangerousaccording to Spinoza for the subjects of a monarch to attempt his replacement with popular ruleThis is because a popular revolution must advance to the point where it annihilates the king thekingrsquos family and the friends of the king in order to prevent the restoration of royal power But inthe process the revolutionary authority must assume a power even more draconian then thatpreviously exercised by the king In addition having committed regicide the new popularauthority faces the danger that it will fall victim to its own precedent For this reason as well andin the interest of survival it must wield power more repressively than the deposed sovereignSpinoza illustrates his point with reference to the English revolution which eliminated themonarch Charles I only to replace him with the Lord Protector Cromwell who was monarch inall but name and more repressive than Charles

Spinozarsquos point seems unassailable especially since the pattern he describes in the caseof the English Revolution repeated itself over the course of the next three centuries in the French

and Russian Revolutions It is at least arguable that Napoleon if not Robespierre was a newLouis XVI and Stalin a new Tsar even if this understates the more fundamental social changesthat resulted form the two revolutions Still Spinoza does not absolutely proscribe therevolutionary overthrow of a tyrannical government but says instead that there is a great dangerin making the attempt Besides his analysis of the conditions necessary for retaining sovereigntydoes not leave the decision about whether to engage in revolution up to militants He argues thatno state can survive that creates mass indignation in its people and this is precisely theunavoidable result of tyrannical government Spinozarsquos real purpose in Chapter 18 is to opposethe Orangist-Calvinist project of replacing the Dutch Republic with a monarchy ldquoAs for theEstates of Hollandrdquo he writes ldquoas far as we know they never had kings but counts to whom theright of sovereignty was never transferredrdquo His point is that the Dutch War of Independenceagainst Spain was justified because it restored the sovereignty of the people against the attemptby the Spanish ldquocountrdquo (King Philip II) to abolish it However any attempt to replace theRepublic with a monarchy would change the form of the state disastrously by divesting thepeople of their former rights

When Spinoza wrote his treatise the only revolutionary forces that existed were on theRight The danger he warns about in Chapter 18 of the TPT did indeed come to pass only oneyear after his letter to Jelles In 1672 a Calvinist-Orangist mob hacked Johan De Witt and hisbrother Cornelius to death at a time when Holland was invaded by the French army Streetorators stirred up the mob by claiming that the invasion was the result of the brothersrsquo treason Inthe aftermath of the murders William III prince of Orange was elevated to the position ofstadtholder of Holland Although William went on to become King of England he stopped shortof claiming a Dutch throne However in actuality he substituted his own power for much of thatwhich had belonged to the Estates General while the Reformed Church gained considerableinfluence in Dutch government According to a story made famous by Spinozarsquos earliestbiographer Johannes Colerus when the De Witt brothers were murdered Spinozarsquos landlordthwarted his attempt to go the site of the assassinations where the bodies of the brothers werestill on gruesome display in order to plant a sign reading Ultimi Barbarorum (the ultimatebarbarians) In this way the landlord undoubtedly saved the philosopherrsquos life It was the onlytime we know of when the mature Spinoza gave in to his passive affects in a significant way

There is a passage in Chapter 18 of the TPT that uncannily anticipates the murders

Tyranny is most violent where individual beliefs which are unalienable rights areregarded as criminal Indeed in such circumstances the anger of the common people[plebis] is usually the greatest tyrant of allhellip the vilest hypocrites urged on by that samefury which they call zeal for Gods law have everywhere persecuted men whoseblameless character and distinguished qualities have excited the hostility of the commonpeople [plebi] publicly denouncing their beliefs and inflaming the savage multitudersquos[multitudinem] anger against them

Spinoza was the first political philosopher who grappled with the problem of a mass-

based politics of the Right The problem would occur again with the fascist movements of the1920s and 1930s and with the return of the rightwing religious fundamentalisms of our own dayndash Jewish Christian Muslim and Hindu It is not surprising that he failed to solve the problemdefinitively since it continues to remain unsolved The remarkable thing about Spinoza thoughis not that he was skeptical about the liberatory possibilities of revolution by the masses but thathe defended the idea of a popular democracy nonetheless And this he continued to do even inthe aftermath of the De Witt murders In his work on the Political Treatise in the final year of hislife Spinoza developed a powerful critique of the elitist claim that the multitude are incapable ofgoverning

Yet perhaps our [democratic] suggestions will be received with ridicule by those whorestrict to the common people the faults that are inherent in all mankind saying There

is no moderation in the mob they terrorize unless they are frightened and Thecommon people is either a humble servant or an arrogant master there is no truth orjudgment in itrdquo and the like But all men share in one and the same nature it is powerand culture that mislead us with the result that when two men do the same thing weoften say that it is permissible for the one to do it and not the other not because of anydifference in the thing done but in the doer hellipThen again There is no moderation inthe mob they terrorize unless they are frightened For freedom and slavery do not gowell together Finally that there is no truth or judgment in the common people is notsurprising since the important affairs of state are conducted without their knowledgeand from the little that cannot be concealed they can only make conjecturehellip Howeveras we have said all men have the same nature ndash all grow haughty with rule terrorizeunless they are frightened ndash and everywhere truth becomes a casualty through hostilityor servility especially when despotic power is in the hands of one or a few who in trialspay attention not to justice or truth but to the extent of a persons wealth

Surprisingly Spinoza develops this democratic argument while discussing the institutions

appropriate to a monarchy But the key point he makes in the discussion is that a condition ofeffective monarchical rule is expansion of the democratic element within the state in the form ofa sizeable legislative council whose members are drawn from the general population of citizensover the age of fifty On Spinozarsquos view the mistake those who oppose democracy make isassuming that the faults exhibited by the common people ndash such as poor judgment arroganceand hostility ndash belong only to them while they are in fact typical of human beings Actually it iselitist politics that magnifies these all-too-human faults by restricting political power to a limitednumber of people while democratic politics minimizes them through the principle of majorityrule among numerous decision-makers The reason as we already know is that passions pullpeople in different directions making it nearly impossible for the members of a large council toagree on a common position unless they make decisions based not on passion but an idea of thecommon good On Spinozarsquos view it is when government is in the hands of a single person oronly a few people that the dangers the critics of democracy attribute to the common people are infact the greatest

Spinoza also argues against the claim that the common people are not qualified to makepolitical decisions because they lack the necessary education or degree of intellect There is noone he says who has been engaged in an occupation until the age of fifty who lacksunderstanding of his sphere of work ldquoevery man is reasonably competent and sagacious inmatters in which he has been long and attentively engagedrdquo So each is qualified at least to giveadvice in the kingrsquos council concerning his own business especially if given the time necessaryto reflect on the matter under discussion

Most of all the plebs are the group best suited to serving on the council because theirinterest is that of society as a whole ldquoHence it follows that counselors must necessarily beappointed whose private fortune and advantage depend on the general welfare and the peace ofallrdquo For example Spinoza emphasizes the idea that the common people have the highest stake inavoiding war or concluding an existing war with a settlement that brings lasting peace Thereason is they are ones who bear the heaviest burdens of war Unlike the wealthy well-bornmembers of society it is the common person whose occupation is most likely to be interrupted itis his taxes that are raised to onerous levels and it is his son who dies Thus the common interestof society in peace is best served not by a wealthy or educated elite but rather by those whohave the most to lose from war

At the end of the long paragraph defending popular power quoted above Spinozaconnects the question of who holds power within the state to that of who owns property Truthand justice he says are casualties in states where power is held by one person or a handful ofpeople who conduct courtroom trials that favor the rich The implication is that elitist politicalpower and ownership of wealth are intrinsically connected One of the reasons Spinozarecommends public ownership of land and buildings in a monarchy is to prevent the rise of aclass of wealthy landowners with interests different than those of the rest of society Under the

conditions of common ownership ldquothe greatest part of the council will generally have one andthe same attitude of mind towards their common interests and peaceful activitieshelliprdquo And yethaving gone this far he has trouble imagining a state where fixed property is owned collectivelyin which the actually existing multitude holds power The peasants artisans and urban poor whoconstitute the common people of the United Provinces drop out of the picture in the democratic-communist monarchy he describes and nearly everyone makes his living by selling merchandiseor lending money to countrymen ldquoall will have to make a living by engaging in trade or bylending money to their fellow citizensrdquo He seems to assume that the collectivization of land andfixed property would eliminate the occupations of peasant and artisan leaving trade and loaningat interest the only remaining possibilities of work But that of course is not true The fact thatpeople would have to rent farm land would not prevent them from farming any more than theneed to rent workshops in the cities and towns would prevent artisans from plying their tradesBut Spinoza finds the idea of a commonwealth based on commercial enterprise politicallyappealing This is because he regards commercial occupations as contributing to harmony andpeace since he claims they establish connections between people that further the interests of allwhile those who engage in them prosper only in peacetime Both of these assumptions are asquestionable as the expectation that non-commercial occupations will die out After all even inSpinozarsquos day colonialism and the struggle for colonies between imperialist states led to warsbetween the great powers including the United Provinces not to mention the military and otherforms of violence involved in subjugating the colonies The East India Company was not exactlya force for peace What seems to be at work here instead is a failure of social imaginationthough one we may find understandable given the fact that the capitalist economy was still at anearly stage in its development However this may be there is no denying the fact that despite hispowerful arguments in favor of democratic rule and communal property it is still a bourgeoissociety and state that Spinoza envisions

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of what we should not hesitate to call Spinozarsquoscommunism is the critique of private ownership he develops in the Ethics based on his theory ofaffects For him there is a paradox involved in social and political life It stems from the fact thaton the one hand people can survive and develop their capacities only by joining with oneanother in societies and states But on the other hand the necessity of combining with oneanother does not prevent them from seeking their own advantage above that of their fellowsbeing quarrelsome or hateful and erecting obstacles to each otherrsquos happiness Spinoza identifiesthe reason for these deep-rooted problems of social coexistence in Part IV Proposition 35 of theEthics ldquoInsofar as men are assailed by emotions that are passive they can be contrary to oneanotherrdquo Emotions are states of the body characterized by a transition from a lower degree of thepower to exist and act (conatus) to a higher one or conversely from a higher degree to a lowerone The first transition is the affect of joy while the second is that of sadness Passive emotionsare caused by an object external to the body or more precisely external to its essential natureSpinoza conceives of that nature as a specific proportion of motion-and-rest that the parts of thebody exhibit in relation to one another While joy is an increase in our capacity to preserve theproportion of motion-and-rest essential to our body (ie to exist and act as we do) sadness is adecrease in that capacity The political problem created by the passive emotions is that evenwhen they are joyful they are not under the control of the person who experiences themMoreover different people are affected by the same external object in different ways because theparts of their bodies and their proportionate relations of motion-and rest-differ The same objectmay elicit anger in one person and pity in another or love in one and hatred in another and soon And because people differ in their emotional reactions to the same things they also differ inthe judgments they frame on the basis of these reactions What one person praises anotherperson blames what one regards as fearless another believes to be timid etc Finally sincepeople act upon their judgments seeking to foster what they judge to be good and destroy whatthey judge to be bad their differing judgments can result in actions that are in conflict with oneanother In short ldquoinsofar as they are assailed by passive emotions [people] can be contrary toone anotherrdquo

In Proposition 34 Spinoza gives an example of the contrariety caused by the passiveaffects Suppose Peter has sole possession of something Paul loves Deprivation of the loved

object causes sadness in Paul with the idea of Peter as its cause In accordance with Spinozarsquosdefinition of hatred Paul will hate Peter and therefore seek to injure or destroy him in order toremove the cause of his Paulrsquos sadness Spinoza says that this example may seem wrong becausePaul and Peter appear to be contrary to one another because of something they share ndash ie theirlove for the thing Peter possesses But that is not the case Paul has an image of himself aslacking the loved object while Peter has an image of himself as possessing the loved object Sothey in fact differ from one another by virtue of the different images they have rather than bypossessing something in common It is clear from the example that the root of this contrariety ndashie this enmity ndash between Paul and Peter is the fact that the object can be possessed by only oneof them so that what one has the other must lack The difficulty with private property is that it isexclusive to the one who possesses it which means that what I experience as possession othersexperience as deprivation It may seem that there is no problem if other people are indifferent tothe thing I possess However in accordance with Spinozarsquos theory of the imitation of affects themere fact that I love the thing I own other things being equal will cause you to love it as wellMy exclusive possession of the thing will therefore cause sadness in you that takes the form ofhatred or more precisely the kind of hatred called envy which involves pain at the good fortuneof another ldquohuman nature is in general so constituted that men pity the unfortunate and envy thefortunate in the latter case with a hatred proportionate to their love of what they think anotherpossessesrdquo

Common Possession Friendship and Philosophy

In the Ethics Spinoza does not follow his analysis of the antagonisms of private property

by considering the collective possession of material goods (although he does advocateredistribution of wealth to the poor in Part 4 as we have seen) But the theme of commonpossession figures large in the book anyway in his treatment of the intellectual love of God Inorder to understand the connection between common possession and amor Dei intellectualis itwill be necessary to engage in a detailed analysis of Spinozarsquos metaphysics We will begin thattask in earnest in the next chapter At this point we will simply introduce the theme byexamining the relationship between friendship and common possession in the letter to Jelles andsome related writings

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo unlike the similar passages fromActs has its provenance among philosophers Spinoza mistakenly attributes it to Thales but itoccurs in Platorsquos Phaedrus and Laws and is present though not in so many words in thediscussion in the Republic of common ownership of property by the guardian class Thetradition cited by Erasmus that traces the proverb back to Pythagoras is plausible when weconsider the influence the Pythagorean community in Sicily had on Plato in the aftermath ofSocratesrsquo death Erasmus sees the supposed use of a common fund by the Pythagoreans as ananticipation of the similar practice in Acts But Spinozarsquos approach is different What interestshim in the letter is common ownership not as a religious practice but as a matter of thephilosopherrsquos relation to the world Remember the deductive consequences of the proverb sinceall things are in common among friends everything belongs to the wise because the wise arefriends of the gods and all things belong to the gods But what does it mean to say that the wiseare friends of the gods

Although Spinoza uses the word ldquofriendshiprdquo often in his writings he never supplies aformal definition However we can reconstruct the wordrsquos meaning from the contexts in whichhe uses it So for example Proposition 35 of Part III of the Ethics reads

If anyone thinks that there is between the object of his love and another person the sameor a more intimate bond of friendship than there was between them when he alone usedto possess the object loved he will be affected with hatred toward the object loved andwill envy his rival

According to the proposition friendship is an intimate bond between a person and the

object he loves I hate an object of love that I alone once possessed when it wounds my vanity byloving someone else more than me So the object of love must be capable of loving whichmeans that the bond of friendship is a relation of reciprocal love between persons Nowaccording to Spinoza I love something when I have the idea of that thing as the cause of myexperience of joy Joy is an increase in conatus which Spinoza defines as the tendency to persistin being or equivalently the ability to exist and act So friendship is a relation in which Iidentify the other person as the cause of an increase in my conatus and the other personidentifies me as the cause of a similar increase in his or hers Two things each of which causesan increase in the ability to exist and act of the other are said by Spinoza to be in harmony Sincetwo entities in harmony have more combined power than either does singly it is to the advantageof each to be in harmony with the other There is even greater advantage in entering intoharmonious connection with a third individual and the greatest advantage in combining with asmany individuals as possible This is a universal metaphysical principle For example it pertainsjust as much to chemical combination or herding among animals as it does to social relationsbetween people In the case of human relationships it is the fundamental basis of politics orrather one of its two bases the other one being the tendency human beings have to conflict withone another When the state is functioning well it involves not a random collection ofindividuals and certainly not the war of each against all but a group whose members are boundto one another by friendship the human form of harmony Thus for Spinoza friendship is apolitical virtue as it was for Plato and Aristotle

The opposite of friendship is enmity That person is my enemy whom I regard as thecause of my sadness or pain which is the same as saying the cause of a decrease in my abilityto exist and act Like friendship enmity is a reciprocal relationship If I identify you as the causeof my sadness I will seek to injure or eliminate you But that means I will be identified in yourmind as the cause of your sadness Enmity is a relation of reciprocal hatred just as friendship is arelation of reciprocal love Just as there is harmony between friends there is discord betweenenemies The fundamental task of a rational politics is easy to state it is to extend and intensifyfriendship and to reduce and mollify enmity

We have already seen that Spinoza identifies solidarity (generositas) as one of the twoforms of strength of mind (fortitudo) which is the virtue that belongs to the exercise of theintellect Solidarity is the desire to assist others and foster friendship on the basis of reason aloneThe friendship fostered by solidarity is a bond of active love The love of friends for one anotheris active when each person who loves is the adequate cause of his or her love To say that theperson is the adequate cause means that the cause of love is internal to the person who feels it inother words that the love is self-generated Active love differs from passive love in that thecause of passive love is at least partially something that exists outside the person who has theemotion The problem with passive love is that it need not be constant If the bodily dispositionof the person changes in a particular way then the object of erstwhile love will have a differentemotional effect Passive love can change into boredom or indifference or even hatred This isnot possible in the case of active love because it is self-generated Since love involves theexperience of joy no one actively abandons it

There seems to be something odd about the idea of a love between persons that isinternally generated by each of the partners in the relationship Is it not the case that part of theessence of love is the fact that the object of my love is the cause of my love Without denyingthis Spinoza identifies two forms of love that are self-generated in the Ethics One is myintellectual love of God It is indeed true that God is the cause of my love but only insofar as myintellect is part of the infinite intellect of God Thus the object that causes my love - ie God - isinternal to my mind and conversely my mind is internal to it Such reciprocal internality ndash hardas it is to visualize ndash is what Spinoza means by immanence God he tells us is the immanentcause of everything that exists Nothing can exist apart from God while God expresses himselfin all of the things that exist My love of God and Gods love of himself are one and the samebecause Godrsquos intellect is immanent in mine The second form of self-generated love is the

friendship that exists between me and others who love God through the exercise of the intellectThe reason is that the joy I feel in loving God is by the imitation of affects augmented by thejoy you feel in loving God But your love as well as mine is joy caused by the same immanentbeing Another way of saying this is that your intellect and mine are parts (ie finiteexpressions) of the infinite intellect of God Thus the relationship between friends who are boundtogether by the common exercise of the intellect and the love of God that flows from it is basedon an internal bond an internal object and cause of love In this kind of love you and I as itwere discover one another internally You are inside of me and I am inside of you Thus whenyou augment my love and I augment yours it is Gods power as the intellect immanent in us boththat causes the augmentation even though we remain finite individual beings In this state ofaffairs which is admittedly difficult to grasp we can see the rational meaning of the command tolove God by loving the neighbor In intellectual love God not insofar as he is infinite butinsofar as he expresses himself in my finite intellect loves God as he expresses himself in yourfinite intellect

For Spinoza the exercise of the intellect is very different than our ordinary experience ofthe world In the course of ordinary experience we encounter objects in a way that appearshaphazard disordered and incomplete This is so first of all because our encounters are part ofan infinitely complex chain of natural causes and effects of which we know only very limitedparts In addition our experience of objects has as much to do with the condition our bodies arein when we encounter them as it does with the nature of the objects themselves By contrast inexercising the intellect we arrange our ideas in an intelligible pattern that is internal to the mindand entirely different than the images we accumulate through sensory experience The ideas arean expression of our power while the images result from our hapless deliverance to chanceEmotions caused by objects we encounter in the course of ordinary experience are externallydetermined and therefore passive while emotions caused by acts of intellectual comprehensionare internally generated and therefore active That is why love as an active emotion has its originin the exercise of the intellect and the most satisfying form of friendship is based on thereciprocal experience of such love In a letter to Willem van Blyenberg Spinoza provides themost complete description of this kind of friendship to be found in his writings

For my part of all things that are not under my control what I most value is to enterinto a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth For I believe that such a lovingrelationship affords us a serenity surpassing any other boon in the whole wide worldThe love that such men bear to one another grounded as it is in the love that each hasfor knowledge of truth is as unshakable as is the acceptance of truth once it has beenperceived It is moreover the highest source of happiness to be found in things notunder our command for truth more than anything else has the power to effect a closeunion between different sentiments and dispositions

Spinoza says that a friendship based on the love of truth is not under our control But how

can that be if intellectual friendship involves a form of love internally generated by each friendIt would seem that the love we generate through the exercise of the intellect is fully under ourcontrol Spinoza however is referring to the fact that we are able to become friends only withpeople we actually meet which is something that occurs in the course of ordinary haphazarddisordered experience To a large extent our friendships are a matter of chance By way ofillustrating this point it turned out that Spinoza decided his initial judgment of Blyenberg wasmistaken He broke off their correspondence when he realized that the infinite chain of causesand effects had brought his way not a lover of truth but a dogmatic worshipper of the ldquopaperand inkrdquo of the Bible

People create commonwealths because the power of each to exist and act is increased byall others who transfer their rights to the sovereign For reasons we have already considered thepolitical bond is one of friendship ldquoIt is of the first importance to men to establish closerelationships and to bind themselves together with such ties as may most effectively unite theminto one body and as an absolute rule to act in such a way as serves to strengthen friendshiprdquo If

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

only by entering into a community in which the strength of each is combined for the purpose ofdefense that people can effectively possess fixed property but they do so as a members of thecommunity rather than as an separate individuals According to Spinozarsquos theory of rights onlythe community has the right to own the land and its structures because only the community hasthe required power

The communal ownership of land houses and other buildings is a version of the secondcommunist practice on our list of which Hutterite joint ownership is the most developedhistorical example When adopted by a polity rather than a small community though thepractice has an added advantage Under those circumstances communal possession of fixedproperty eliminates the need for taxes except in time of war What takes their place is ageneration of revenue pegged to wealth since the members of society who are able to rent themost expensive and largest amounts of communal property will obviously pay the most in rentIn this way the form of communal ownership of land and buildings that Spinoza recommendsalso acts as a mechanism for the redistribution of wealth

The only communist practice of the Anabaptists that does not find an equivalent inSpinozarsquos writings is that of the cooperative organization of work The absence is related toSpinozarsquos inability to resolve the problem of political agency in the TPT An attempt to mobilizethe multitude on behalf of democratic social change would need to address the organization ofwork in such a way as to alleviate the burden of toil Reducing the number of hours spent inonerous labor is the only way to provide the multitude with the free time necessary to participatein institutionalized democratic politics Along with the redistribution of wealth and thedevelopment of communal property the cooperative reorganization of work would need to beincorporated as a plank in the latent political program that makes its first democratic appearancein the TPT and is extended in a communist direction in the passages from the Ethics and thePolitical Treatise that we have just examined But that would constitute an explicit anddangerous appeal to the multitude as the agent of political and social transformation an appealthat Spinoza consistently rejects It would involve nothing less than the revival of therevolutionary energies of the Peasant War on a new seventeenth-century foundation

In spite of his radicalism Spinoza doubted that revolution was capable of reconstructingsociety and the state in the way revolutionaries wanted In Chapter 18 of the TPT he takes aposition that is at least on the surface opposed to revolution or any attempt to change the formof the state fundamentally The context is a discussion of the transition from the early Hebrewcommonwealth in which the people held sovereignty to the rule of kings Spinoza tells us thatthe first period saw only a single civil war and concluded with a compassion for the vanquishedthat resulted in lasting peace By contrast the period of kings was marred by multiple warswaged only for the glory of the rulers and involved the massacre of hundreds of thousandsDuring the first period few prophets arose to rebuke the Jews while a great many emergedduring the time of the monarchies From this example Spinoza reasons that it is fatal for peopleaccustomed to popular sovereignty and governed by settled laws to adopt a new monarchicalform of government On the one hand they will be unable to tolerate the arbitrary exercise ofpower by a single individual while on the other the new monarch will be compelled to abolishthe existing laws because they did not originate by his own authority But it is just as dangerousaccording to Spinoza for the subjects of a monarch to attempt his replacement with popular ruleThis is because a popular revolution must advance to the point where it annihilates the king thekingrsquos family and the friends of the king in order to prevent the restoration of royal power But inthe process the revolutionary authority must assume a power even more draconian then thatpreviously exercised by the king In addition having committed regicide the new popularauthority faces the danger that it will fall victim to its own precedent For this reason as well andin the interest of survival it must wield power more repressively than the deposed sovereignSpinoza illustrates his point with reference to the English revolution which eliminated themonarch Charles I only to replace him with the Lord Protector Cromwell who was monarch inall but name and more repressive than Charles

Spinozarsquos point seems unassailable especially since the pattern he describes in the caseof the English Revolution repeated itself over the course of the next three centuries in the French

and Russian Revolutions It is at least arguable that Napoleon if not Robespierre was a newLouis XVI and Stalin a new Tsar even if this understates the more fundamental social changesthat resulted form the two revolutions Still Spinoza does not absolutely proscribe therevolutionary overthrow of a tyrannical government but says instead that there is a great dangerin making the attempt Besides his analysis of the conditions necessary for retaining sovereigntydoes not leave the decision about whether to engage in revolution up to militants He argues thatno state can survive that creates mass indignation in its people and this is precisely theunavoidable result of tyrannical government Spinozarsquos real purpose in Chapter 18 is to opposethe Orangist-Calvinist project of replacing the Dutch Republic with a monarchy ldquoAs for theEstates of Hollandrdquo he writes ldquoas far as we know they never had kings but counts to whom theright of sovereignty was never transferredrdquo His point is that the Dutch War of Independenceagainst Spain was justified because it restored the sovereignty of the people against the attemptby the Spanish ldquocountrdquo (King Philip II) to abolish it However any attempt to replace theRepublic with a monarchy would change the form of the state disastrously by divesting thepeople of their former rights

When Spinoza wrote his treatise the only revolutionary forces that existed were on theRight The danger he warns about in Chapter 18 of the TPT did indeed come to pass only oneyear after his letter to Jelles In 1672 a Calvinist-Orangist mob hacked Johan De Witt and hisbrother Cornelius to death at a time when Holland was invaded by the French army Streetorators stirred up the mob by claiming that the invasion was the result of the brothersrsquo treason Inthe aftermath of the murders William III prince of Orange was elevated to the position ofstadtholder of Holland Although William went on to become King of England he stopped shortof claiming a Dutch throne However in actuality he substituted his own power for much of thatwhich had belonged to the Estates General while the Reformed Church gained considerableinfluence in Dutch government According to a story made famous by Spinozarsquos earliestbiographer Johannes Colerus when the De Witt brothers were murdered Spinozarsquos landlordthwarted his attempt to go the site of the assassinations where the bodies of the brothers werestill on gruesome display in order to plant a sign reading Ultimi Barbarorum (the ultimatebarbarians) In this way the landlord undoubtedly saved the philosopherrsquos life It was the onlytime we know of when the mature Spinoza gave in to his passive affects in a significant way

There is a passage in Chapter 18 of the TPT that uncannily anticipates the murders

Tyranny is most violent where individual beliefs which are unalienable rights areregarded as criminal Indeed in such circumstances the anger of the common people[plebis] is usually the greatest tyrant of allhellip the vilest hypocrites urged on by that samefury which they call zeal for Gods law have everywhere persecuted men whoseblameless character and distinguished qualities have excited the hostility of the commonpeople [plebi] publicly denouncing their beliefs and inflaming the savage multitudersquos[multitudinem] anger against them

Spinoza was the first political philosopher who grappled with the problem of a mass-

based politics of the Right The problem would occur again with the fascist movements of the1920s and 1930s and with the return of the rightwing religious fundamentalisms of our own dayndash Jewish Christian Muslim and Hindu It is not surprising that he failed to solve the problemdefinitively since it continues to remain unsolved The remarkable thing about Spinoza thoughis not that he was skeptical about the liberatory possibilities of revolution by the masses but thathe defended the idea of a popular democracy nonetheless And this he continued to do even inthe aftermath of the De Witt murders In his work on the Political Treatise in the final year of hislife Spinoza developed a powerful critique of the elitist claim that the multitude are incapable ofgoverning

Yet perhaps our [democratic] suggestions will be received with ridicule by those whorestrict to the common people the faults that are inherent in all mankind saying There

is no moderation in the mob they terrorize unless they are frightened and Thecommon people is either a humble servant or an arrogant master there is no truth orjudgment in itrdquo and the like But all men share in one and the same nature it is powerand culture that mislead us with the result that when two men do the same thing weoften say that it is permissible for the one to do it and not the other not because of anydifference in the thing done but in the doer hellipThen again There is no moderation inthe mob they terrorize unless they are frightened For freedom and slavery do not gowell together Finally that there is no truth or judgment in the common people is notsurprising since the important affairs of state are conducted without their knowledgeand from the little that cannot be concealed they can only make conjecturehellip Howeveras we have said all men have the same nature ndash all grow haughty with rule terrorizeunless they are frightened ndash and everywhere truth becomes a casualty through hostilityor servility especially when despotic power is in the hands of one or a few who in trialspay attention not to justice or truth but to the extent of a persons wealth

Surprisingly Spinoza develops this democratic argument while discussing the institutions

appropriate to a monarchy But the key point he makes in the discussion is that a condition ofeffective monarchical rule is expansion of the democratic element within the state in the form ofa sizeable legislative council whose members are drawn from the general population of citizensover the age of fifty On Spinozarsquos view the mistake those who oppose democracy make isassuming that the faults exhibited by the common people ndash such as poor judgment arroganceand hostility ndash belong only to them while they are in fact typical of human beings Actually it iselitist politics that magnifies these all-too-human faults by restricting political power to a limitednumber of people while democratic politics minimizes them through the principle of majorityrule among numerous decision-makers The reason as we already know is that passions pullpeople in different directions making it nearly impossible for the members of a large council toagree on a common position unless they make decisions based not on passion but an idea of thecommon good On Spinozarsquos view it is when government is in the hands of a single person oronly a few people that the dangers the critics of democracy attribute to the common people are infact the greatest

Spinoza also argues against the claim that the common people are not qualified to makepolitical decisions because they lack the necessary education or degree of intellect There is noone he says who has been engaged in an occupation until the age of fifty who lacksunderstanding of his sphere of work ldquoevery man is reasonably competent and sagacious inmatters in which he has been long and attentively engagedrdquo So each is qualified at least to giveadvice in the kingrsquos council concerning his own business especially if given the time necessaryto reflect on the matter under discussion

Most of all the plebs are the group best suited to serving on the council because theirinterest is that of society as a whole ldquoHence it follows that counselors must necessarily beappointed whose private fortune and advantage depend on the general welfare and the peace ofallrdquo For example Spinoza emphasizes the idea that the common people have the highest stake inavoiding war or concluding an existing war with a settlement that brings lasting peace Thereason is they are ones who bear the heaviest burdens of war Unlike the wealthy well-bornmembers of society it is the common person whose occupation is most likely to be interrupted itis his taxes that are raised to onerous levels and it is his son who dies Thus the common interestof society in peace is best served not by a wealthy or educated elite but rather by those whohave the most to lose from war

At the end of the long paragraph defending popular power quoted above Spinozaconnects the question of who holds power within the state to that of who owns property Truthand justice he says are casualties in states where power is held by one person or a handful ofpeople who conduct courtroom trials that favor the rich The implication is that elitist politicalpower and ownership of wealth are intrinsically connected One of the reasons Spinozarecommends public ownership of land and buildings in a monarchy is to prevent the rise of aclass of wealthy landowners with interests different than those of the rest of society Under the

conditions of common ownership ldquothe greatest part of the council will generally have one andthe same attitude of mind towards their common interests and peaceful activitieshelliprdquo And yethaving gone this far he has trouble imagining a state where fixed property is owned collectivelyin which the actually existing multitude holds power The peasants artisans and urban poor whoconstitute the common people of the United Provinces drop out of the picture in the democratic-communist monarchy he describes and nearly everyone makes his living by selling merchandiseor lending money to countrymen ldquoall will have to make a living by engaging in trade or bylending money to their fellow citizensrdquo He seems to assume that the collectivization of land andfixed property would eliminate the occupations of peasant and artisan leaving trade and loaningat interest the only remaining possibilities of work But that of course is not true The fact thatpeople would have to rent farm land would not prevent them from farming any more than theneed to rent workshops in the cities and towns would prevent artisans from plying their tradesBut Spinoza finds the idea of a commonwealth based on commercial enterprise politicallyappealing This is because he regards commercial occupations as contributing to harmony andpeace since he claims they establish connections between people that further the interests of allwhile those who engage in them prosper only in peacetime Both of these assumptions are asquestionable as the expectation that non-commercial occupations will die out After all even inSpinozarsquos day colonialism and the struggle for colonies between imperialist states led to warsbetween the great powers including the United Provinces not to mention the military and otherforms of violence involved in subjugating the colonies The East India Company was not exactlya force for peace What seems to be at work here instead is a failure of social imaginationthough one we may find understandable given the fact that the capitalist economy was still at anearly stage in its development However this may be there is no denying the fact that despite hispowerful arguments in favor of democratic rule and communal property it is still a bourgeoissociety and state that Spinoza envisions

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of what we should not hesitate to call Spinozarsquoscommunism is the critique of private ownership he develops in the Ethics based on his theory ofaffects For him there is a paradox involved in social and political life It stems from the fact thaton the one hand people can survive and develop their capacities only by joining with oneanother in societies and states But on the other hand the necessity of combining with oneanother does not prevent them from seeking their own advantage above that of their fellowsbeing quarrelsome or hateful and erecting obstacles to each otherrsquos happiness Spinoza identifiesthe reason for these deep-rooted problems of social coexistence in Part IV Proposition 35 of theEthics ldquoInsofar as men are assailed by emotions that are passive they can be contrary to oneanotherrdquo Emotions are states of the body characterized by a transition from a lower degree of thepower to exist and act (conatus) to a higher one or conversely from a higher degree to a lowerone The first transition is the affect of joy while the second is that of sadness Passive emotionsare caused by an object external to the body or more precisely external to its essential natureSpinoza conceives of that nature as a specific proportion of motion-and-rest that the parts of thebody exhibit in relation to one another While joy is an increase in our capacity to preserve theproportion of motion-and-rest essential to our body (ie to exist and act as we do) sadness is adecrease in that capacity The political problem created by the passive emotions is that evenwhen they are joyful they are not under the control of the person who experiences themMoreover different people are affected by the same external object in different ways because theparts of their bodies and their proportionate relations of motion-and rest-differ The same objectmay elicit anger in one person and pity in another or love in one and hatred in another and soon And because people differ in their emotional reactions to the same things they also differ inthe judgments they frame on the basis of these reactions What one person praises anotherperson blames what one regards as fearless another believes to be timid etc Finally sincepeople act upon their judgments seeking to foster what they judge to be good and destroy whatthey judge to be bad their differing judgments can result in actions that are in conflict with oneanother In short ldquoinsofar as they are assailed by passive emotions [people] can be contrary toone anotherrdquo

In Proposition 34 Spinoza gives an example of the contrariety caused by the passiveaffects Suppose Peter has sole possession of something Paul loves Deprivation of the loved

object causes sadness in Paul with the idea of Peter as its cause In accordance with Spinozarsquosdefinition of hatred Paul will hate Peter and therefore seek to injure or destroy him in order toremove the cause of his Paulrsquos sadness Spinoza says that this example may seem wrong becausePaul and Peter appear to be contrary to one another because of something they share ndash ie theirlove for the thing Peter possesses But that is not the case Paul has an image of himself aslacking the loved object while Peter has an image of himself as possessing the loved object Sothey in fact differ from one another by virtue of the different images they have rather than bypossessing something in common It is clear from the example that the root of this contrariety ndashie this enmity ndash between Paul and Peter is the fact that the object can be possessed by only oneof them so that what one has the other must lack The difficulty with private property is that it isexclusive to the one who possesses it which means that what I experience as possession othersexperience as deprivation It may seem that there is no problem if other people are indifferent tothe thing I possess However in accordance with Spinozarsquos theory of the imitation of affects themere fact that I love the thing I own other things being equal will cause you to love it as wellMy exclusive possession of the thing will therefore cause sadness in you that takes the form ofhatred or more precisely the kind of hatred called envy which involves pain at the good fortuneof another ldquohuman nature is in general so constituted that men pity the unfortunate and envy thefortunate in the latter case with a hatred proportionate to their love of what they think anotherpossessesrdquo

Common Possession Friendship and Philosophy

In the Ethics Spinoza does not follow his analysis of the antagonisms of private property

by considering the collective possession of material goods (although he does advocateredistribution of wealth to the poor in Part 4 as we have seen) But the theme of commonpossession figures large in the book anyway in his treatment of the intellectual love of God Inorder to understand the connection between common possession and amor Dei intellectualis itwill be necessary to engage in a detailed analysis of Spinozarsquos metaphysics We will begin thattask in earnest in the next chapter At this point we will simply introduce the theme byexamining the relationship between friendship and common possession in the letter to Jelles andsome related writings

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo unlike the similar passages fromActs has its provenance among philosophers Spinoza mistakenly attributes it to Thales but itoccurs in Platorsquos Phaedrus and Laws and is present though not in so many words in thediscussion in the Republic of common ownership of property by the guardian class Thetradition cited by Erasmus that traces the proverb back to Pythagoras is plausible when weconsider the influence the Pythagorean community in Sicily had on Plato in the aftermath ofSocratesrsquo death Erasmus sees the supposed use of a common fund by the Pythagoreans as ananticipation of the similar practice in Acts But Spinozarsquos approach is different What interestshim in the letter is common ownership not as a religious practice but as a matter of thephilosopherrsquos relation to the world Remember the deductive consequences of the proverb sinceall things are in common among friends everything belongs to the wise because the wise arefriends of the gods and all things belong to the gods But what does it mean to say that the wiseare friends of the gods

Although Spinoza uses the word ldquofriendshiprdquo often in his writings he never supplies aformal definition However we can reconstruct the wordrsquos meaning from the contexts in whichhe uses it So for example Proposition 35 of Part III of the Ethics reads

If anyone thinks that there is between the object of his love and another person the sameor a more intimate bond of friendship than there was between them when he alone usedto possess the object loved he will be affected with hatred toward the object loved andwill envy his rival

According to the proposition friendship is an intimate bond between a person and the

object he loves I hate an object of love that I alone once possessed when it wounds my vanity byloving someone else more than me So the object of love must be capable of loving whichmeans that the bond of friendship is a relation of reciprocal love between persons Nowaccording to Spinoza I love something when I have the idea of that thing as the cause of myexperience of joy Joy is an increase in conatus which Spinoza defines as the tendency to persistin being or equivalently the ability to exist and act So friendship is a relation in which Iidentify the other person as the cause of an increase in my conatus and the other personidentifies me as the cause of a similar increase in his or hers Two things each of which causesan increase in the ability to exist and act of the other are said by Spinoza to be in harmony Sincetwo entities in harmony have more combined power than either does singly it is to the advantageof each to be in harmony with the other There is even greater advantage in entering intoharmonious connection with a third individual and the greatest advantage in combining with asmany individuals as possible This is a universal metaphysical principle For example it pertainsjust as much to chemical combination or herding among animals as it does to social relationsbetween people In the case of human relationships it is the fundamental basis of politics orrather one of its two bases the other one being the tendency human beings have to conflict withone another When the state is functioning well it involves not a random collection ofindividuals and certainly not the war of each against all but a group whose members are boundto one another by friendship the human form of harmony Thus for Spinoza friendship is apolitical virtue as it was for Plato and Aristotle

The opposite of friendship is enmity That person is my enemy whom I regard as thecause of my sadness or pain which is the same as saying the cause of a decrease in my abilityto exist and act Like friendship enmity is a reciprocal relationship If I identify you as the causeof my sadness I will seek to injure or eliminate you But that means I will be identified in yourmind as the cause of your sadness Enmity is a relation of reciprocal hatred just as friendship is arelation of reciprocal love Just as there is harmony between friends there is discord betweenenemies The fundamental task of a rational politics is easy to state it is to extend and intensifyfriendship and to reduce and mollify enmity

We have already seen that Spinoza identifies solidarity (generositas) as one of the twoforms of strength of mind (fortitudo) which is the virtue that belongs to the exercise of theintellect Solidarity is the desire to assist others and foster friendship on the basis of reason aloneThe friendship fostered by solidarity is a bond of active love The love of friends for one anotheris active when each person who loves is the adequate cause of his or her love To say that theperson is the adequate cause means that the cause of love is internal to the person who feels it inother words that the love is self-generated Active love differs from passive love in that thecause of passive love is at least partially something that exists outside the person who has theemotion The problem with passive love is that it need not be constant If the bodily dispositionof the person changes in a particular way then the object of erstwhile love will have a differentemotional effect Passive love can change into boredom or indifference or even hatred This isnot possible in the case of active love because it is self-generated Since love involves theexperience of joy no one actively abandons it

There seems to be something odd about the idea of a love between persons that isinternally generated by each of the partners in the relationship Is it not the case that part of theessence of love is the fact that the object of my love is the cause of my love Without denyingthis Spinoza identifies two forms of love that are self-generated in the Ethics One is myintellectual love of God It is indeed true that God is the cause of my love but only insofar as myintellect is part of the infinite intellect of God Thus the object that causes my love - ie God - isinternal to my mind and conversely my mind is internal to it Such reciprocal internality ndash hardas it is to visualize ndash is what Spinoza means by immanence God he tells us is the immanentcause of everything that exists Nothing can exist apart from God while God expresses himselfin all of the things that exist My love of God and Gods love of himself are one and the samebecause Godrsquos intellect is immanent in mine The second form of self-generated love is the

friendship that exists between me and others who love God through the exercise of the intellectThe reason is that the joy I feel in loving God is by the imitation of affects augmented by thejoy you feel in loving God But your love as well as mine is joy caused by the same immanentbeing Another way of saying this is that your intellect and mine are parts (ie finiteexpressions) of the infinite intellect of God Thus the relationship between friends who are boundtogether by the common exercise of the intellect and the love of God that flows from it is basedon an internal bond an internal object and cause of love In this kind of love you and I as itwere discover one another internally You are inside of me and I am inside of you Thus whenyou augment my love and I augment yours it is Gods power as the intellect immanent in us boththat causes the augmentation even though we remain finite individual beings In this state ofaffairs which is admittedly difficult to grasp we can see the rational meaning of the command tolove God by loving the neighbor In intellectual love God not insofar as he is infinite butinsofar as he expresses himself in my finite intellect loves God as he expresses himself in yourfinite intellect

For Spinoza the exercise of the intellect is very different than our ordinary experience ofthe world In the course of ordinary experience we encounter objects in a way that appearshaphazard disordered and incomplete This is so first of all because our encounters are part ofan infinitely complex chain of natural causes and effects of which we know only very limitedparts In addition our experience of objects has as much to do with the condition our bodies arein when we encounter them as it does with the nature of the objects themselves By contrast inexercising the intellect we arrange our ideas in an intelligible pattern that is internal to the mindand entirely different than the images we accumulate through sensory experience The ideas arean expression of our power while the images result from our hapless deliverance to chanceEmotions caused by objects we encounter in the course of ordinary experience are externallydetermined and therefore passive while emotions caused by acts of intellectual comprehensionare internally generated and therefore active That is why love as an active emotion has its originin the exercise of the intellect and the most satisfying form of friendship is based on thereciprocal experience of such love In a letter to Willem van Blyenberg Spinoza provides themost complete description of this kind of friendship to be found in his writings

For my part of all things that are not under my control what I most value is to enterinto a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth For I believe that such a lovingrelationship affords us a serenity surpassing any other boon in the whole wide worldThe love that such men bear to one another grounded as it is in the love that each hasfor knowledge of truth is as unshakable as is the acceptance of truth once it has beenperceived It is moreover the highest source of happiness to be found in things notunder our command for truth more than anything else has the power to effect a closeunion between different sentiments and dispositions

Spinoza says that a friendship based on the love of truth is not under our control But how

can that be if intellectual friendship involves a form of love internally generated by each friendIt would seem that the love we generate through the exercise of the intellect is fully under ourcontrol Spinoza however is referring to the fact that we are able to become friends only withpeople we actually meet which is something that occurs in the course of ordinary haphazarddisordered experience To a large extent our friendships are a matter of chance By way ofillustrating this point it turned out that Spinoza decided his initial judgment of Blyenberg wasmistaken He broke off their correspondence when he realized that the infinite chain of causesand effects had brought his way not a lover of truth but a dogmatic worshipper of the ldquopaperand inkrdquo of the Bible

People create commonwealths because the power of each to exist and act is increased byall others who transfer their rights to the sovereign For reasons we have already considered thepolitical bond is one of friendship ldquoIt is of the first importance to men to establish closerelationships and to bind themselves together with such ties as may most effectively unite theminto one body and as an absolute rule to act in such a way as serves to strengthen friendshiprdquo If

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

and Russian Revolutions It is at least arguable that Napoleon if not Robespierre was a newLouis XVI and Stalin a new Tsar even if this understates the more fundamental social changesthat resulted form the two revolutions Still Spinoza does not absolutely proscribe therevolutionary overthrow of a tyrannical government but says instead that there is a great dangerin making the attempt Besides his analysis of the conditions necessary for retaining sovereigntydoes not leave the decision about whether to engage in revolution up to militants He argues thatno state can survive that creates mass indignation in its people and this is precisely theunavoidable result of tyrannical government Spinozarsquos real purpose in Chapter 18 is to opposethe Orangist-Calvinist project of replacing the Dutch Republic with a monarchy ldquoAs for theEstates of Hollandrdquo he writes ldquoas far as we know they never had kings but counts to whom theright of sovereignty was never transferredrdquo His point is that the Dutch War of Independenceagainst Spain was justified because it restored the sovereignty of the people against the attemptby the Spanish ldquocountrdquo (King Philip II) to abolish it However any attempt to replace theRepublic with a monarchy would change the form of the state disastrously by divesting thepeople of their former rights

When Spinoza wrote his treatise the only revolutionary forces that existed were on theRight The danger he warns about in Chapter 18 of the TPT did indeed come to pass only oneyear after his letter to Jelles In 1672 a Calvinist-Orangist mob hacked Johan De Witt and hisbrother Cornelius to death at a time when Holland was invaded by the French army Streetorators stirred up the mob by claiming that the invasion was the result of the brothersrsquo treason Inthe aftermath of the murders William III prince of Orange was elevated to the position ofstadtholder of Holland Although William went on to become King of England he stopped shortof claiming a Dutch throne However in actuality he substituted his own power for much of thatwhich had belonged to the Estates General while the Reformed Church gained considerableinfluence in Dutch government According to a story made famous by Spinozarsquos earliestbiographer Johannes Colerus when the De Witt brothers were murdered Spinozarsquos landlordthwarted his attempt to go the site of the assassinations where the bodies of the brothers werestill on gruesome display in order to plant a sign reading Ultimi Barbarorum (the ultimatebarbarians) In this way the landlord undoubtedly saved the philosopherrsquos life It was the onlytime we know of when the mature Spinoza gave in to his passive affects in a significant way

There is a passage in Chapter 18 of the TPT that uncannily anticipates the murders

Tyranny is most violent where individual beliefs which are unalienable rights areregarded as criminal Indeed in such circumstances the anger of the common people[plebis] is usually the greatest tyrant of allhellip the vilest hypocrites urged on by that samefury which they call zeal for Gods law have everywhere persecuted men whoseblameless character and distinguished qualities have excited the hostility of the commonpeople [plebi] publicly denouncing their beliefs and inflaming the savage multitudersquos[multitudinem] anger against them

Spinoza was the first political philosopher who grappled with the problem of a mass-

based politics of the Right The problem would occur again with the fascist movements of the1920s and 1930s and with the return of the rightwing religious fundamentalisms of our own dayndash Jewish Christian Muslim and Hindu It is not surprising that he failed to solve the problemdefinitively since it continues to remain unsolved The remarkable thing about Spinoza thoughis not that he was skeptical about the liberatory possibilities of revolution by the masses but thathe defended the idea of a popular democracy nonetheless And this he continued to do even inthe aftermath of the De Witt murders In his work on the Political Treatise in the final year of hislife Spinoza developed a powerful critique of the elitist claim that the multitude are incapable ofgoverning

Yet perhaps our [democratic] suggestions will be received with ridicule by those whorestrict to the common people the faults that are inherent in all mankind saying There

is no moderation in the mob they terrorize unless they are frightened and Thecommon people is either a humble servant or an arrogant master there is no truth orjudgment in itrdquo and the like But all men share in one and the same nature it is powerand culture that mislead us with the result that when two men do the same thing weoften say that it is permissible for the one to do it and not the other not because of anydifference in the thing done but in the doer hellipThen again There is no moderation inthe mob they terrorize unless they are frightened For freedom and slavery do not gowell together Finally that there is no truth or judgment in the common people is notsurprising since the important affairs of state are conducted without their knowledgeand from the little that cannot be concealed they can only make conjecturehellip Howeveras we have said all men have the same nature ndash all grow haughty with rule terrorizeunless they are frightened ndash and everywhere truth becomes a casualty through hostilityor servility especially when despotic power is in the hands of one or a few who in trialspay attention not to justice or truth but to the extent of a persons wealth

Surprisingly Spinoza develops this democratic argument while discussing the institutions

appropriate to a monarchy But the key point he makes in the discussion is that a condition ofeffective monarchical rule is expansion of the democratic element within the state in the form ofa sizeable legislative council whose members are drawn from the general population of citizensover the age of fifty On Spinozarsquos view the mistake those who oppose democracy make isassuming that the faults exhibited by the common people ndash such as poor judgment arroganceand hostility ndash belong only to them while they are in fact typical of human beings Actually it iselitist politics that magnifies these all-too-human faults by restricting political power to a limitednumber of people while democratic politics minimizes them through the principle of majorityrule among numerous decision-makers The reason as we already know is that passions pullpeople in different directions making it nearly impossible for the members of a large council toagree on a common position unless they make decisions based not on passion but an idea of thecommon good On Spinozarsquos view it is when government is in the hands of a single person oronly a few people that the dangers the critics of democracy attribute to the common people are infact the greatest

Spinoza also argues against the claim that the common people are not qualified to makepolitical decisions because they lack the necessary education or degree of intellect There is noone he says who has been engaged in an occupation until the age of fifty who lacksunderstanding of his sphere of work ldquoevery man is reasonably competent and sagacious inmatters in which he has been long and attentively engagedrdquo So each is qualified at least to giveadvice in the kingrsquos council concerning his own business especially if given the time necessaryto reflect on the matter under discussion

Most of all the plebs are the group best suited to serving on the council because theirinterest is that of society as a whole ldquoHence it follows that counselors must necessarily beappointed whose private fortune and advantage depend on the general welfare and the peace ofallrdquo For example Spinoza emphasizes the idea that the common people have the highest stake inavoiding war or concluding an existing war with a settlement that brings lasting peace Thereason is they are ones who bear the heaviest burdens of war Unlike the wealthy well-bornmembers of society it is the common person whose occupation is most likely to be interrupted itis his taxes that are raised to onerous levels and it is his son who dies Thus the common interestof society in peace is best served not by a wealthy or educated elite but rather by those whohave the most to lose from war

At the end of the long paragraph defending popular power quoted above Spinozaconnects the question of who holds power within the state to that of who owns property Truthand justice he says are casualties in states where power is held by one person or a handful ofpeople who conduct courtroom trials that favor the rich The implication is that elitist politicalpower and ownership of wealth are intrinsically connected One of the reasons Spinozarecommends public ownership of land and buildings in a monarchy is to prevent the rise of aclass of wealthy landowners with interests different than those of the rest of society Under the

conditions of common ownership ldquothe greatest part of the council will generally have one andthe same attitude of mind towards their common interests and peaceful activitieshelliprdquo And yethaving gone this far he has trouble imagining a state where fixed property is owned collectivelyin which the actually existing multitude holds power The peasants artisans and urban poor whoconstitute the common people of the United Provinces drop out of the picture in the democratic-communist monarchy he describes and nearly everyone makes his living by selling merchandiseor lending money to countrymen ldquoall will have to make a living by engaging in trade or bylending money to their fellow citizensrdquo He seems to assume that the collectivization of land andfixed property would eliminate the occupations of peasant and artisan leaving trade and loaningat interest the only remaining possibilities of work But that of course is not true The fact thatpeople would have to rent farm land would not prevent them from farming any more than theneed to rent workshops in the cities and towns would prevent artisans from plying their tradesBut Spinoza finds the idea of a commonwealth based on commercial enterprise politicallyappealing This is because he regards commercial occupations as contributing to harmony andpeace since he claims they establish connections between people that further the interests of allwhile those who engage in them prosper only in peacetime Both of these assumptions are asquestionable as the expectation that non-commercial occupations will die out After all even inSpinozarsquos day colonialism and the struggle for colonies between imperialist states led to warsbetween the great powers including the United Provinces not to mention the military and otherforms of violence involved in subjugating the colonies The East India Company was not exactlya force for peace What seems to be at work here instead is a failure of social imaginationthough one we may find understandable given the fact that the capitalist economy was still at anearly stage in its development However this may be there is no denying the fact that despite hispowerful arguments in favor of democratic rule and communal property it is still a bourgeoissociety and state that Spinoza envisions

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of what we should not hesitate to call Spinozarsquoscommunism is the critique of private ownership he develops in the Ethics based on his theory ofaffects For him there is a paradox involved in social and political life It stems from the fact thaton the one hand people can survive and develop their capacities only by joining with oneanother in societies and states But on the other hand the necessity of combining with oneanother does not prevent them from seeking their own advantage above that of their fellowsbeing quarrelsome or hateful and erecting obstacles to each otherrsquos happiness Spinoza identifiesthe reason for these deep-rooted problems of social coexistence in Part IV Proposition 35 of theEthics ldquoInsofar as men are assailed by emotions that are passive they can be contrary to oneanotherrdquo Emotions are states of the body characterized by a transition from a lower degree of thepower to exist and act (conatus) to a higher one or conversely from a higher degree to a lowerone The first transition is the affect of joy while the second is that of sadness Passive emotionsare caused by an object external to the body or more precisely external to its essential natureSpinoza conceives of that nature as a specific proportion of motion-and-rest that the parts of thebody exhibit in relation to one another While joy is an increase in our capacity to preserve theproportion of motion-and-rest essential to our body (ie to exist and act as we do) sadness is adecrease in that capacity The political problem created by the passive emotions is that evenwhen they are joyful they are not under the control of the person who experiences themMoreover different people are affected by the same external object in different ways because theparts of their bodies and their proportionate relations of motion-and rest-differ The same objectmay elicit anger in one person and pity in another or love in one and hatred in another and soon And because people differ in their emotional reactions to the same things they also differ inthe judgments they frame on the basis of these reactions What one person praises anotherperson blames what one regards as fearless another believes to be timid etc Finally sincepeople act upon their judgments seeking to foster what they judge to be good and destroy whatthey judge to be bad their differing judgments can result in actions that are in conflict with oneanother In short ldquoinsofar as they are assailed by passive emotions [people] can be contrary toone anotherrdquo

In Proposition 34 Spinoza gives an example of the contrariety caused by the passiveaffects Suppose Peter has sole possession of something Paul loves Deprivation of the loved

object causes sadness in Paul with the idea of Peter as its cause In accordance with Spinozarsquosdefinition of hatred Paul will hate Peter and therefore seek to injure or destroy him in order toremove the cause of his Paulrsquos sadness Spinoza says that this example may seem wrong becausePaul and Peter appear to be contrary to one another because of something they share ndash ie theirlove for the thing Peter possesses But that is not the case Paul has an image of himself aslacking the loved object while Peter has an image of himself as possessing the loved object Sothey in fact differ from one another by virtue of the different images they have rather than bypossessing something in common It is clear from the example that the root of this contrariety ndashie this enmity ndash between Paul and Peter is the fact that the object can be possessed by only oneof them so that what one has the other must lack The difficulty with private property is that it isexclusive to the one who possesses it which means that what I experience as possession othersexperience as deprivation It may seem that there is no problem if other people are indifferent tothe thing I possess However in accordance with Spinozarsquos theory of the imitation of affects themere fact that I love the thing I own other things being equal will cause you to love it as wellMy exclusive possession of the thing will therefore cause sadness in you that takes the form ofhatred or more precisely the kind of hatred called envy which involves pain at the good fortuneof another ldquohuman nature is in general so constituted that men pity the unfortunate and envy thefortunate in the latter case with a hatred proportionate to their love of what they think anotherpossessesrdquo

Common Possession Friendship and Philosophy

In the Ethics Spinoza does not follow his analysis of the antagonisms of private property

by considering the collective possession of material goods (although he does advocateredistribution of wealth to the poor in Part 4 as we have seen) But the theme of commonpossession figures large in the book anyway in his treatment of the intellectual love of God Inorder to understand the connection between common possession and amor Dei intellectualis itwill be necessary to engage in a detailed analysis of Spinozarsquos metaphysics We will begin thattask in earnest in the next chapter At this point we will simply introduce the theme byexamining the relationship between friendship and common possession in the letter to Jelles andsome related writings

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo unlike the similar passages fromActs has its provenance among philosophers Spinoza mistakenly attributes it to Thales but itoccurs in Platorsquos Phaedrus and Laws and is present though not in so many words in thediscussion in the Republic of common ownership of property by the guardian class Thetradition cited by Erasmus that traces the proverb back to Pythagoras is plausible when weconsider the influence the Pythagorean community in Sicily had on Plato in the aftermath ofSocratesrsquo death Erasmus sees the supposed use of a common fund by the Pythagoreans as ananticipation of the similar practice in Acts But Spinozarsquos approach is different What interestshim in the letter is common ownership not as a religious practice but as a matter of thephilosopherrsquos relation to the world Remember the deductive consequences of the proverb sinceall things are in common among friends everything belongs to the wise because the wise arefriends of the gods and all things belong to the gods But what does it mean to say that the wiseare friends of the gods

Although Spinoza uses the word ldquofriendshiprdquo often in his writings he never supplies aformal definition However we can reconstruct the wordrsquos meaning from the contexts in whichhe uses it So for example Proposition 35 of Part III of the Ethics reads

If anyone thinks that there is between the object of his love and another person the sameor a more intimate bond of friendship than there was between them when he alone usedto possess the object loved he will be affected with hatred toward the object loved andwill envy his rival

According to the proposition friendship is an intimate bond between a person and the

object he loves I hate an object of love that I alone once possessed when it wounds my vanity byloving someone else more than me So the object of love must be capable of loving whichmeans that the bond of friendship is a relation of reciprocal love between persons Nowaccording to Spinoza I love something when I have the idea of that thing as the cause of myexperience of joy Joy is an increase in conatus which Spinoza defines as the tendency to persistin being or equivalently the ability to exist and act So friendship is a relation in which Iidentify the other person as the cause of an increase in my conatus and the other personidentifies me as the cause of a similar increase in his or hers Two things each of which causesan increase in the ability to exist and act of the other are said by Spinoza to be in harmony Sincetwo entities in harmony have more combined power than either does singly it is to the advantageof each to be in harmony with the other There is even greater advantage in entering intoharmonious connection with a third individual and the greatest advantage in combining with asmany individuals as possible This is a universal metaphysical principle For example it pertainsjust as much to chemical combination or herding among animals as it does to social relationsbetween people In the case of human relationships it is the fundamental basis of politics orrather one of its two bases the other one being the tendency human beings have to conflict withone another When the state is functioning well it involves not a random collection ofindividuals and certainly not the war of each against all but a group whose members are boundto one another by friendship the human form of harmony Thus for Spinoza friendship is apolitical virtue as it was for Plato and Aristotle

The opposite of friendship is enmity That person is my enemy whom I regard as thecause of my sadness or pain which is the same as saying the cause of a decrease in my abilityto exist and act Like friendship enmity is a reciprocal relationship If I identify you as the causeof my sadness I will seek to injure or eliminate you But that means I will be identified in yourmind as the cause of your sadness Enmity is a relation of reciprocal hatred just as friendship is arelation of reciprocal love Just as there is harmony between friends there is discord betweenenemies The fundamental task of a rational politics is easy to state it is to extend and intensifyfriendship and to reduce and mollify enmity

We have already seen that Spinoza identifies solidarity (generositas) as one of the twoforms of strength of mind (fortitudo) which is the virtue that belongs to the exercise of theintellect Solidarity is the desire to assist others and foster friendship on the basis of reason aloneThe friendship fostered by solidarity is a bond of active love The love of friends for one anotheris active when each person who loves is the adequate cause of his or her love To say that theperson is the adequate cause means that the cause of love is internal to the person who feels it inother words that the love is self-generated Active love differs from passive love in that thecause of passive love is at least partially something that exists outside the person who has theemotion The problem with passive love is that it need not be constant If the bodily dispositionof the person changes in a particular way then the object of erstwhile love will have a differentemotional effect Passive love can change into boredom or indifference or even hatred This isnot possible in the case of active love because it is self-generated Since love involves theexperience of joy no one actively abandons it

There seems to be something odd about the idea of a love between persons that isinternally generated by each of the partners in the relationship Is it not the case that part of theessence of love is the fact that the object of my love is the cause of my love Without denyingthis Spinoza identifies two forms of love that are self-generated in the Ethics One is myintellectual love of God It is indeed true that God is the cause of my love but only insofar as myintellect is part of the infinite intellect of God Thus the object that causes my love - ie God - isinternal to my mind and conversely my mind is internal to it Such reciprocal internality ndash hardas it is to visualize ndash is what Spinoza means by immanence God he tells us is the immanentcause of everything that exists Nothing can exist apart from God while God expresses himselfin all of the things that exist My love of God and Gods love of himself are one and the samebecause Godrsquos intellect is immanent in mine The second form of self-generated love is the

friendship that exists between me and others who love God through the exercise of the intellectThe reason is that the joy I feel in loving God is by the imitation of affects augmented by thejoy you feel in loving God But your love as well as mine is joy caused by the same immanentbeing Another way of saying this is that your intellect and mine are parts (ie finiteexpressions) of the infinite intellect of God Thus the relationship between friends who are boundtogether by the common exercise of the intellect and the love of God that flows from it is basedon an internal bond an internal object and cause of love In this kind of love you and I as itwere discover one another internally You are inside of me and I am inside of you Thus whenyou augment my love and I augment yours it is Gods power as the intellect immanent in us boththat causes the augmentation even though we remain finite individual beings In this state ofaffairs which is admittedly difficult to grasp we can see the rational meaning of the command tolove God by loving the neighbor In intellectual love God not insofar as he is infinite butinsofar as he expresses himself in my finite intellect loves God as he expresses himself in yourfinite intellect

For Spinoza the exercise of the intellect is very different than our ordinary experience ofthe world In the course of ordinary experience we encounter objects in a way that appearshaphazard disordered and incomplete This is so first of all because our encounters are part ofan infinitely complex chain of natural causes and effects of which we know only very limitedparts In addition our experience of objects has as much to do with the condition our bodies arein when we encounter them as it does with the nature of the objects themselves By contrast inexercising the intellect we arrange our ideas in an intelligible pattern that is internal to the mindand entirely different than the images we accumulate through sensory experience The ideas arean expression of our power while the images result from our hapless deliverance to chanceEmotions caused by objects we encounter in the course of ordinary experience are externallydetermined and therefore passive while emotions caused by acts of intellectual comprehensionare internally generated and therefore active That is why love as an active emotion has its originin the exercise of the intellect and the most satisfying form of friendship is based on thereciprocal experience of such love In a letter to Willem van Blyenberg Spinoza provides themost complete description of this kind of friendship to be found in his writings

For my part of all things that are not under my control what I most value is to enterinto a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth For I believe that such a lovingrelationship affords us a serenity surpassing any other boon in the whole wide worldThe love that such men bear to one another grounded as it is in the love that each hasfor knowledge of truth is as unshakable as is the acceptance of truth once it has beenperceived It is moreover the highest source of happiness to be found in things notunder our command for truth more than anything else has the power to effect a closeunion between different sentiments and dispositions

Spinoza says that a friendship based on the love of truth is not under our control But how

can that be if intellectual friendship involves a form of love internally generated by each friendIt would seem that the love we generate through the exercise of the intellect is fully under ourcontrol Spinoza however is referring to the fact that we are able to become friends only withpeople we actually meet which is something that occurs in the course of ordinary haphazarddisordered experience To a large extent our friendships are a matter of chance By way ofillustrating this point it turned out that Spinoza decided his initial judgment of Blyenberg wasmistaken He broke off their correspondence when he realized that the infinite chain of causesand effects had brought his way not a lover of truth but a dogmatic worshipper of the ldquopaperand inkrdquo of the Bible

People create commonwealths because the power of each to exist and act is increased byall others who transfer their rights to the sovereign For reasons we have already considered thepolitical bond is one of friendship ldquoIt is of the first importance to men to establish closerelationships and to bind themselves together with such ties as may most effectively unite theminto one body and as an absolute rule to act in such a way as serves to strengthen friendshiprdquo If

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

is no moderation in the mob they terrorize unless they are frightened and Thecommon people is either a humble servant or an arrogant master there is no truth orjudgment in itrdquo and the like But all men share in one and the same nature it is powerand culture that mislead us with the result that when two men do the same thing weoften say that it is permissible for the one to do it and not the other not because of anydifference in the thing done but in the doer hellipThen again There is no moderation inthe mob they terrorize unless they are frightened For freedom and slavery do not gowell together Finally that there is no truth or judgment in the common people is notsurprising since the important affairs of state are conducted without their knowledgeand from the little that cannot be concealed they can only make conjecturehellip Howeveras we have said all men have the same nature ndash all grow haughty with rule terrorizeunless they are frightened ndash and everywhere truth becomes a casualty through hostilityor servility especially when despotic power is in the hands of one or a few who in trialspay attention not to justice or truth but to the extent of a persons wealth

Surprisingly Spinoza develops this democratic argument while discussing the institutions

appropriate to a monarchy But the key point he makes in the discussion is that a condition ofeffective monarchical rule is expansion of the democratic element within the state in the form ofa sizeable legislative council whose members are drawn from the general population of citizensover the age of fifty On Spinozarsquos view the mistake those who oppose democracy make isassuming that the faults exhibited by the common people ndash such as poor judgment arroganceand hostility ndash belong only to them while they are in fact typical of human beings Actually it iselitist politics that magnifies these all-too-human faults by restricting political power to a limitednumber of people while democratic politics minimizes them through the principle of majorityrule among numerous decision-makers The reason as we already know is that passions pullpeople in different directions making it nearly impossible for the members of a large council toagree on a common position unless they make decisions based not on passion but an idea of thecommon good On Spinozarsquos view it is when government is in the hands of a single person oronly a few people that the dangers the critics of democracy attribute to the common people are infact the greatest

Spinoza also argues against the claim that the common people are not qualified to makepolitical decisions because they lack the necessary education or degree of intellect There is noone he says who has been engaged in an occupation until the age of fifty who lacksunderstanding of his sphere of work ldquoevery man is reasonably competent and sagacious inmatters in which he has been long and attentively engagedrdquo So each is qualified at least to giveadvice in the kingrsquos council concerning his own business especially if given the time necessaryto reflect on the matter under discussion

Most of all the plebs are the group best suited to serving on the council because theirinterest is that of society as a whole ldquoHence it follows that counselors must necessarily beappointed whose private fortune and advantage depend on the general welfare and the peace ofallrdquo For example Spinoza emphasizes the idea that the common people have the highest stake inavoiding war or concluding an existing war with a settlement that brings lasting peace Thereason is they are ones who bear the heaviest burdens of war Unlike the wealthy well-bornmembers of society it is the common person whose occupation is most likely to be interrupted itis his taxes that are raised to onerous levels and it is his son who dies Thus the common interestof society in peace is best served not by a wealthy or educated elite but rather by those whohave the most to lose from war

At the end of the long paragraph defending popular power quoted above Spinozaconnects the question of who holds power within the state to that of who owns property Truthand justice he says are casualties in states where power is held by one person or a handful ofpeople who conduct courtroom trials that favor the rich The implication is that elitist politicalpower and ownership of wealth are intrinsically connected One of the reasons Spinozarecommends public ownership of land and buildings in a monarchy is to prevent the rise of aclass of wealthy landowners with interests different than those of the rest of society Under the

conditions of common ownership ldquothe greatest part of the council will generally have one andthe same attitude of mind towards their common interests and peaceful activitieshelliprdquo And yethaving gone this far he has trouble imagining a state where fixed property is owned collectivelyin which the actually existing multitude holds power The peasants artisans and urban poor whoconstitute the common people of the United Provinces drop out of the picture in the democratic-communist monarchy he describes and nearly everyone makes his living by selling merchandiseor lending money to countrymen ldquoall will have to make a living by engaging in trade or bylending money to their fellow citizensrdquo He seems to assume that the collectivization of land andfixed property would eliminate the occupations of peasant and artisan leaving trade and loaningat interest the only remaining possibilities of work But that of course is not true The fact thatpeople would have to rent farm land would not prevent them from farming any more than theneed to rent workshops in the cities and towns would prevent artisans from plying their tradesBut Spinoza finds the idea of a commonwealth based on commercial enterprise politicallyappealing This is because he regards commercial occupations as contributing to harmony andpeace since he claims they establish connections between people that further the interests of allwhile those who engage in them prosper only in peacetime Both of these assumptions are asquestionable as the expectation that non-commercial occupations will die out After all even inSpinozarsquos day colonialism and the struggle for colonies between imperialist states led to warsbetween the great powers including the United Provinces not to mention the military and otherforms of violence involved in subjugating the colonies The East India Company was not exactlya force for peace What seems to be at work here instead is a failure of social imaginationthough one we may find understandable given the fact that the capitalist economy was still at anearly stage in its development However this may be there is no denying the fact that despite hispowerful arguments in favor of democratic rule and communal property it is still a bourgeoissociety and state that Spinoza envisions

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of what we should not hesitate to call Spinozarsquoscommunism is the critique of private ownership he develops in the Ethics based on his theory ofaffects For him there is a paradox involved in social and political life It stems from the fact thaton the one hand people can survive and develop their capacities only by joining with oneanother in societies and states But on the other hand the necessity of combining with oneanother does not prevent them from seeking their own advantage above that of their fellowsbeing quarrelsome or hateful and erecting obstacles to each otherrsquos happiness Spinoza identifiesthe reason for these deep-rooted problems of social coexistence in Part IV Proposition 35 of theEthics ldquoInsofar as men are assailed by emotions that are passive they can be contrary to oneanotherrdquo Emotions are states of the body characterized by a transition from a lower degree of thepower to exist and act (conatus) to a higher one or conversely from a higher degree to a lowerone The first transition is the affect of joy while the second is that of sadness Passive emotionsare caused by an object external to the body or more precisely external to its essential natureSpinoza conceives of that nature as a specific proportion of motion-and-rest that the parts of thebody exhibit in relation to one another While joy is an increase in our capacity to preserve theproportion of motion-and-rest essential to our body (ie to exist and act as we do) sadness is adecrease in that capacity The political problem created by the passive emotions is that evenwhen they are joyful they are not under the control of the person who experiences themMoreover different people are affected by the same external object in different ways because theparts of their bodies and their proportionate relations of motion-and rest-differ The same objectmay elicit anger in one person and pity in another or love in one and hatred in another and soon And because people differ in their emotional reactions to the same things they also differ inthe judgments they frame on the basis of these reactions What one person praises anotherperson blames what one regards as fearless another believes to be timid etc Finally sincepeople act upon their judgments seeking to foster what they judge to be good and destroy whatthey judge to be bad their differing judgments can result in actions that are in conflict with oneanother In short ldquoinsofar as they are assailed by passive emotions [people] can be contrary toone anotherrdquo

In Proposition 34 Spinoza gives an example of the contrariety caused by the passiveaffects Suppose Peter has sole possession of something Paul loves Deprivation of the loved

object causes sadness in Paul with the idea of Peter as its cause In accordance with Spinozarsquosdefinition of hatred Paul will hate Peter and therefore seek to injure or destroy him in order toremove the cause of his Paulrsquos sadness Spinoza says that this example may seem wrong becausePaul and Peter appear to be contrary to one another because of something they share ndash ie theirlove for the thing Peter possesses But that is not the case Paul has an image of himself aslacking the loved object while Peter has an image of himself as possessing the loved object Sothey in fact differ from one another by virtue of the different images they have rather than bypossessing something in common It is clear from the example that the root of this contrariety ndashie this enmity ndash between Paul and Peter is the fact that the object can be possessed by only oneof them so that what one has the other must lack The difficulty with private property is that it isexclusive to the one who possesses it which means that what I experience as possession othersexperience as deprivation It may seem that there is no problem if other people are indifferent tothe thing I possess However in accordance with Spinozarsquos theory of the imitation of affects themere fact that I love the thing I own other things being equal will cause you to love it as wellMy exclusive possession of the thing will therefore cause sadness in you that takes the form ofhatred or more precisely the kind of hatred called envy which involves pain at the good fortuneof another ldquohuman nature is in general so constituted that men pity the unfortunate and envy thefortunate in the latter case with a hatred proportionate to their love of what they think anotherpossessesrdquo

Common Possession Friendship and Philosophy

In the Ethics Spinoza does not follow his analysis of the antagonisms of private property

by considering the collective possession of material goods (although he does advocateredistribution of wealth to the poor in Part 4 as we have seen) But the theme of commonpossession figures large in the book anyway in his treatment of the intellectual love of God Inorder to understand the connection between common possession and amor Dei intellectualis itwill be necessary to engage in a detailed analysis of Spinozarsquos metaphysics We will begin thattask in earnest in the next chapter At this point we will simply introduce the theme byexamining the relationship between friendship and common possession in the letter to Jelles andsome related writings

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo unlike the similar passages fromActs has its provenance among philosophers Spinoza mistakenly attributes it to Thales but itoccurs in Platorsquos Phaedrus and Laws and is present though not in so many words in thediscussion in the Republic of common ownership of property by the guardian class Thetradition cited by Erasmus that traces the proverb back to Pythagoras is plausible when weconsider the influence the Pythagorean community in Sicily had on Plato in the aftermath ofSocratesrsquo death Erasmus sees the supposed use of a common fund by the Pythagoreans as ananticipation of the similar practice in Acts But Spinozarsquos approach is different What interestshim in the letter is common ownership not as a religious practice but as a matter of thephilosopherrsquos relation to the world Remember the deductive consequences of the proverb sinceall things are in common among friends everything belongs to the wise because the wise arefriends of the gods and all things belong to the gods But what does it mean to say that the wiseare friends of the gods

Although Spinoza uses the word ldquofriendshiprdquo often in his writings he never supplies aformal definition However we can reconstruct the wordrsquos meaning from the contexts in whichhe uses it So for example Proposition 35 of Part III of the Ethics reads

If anyone thinks that there is between the object of his love and another person the sameor a more intimate bond of friendship than there was between them when he alone usedto possess the object loved he will be affected with hatred toward the object loved andwill envy his rival

According to the proposition friendship is an intimate bond between a person and the

object he loves I hate an object of love that I alone once possessed when it wounds my vanity byloving someone else more than me So the object of love must be capable of loving whichmeans that the bond of friendship is a relation of reciprocal love between persons Nowaccording to Spinoza I love something when I have the idea of that thing as the cause of myexperience of joy Joy is an increase in conatus which Spinoza defines as the tendency to persistin being or equivalently the ability to exist and act So friendship is a relation in which Iidentify the other person as the cause of an increase in my conatus and the other personidentifies me as the cause of a similar increase in his or hers Two things each of which causesan increase in the ability to exist and act of the other are said by Spinoza to be in harmony Sincetwo entities in harmony have more combined power than either does singly it is to the advantageof each to be in harmony with the other There is even greater advantage in entering intoharmonious connection with a third individual and the greatest advantage in combining with asmany individuals as possible This is a universal metaphysical principle For example it pertainsjust as much to chemical combination or herding among animals as it does to social relationsbetween people In the case of human relationships it is the fundamental basis of politics orrather one of its two bases the other one being the tendency human beings have to conflict withone another When the state is functioning well it involves not a random collection ofindividuals and certainly not the war of each against all but a group whose members are boundto one another by friendship the human form of harmony Thus for Spinoza friendship is apolitical virtue as it was for Plato and Aristotle

The opposite of friendship is enmity That person is my enemy whom I regard as thecause of my sadness or pain which is the same as saying the cause of a decrease in my abilityto exist and act Like friendship enmity is a reciprocal relationship If I identify you as the causeof my sadness I will seek to injure or eliminate you But that means I will be identified in yourmind as the cause of your sadness Enmity is a relation of reciprocal hatred just as friendship is arelation of reciprocal love Just as there is harmony between friends there is discord betweenenemies The fundamental task of a rational politics is easy to state it is to extend and intensifyfriendship and to reduce and mollify enmity

We have already seen that Spinoza identifies solidarity (generositas) as one of the twoforms of strength of mind (fortitudo) which is the virtue that belongs to the exercise of theintellect Solidarity is the desire to assist others and foster friendship on the basis of reason aloneThe friendship fostered by solidarity is a bond of active love The love of friends for one anotheris active when each person who loves is the adequate cause of his or her love To say that theperson is the adequate cause means that the cause of love is internal to the person who feels it inother words that the love is self-generated Active love differs from passive love in that thecause of passive love is at least partially something that exists outside the person who has theemotion The problem with passive love is that it need not be constant If the bodily dispositionof the person changes in a particular way then the object of erstwhile love will have a differentemotional effect Passive love can change into boredom or indifference or even hatred This isnot possible in the case of active love because it is self-generated Since love involves theexperience of joy no one actively abandons it

There seems to be something odd about the idea of a love between persons that isinternally generated by each of the partners in the relationship Is it not the case that part of theessence of love is the fact that the object of my love is the cause of my love Without denyingthis Spinoza identifies two forms of love that are self-generated in the Ethics One is myintellectual love of God It is indeed true that God is the cause of my love but only insofar as myintellect is part of the infinite intellect of God Thus the object that causes my love - ie God - isinternal to my mind and conversely my mind is internal to it Such reciprocal internality ndash hardas it is to visualize ndash is what Spinoza means by immanence God he tells us is the immanentcause of everything that exists Nothing can exist apart from God while God expresses himselfin all of the things that exist My love of God and Gods love of himself are one and the samebecause Godrsquos intellect is immanent in mine The second form of self-generated love is the

friendship that exists between me and others who love God through the exercise of the intellectThe reason is that the joy I feel in loving God is by the imitation of affects augmented by thejoy you feel in loving God But your love as well as mine is joy caused by the same immanentbeing Another way of saying this is that your intellect and mine are parts (ie finiteexpressions) of the infinite intellect of God Thus the relationship between friends who are boundtogether by the common exercise of the intellect and the love of God that flows from it is basedon an internal bond an internal object and cause of love In this kind of love you and I as itwere discover one another internally You are inside of me and I am inside of you Thus whenyou augment my love and I augment yours it is Gods power as the intellect immanent in us boththat causes the augmentation even though we remain finite individual beings In this state ofaffairs which is admittedly difficult to grasp we can see the rational meaning of the command tolove God by loving the neighbor In intellectual love God not insofar as he is infinite butinsofar as he expresses himself in my finite intellect loves God as he expresses himself in yourfinite intellect

For Spinoza the exercise of the intellect is very different than our ordinary experience ofthe world In the course of ordinary experience we encounter objects in a way that appearshaphazard disordered and incomplete This is so first of all because our encounters are part ofan infinitely complex chain of natural causes and effects of which we know only very limitedparts In addition our experience of objects has as much to do with the condition our bodies arein when we encounter them as it does with the nature of the objects themselves By contrast inexercising the intellect we arrange our ideas in an intelligible pattern that is internal to the mindand entirely different than the images we accumulate through sensory experience The ideas arean expression of our power while the images result from our hapless deliverance to chanceEmotions caused by objects we encounter in the course of ordinary experience are externallydetermined and therefore passive while emotions caused by acts of intellectual comprehensionare internally generated and therefore active That is why love as an active emotion has its originin the exercise of the intellect and the most satisfying form of friendship is based on thereciprocal experience of such love In a letter to Willem van Blyenberg Spinoza provides themost complete description of this kind of friendship to be found in his writings

For my part of all things that are not under my control what I most value is to enterinto a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth For I believe that such a lovingrelationship affords us a serenity surpassing any other boon in the whole wide worldThe love that such men bear to one another grounded as it is in the love that each hasfor knowledge of truth is as unshakable as is the acceptance of truth once it has beenperceived It is moreover the highest source of happiness to be found in things notunder our command for truth more than anything else has the power to effect a closeunion between different sentiments and dispositions

Spinoza says that a friendship based on the love of truth is not under our control But how

can that be if intellectual friendship involves a form of love internally generated by each friendIt would seem that the love we generate through the exercise of the intellect is fully under ourcontrol Spinoza however is referring to the fact that we are able to become friends only withpeople we actually meet which is something that occurs in the course of ordinary haphazarddisordered experience To a large extent our friendships are a matter of chance By way ofillustrating this point it turned out that Spinoza decided his initial judgment of Blyenberg wasmistaken He broke off their correspondence when he realized that the infinite chain of causesand effects had brought his way not a lover of truth but a dogmatic worshipper of the ldquopaperand inkrdquo of the Bible

People create commonwealths because the power of each to exist and act is increased byall others who transfer their rights to the sovereign For reasons we have already considered thepolitical bond is one of friendship ldquoIt is of the first importance to men to establish closerelationships and to bind themselves together with such ties as may most effectively unite theminto one body and as an absolute rule to act in such a way as serves to strengthen friendshiprdquo If

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

conditions of common ownership ldquothe greatest part of the council will generally have one andthe same attitude of mind towards their common interests and peaceful activitieshelliprdquo And yethaving gone this far he has trouble imagining a state where fixed property is owned collectivelyin which the actually existing multitude holds power The peasants artisans and urban poor whoconstitute the common people of the United Provinces drop out of the picture in the democratic-communist monarchy he describes and nearly everyone makes his living by selling merchandiseor lending money to countrymen ldquoall will have to make a living by engaging in trade or bylending money to their fellow citizensrdquo He seems to assume that the collectivization of land andfixed property would eliminate the occupations of peasant and artisan leaving trade and loaningat interest the only remaining possibilities of work But that of course is not true The fact thatpeople would have to rent farm land would not prevent them from farming any more than theneed to rent workshops in the cities and towns would prevent artisans from plying their tradesBut Spinoza finds the idea of a commonwealth based on commercial enterprise politicallyappealing This is because he regards commercial occupations as contributing to harmony andpeace since he claims they establish connections between people that further the interests of allwhile those who engage in them prosper only in peacetime Both of these assumptions are asquestionable as the expectation that non-commercial occupations will die out After all even inSpinozarsquos day colonialism and the struggle for colonies between imperialist states led to warsbetween the great powers including the United Provinces not to mention the military and otherforms of violence involved in subjugating the colonies The East India Company was not exactlya force for peace What seems to be at work here instead is a failure of social imaginationthough one we may find understandable given the fact that the capitalist economy was still at anearly stage in its development However this may be there is no denying the fact that despite hispowerful arguments in favor of democratic rule and communal property it is still a bourgeoissociety and state that Spinoza envisions

Perhaps the most innovative aspect of what we should not hesitate to call Spinozarsquoscommunism is the critique of private ownership he develops in the Ethics based on his theory ofaffects For him there is a paradox involved in social and political life It stems from the fact thaton the one hand people can survive and develop their capacities only by joining with oneanother in societies and states But on the other hand the necessity of combining with oneanother does not prevent them from seeking their own advantage above that of their fellowsbeing quarrelsome or hateful and erecting obstacles to each otherrsquos happiness Spinoza identifiesthe reason for these deep-rooted problems of social coexistence in Part IV Proposition 35 of theEthics ldquoInsofar as men are assailed by emotions that are passive they can be contrary to oneanotherrdquo Emotions are states of the body characterized by a transition from a lower degree of thepower to exist and act (conatus) to a higher one or conversely from a higher degree to a lowerone The first transition is the affect of joy while the second is that of sadness Passive emotionsare caused by an object external to the body or more precisely external to its essential natureSpinoza conceives of that nature as a specific proportion of motion-and-rest that the parts of thebody exhibit in relation to one another While joy is an increase in our capacity to preserve theproportion of motion-and-rest essential to our body (ie to exist and act as we do) sadness is adecrease in that capacity The political problem created by the passive emotions is that evenwhen they are joyful they are not under the control of the person who experiences themMoreover different people are affected by the same external object in different ways because theparts of their bodies and their proportionate relations of motion-and rest-differ The same objectmay elicit anger in one person and pity in another or love in one and hatred in another and soon And because people differ in their emotional reactions to the same things they also differ inthe judgments they frame on the basis of these reactions What one person praises anotherperson blames what one regards as fearless another believes to be timid etc Finally sincepeople act upon their judgments seeking to foster what they judge to be good and destroy whatthey judge to be bad their differing judgments can result in actions that are in conflict with oneanother In short ldquoinsofar as they are assailed by passive emotions [people] can be contrary toone anotherrdquo

In Proposition 34 Spinoza gives an example of the contrariety caused by the passiveaffects Suppose Peter has sole possession of something Paul loves Deprivation of the loved

object causes sadness in Paul with the idea of Peter as its cause In accordance with Spinozarsquosdefinition of hatred Paul will hate Peter and therefore seek to injure or destroy him in order toremove the cause of his Paulrsquos sadness Spinoza says that this example may seem wrong becausePaul and Peter appear to be contrary to one another because of something they share ndash ie theirlove for the thing Peter possesses But that is not the case Paul has an image of himself aslacking the loved object while Peter has an image of himself as possessing the loved object Sothey in fact differ from one another by virtue of the different images they have rather than bypossessing something in common It is clear from the example that the root of this contrariety ndashie this enmity ndash between Paul and Peter is the fact that the object can be possessed by only oneof them so that what one has the other must lack The difficulty with private property is that it isexclusive to the one who possesses it which means that what I experience as possession othersexperience as deprivation It may seem that there is no problem if other people are indifferent tothe thing I possess However in accordance with Spinozarsquos theory of the imitation of affects themere fact that I love the thing I own other things being equal will cause you to love it as wellMy exclusive possession of the thing will therefore cause sadness in you that takes the form ofhatred or more precisely the kind of hatred called envy which involves pain at the good fortuneof another ldquohuman nature is in general so constituted that men pity the unfortunate and envy thefortunate in the latter case with a hatred proportionate to their love of what they think anotherpossessesrdquo

Common Possession Friendship and Philosophy

In the Ethics Spinoza does not follow his analysis of the antagonisms of private property

by considering the collective possession of material goods (although he does advocateredistribution of wealth to the poor in Part 4 as we have seen) But the theme of commonpossession figures large in the book anyway in his treatment of the intellectual love of God Inorder to understand the connection between common possession and amor Dei intellectualis itwill be necessary to engage in a detailed analysis of Spinozarsquos metaphysics We will begin thattask in earnest in the next chapter At this point we will simply introduce the theme byexamining the relationship between friendship and common possession in the letter to Jelles andsome related writings

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo unlike the similar passages fromActs has its provenance among philosophers Spinoza mistakenly attributes it to Thales but itoccurs in Platorsquos Phaedrus and Laws and is present though not in so many words in thediscussion in the Republic of common ownership of property by the guardian class Thetradition cited by Erasmus that traces the proverb back to Pythagoras is plausible when weconsider the influence the Pythagorean community in Sicily had on Plato in the aftermath ofSocratesrsquo death Erasmus sees the supposed use of a common fund by the Pythagoreans as ananticipation of the similar practice in Acts But Spinozarsquos approach is different What interestshim in the letter is common ownership not as a religious practice but as a matter of thephilosopherrsquos relation to the world Remember the deductive consequences of the proverb sinceall things are in common among friends everything belongs to the wise because the wise arefriends of the gods and all things belong to the gods But what does it mean to say that the wiseare friends of the gods

Although Spinoza uses the word ldquofriendshiprdquo often in his writings he never supplies aformal definition However we can reconstruct the wordrsquos meaning from the contexts in whichhe uses it So for example Proposition 35 of Part III of the Ethics reads

If anyone thinks that there is between the object of his love and another person the sameor a more intimate bond of friendship than there was between them when he alone usedto possess the object loved he will be affected with hatred toward the object loved andwill envy his rival

According to the proposition friendship is an intimate bond between a person and the

object he loves I hate an object of love that I alone once possessed when it wounds my vanity byloving someone else more than me So the object of love must be capable of loving whichmeans that the bond of friendship is a relation of reciprocal love between persons Nowaccording to Spinoza I love something when I have the idea of that thing as the cause of myexperience of joy Joy is an increase in conatus which Spinoza defines as the tendency to persistin being or equivalently the ability to exist and act So friendship is a relation in which Iidentify the other person as the cause of an increase in my conatus and the other personidentifies me as the cause of a similar increase in his or hers Two things each of which causesan increase in the ability to exist and act of the other are said by Spinoza to be in harmony Sincetwo entities in harmony have more combined power than either does singly it is to the advantageof each to be in harmony with the other There is even greater advantage in entering intoharmonious connection with a third individual and the greatest advantage in combining with asmany individuals as possible This is a universal metaphysical principle For example it pertainsjust as much to chemical combination or herding among animals as it does to social relationsbetween people In the case of human relationships it is the fundamental basis of politics orrather one of its two bases the other one being the tendency human beings have to conflict withone another When the state is functioning well it involves not a random collection ofindividuals and certainly not the war of each against all but a group whose members are boundto one another by friendship the human form of harmony Thus for Spinoza friendship is apolitical virtue as it was for Plato and Aristotle

The opposite of friendship is enmity That person is my enemy whom I regard as thecause of my sadness or pain which is the same as saying the cause of a decrease in my abilityto exist and act Like friendship enmity is a reciprocal relationship If I identify you as the causeof my sadness I will seek to injure or eliminate you But that means I will be identified in yourmind as the cause of your sadness Enmity is a relation of reciprocal hatred just as friendship is arelation of reciprocal love Just as there is harmony between friends there is discord betweenenemies The fundamental task of a rational politics is easy to state it is to extend and intensifyfriendship and to reduce and mollify enmity

We have already seen that Spinoza identifies solidarity (generositas) as one of the twoforms of strength of mind (fortitudo) which is the virtue that belongs to the exercise of theintellect Solidarity is the desire to assist others and foster friendship on the basis of reason aloneThe friendship fostered by solidarity is a bond of active love The love of friends for one anotheris active when each person who loves is the adequate cause of his or her love To say that theperson is the adequate cause means that the cause of love is internal to the person who feels it inother words that the love is self-generated Active love differs from passive love in that thecause of passive love is at least partially something that exists outside the person who has theemotion The problem with passive love is that it need not be constant If the bodily dispositionof the person changes in a particular way then the object of erstwhile love will have a differentemotional effect Passive love can change into boredom or indifference or even hatred This isnot possible in the case of active love because it is self-generated Since love involves theexperience of joy no one actively abandons it

There seems to be something odd about the idea of a love between persons that isinternally generated by each of the partners in the relationship Is it not the case that part of theessence of love is the fact that the object of my love is the cause of my love Without denyingthis Spinoza identifies two forms of love that are self-generated in the Ethics One is myintellectual love of God It is indeed true that God is the cause of my love but only insofar as myintellect is part of the infinite intellect of God Thus the object that causes my love - ie God - isinternal to my mind and conversely my mind is internal to it Such reciprocal internality ndash hardas it is to visualize ndash is what Spinoza means by immanence God he tells us is the immanentcause of everything that exists Nothing can exist apart from God while God expresses himselfin all of the things that exist My love of God and Gods love of himself are one and the samebecause Godrsquos intellect is immanent in mine The second form of self-generated love is the

friendship that exists between me and others who love God through the exercise of the intellectThe reason is that the joy I feel in loving God is by the imitation of affects augmented by thejoy you feel in loving God But your love as well as mine is joy caused by the same immanentbeing Another way of saying this is that your intellect and mine are parts (ie finiteexpressions) of the infinite intellect of God Thus the relationship between friends who are boundtogether by the common exercise of the intellect and the love of God that flows from it is basedon an internal bond an internal object and cause of love In this kind of love you and I as itwere discover one another internally You are inside of me and I am inside of you Thus whenyou augment my love and I augment yours it is Gods power as the intellect immanent in us boththat causes the augmentation even though we remain finite individual beings In this state ofaffairs which is admittedly difficult to grasp we can see the rational meaning of the command tolove God by loving the neighbor In intellectual love God not insofar as he is infinite butinsofar as he expresses himself in my finite intellect loves God as he expresses himself in yourfinite intellect

For Spinoza the exercise of the intellect is very different than our ordinary experience ofthe world In the course of ordinary experience we encounter objects in a way that appearshaphazard disordered and incomplete This is so first of all because our encounters are part ofan infinitely complex chain of natural causes and effects of which we know only very limitedparts In addition our experience of objects has as much to do with the condition our bodies arein when we encounter them as it does with the nature of the objects themselves By contrast inexercising the intellect we arrange our ideas in an intelligible pattern that is internal to the mindand entirely different than the images we accumulate through sensory experience The ideas arean expression of our power while the images result from our hapless deliverance to chanceEmotions caused by objects we encounter in the course of ordinary experience are externallydetermined and therefore passive while emotions caused by acts of intellectual comprehensionare internally generated and therefore active That is why love as an active emotion has its originin the exercise of the intellect and the most satisfying form of friendship is based on thereciprocal experience of such love In a letter to Willem van Blyenberg Spinoza provides themost complete description of this kind of friendship to be found in his writings

For my part of all things that are not under my control what I most value is to enterinto a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth For I believe that such a lovingrelationship affords us a serenity surpassing any other boon in the whole wide worldThe love that such men bear to one another grounded as it is in the love that each hasfor knowledge of truth is as unshakable as is the acceptance of truth once it has beenperceived It is moreover the highest source of happiness to be found in things notunder our command for truth more than anything else has the power to effect a closeunion between different sentiments and dispositions

Spinoza says that a friendship based on the love of truth is not under our control But how

can that be if intellectual friendship involves a form of love internally generated by each friendIt would seem that the love we generate through the exercise of the intellect is fully under ourcontrol Spinoza however is referring to the fact that we are able to become friends only withpeople we actually meet which is something that occurs in the course of ordinary haphazarddisordered experience To a large extent our friendships are a matter of chance By way ofillustrating this point it turned out that Spinoza decided his initial judgment of Blyenberg wasmistaken He broke off their correspondence when he realized that the infinite chain of causesand effects had brought his way not a lover of truth but a dogmatic worshipper of the ldquopaperand inkrdquo of the Bible

People create commonwealths because the power of each to exist and act is increased byall others who transfer their rights to the sovereign For reasons we have already considered thepolitical bond is one of friendship ldquoIt is of the first importance to men to establish closerelationships and to bind themselves together with such ties as may most effectively unite theminto one body and as an absolute rule to act in such a way as serves to strengthen friendshiprdquo If

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

object causes sadness in Paul with the idea of Peter as its cause In accordance with Spinozarsquosdefinition of hatred Paul will hate Peter and therefore seek to injure or destroy him in order toremove the cause of his Paulrsquos sadness Spinoza says that this example may seem wrong becausePaul and Peter appear to be contrary to one another because of something they share ndash ie theirlove for the thing Peter possesses But that is not the case Paul has an image of himself aslacking the loved object while Peter has an image of himself as possessing the loved object Sothey in fact differ from one another by virtue of the different images they have rather than bypossessing something in common It is clear from the example that the root of this contrariety ndashie this enmity ndash between Paul and Peter is the fact that the object can be possessed by only oneof them so that what one has the other must lack The difficulty with private property is that it isexclusive to the one who possesses it which means that what I experience as possession othersexperience as deprivation It may seem that there is no problem if other people are indifferent tothe thing I possess However in accordance with Spinozarsquos theory of the imitation of affects themere fact that I love the thing I own other things being equal will cause you to love it as wellMy exclusive possession of the thing will therefore cause sadness in you that takes the form ofhatred or more precisely the kind of hatred called envy which involves pain at the good fortuneof another ldquohuman nature is in general so constituted that men pity the unfortunate and envy thefortunate in the latter case with a hatred proportionate to their love of what they think anotherpossessesrdquo

Common Possession Friendship and Philosophy

In the Ethics Spinoza does not follow his analysis of the antagonisms of private property

by considering the collective possession of material goods (although he does advocateredistribution of wealth to the poor in Part 4 as we have seen) But the theme of commonpossession figures large in the book anyway in his treatment of the intellectual love of God Inorder to understand the connection between common possession and amor Dei intellectualis itwill be necessary to engage in a detailed analysis of Spinozarsquos metaphysics We will begin thattask in earnest in the next chapter At this point we will simply introduce the theme byexamining the relationship between friendship and common possession in the letter to Jelles andsome related writings

The proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo unlike the similar passages fromActs has its provenance among philosophers Spinoza mistakenly attributes it to Thales but itoccurs in Platorsquos Phaedrus and Laws and is present though not in so many words in thediscussion in the Republic of common ownership of property by the guardian class Thetradition cited by Erasmus that traces the proverb back to Pythagoras is plausible when weconsider the influence the Pythagorean community in Sicily had on Plato in the aftermath ofSocratesrsquo death Erasmus sees the supposed use of a common fund by the Pythagoreans as ananticipation of the similar practice in Acts But Spinozarsquos approach is different What interestshim in the letter is common ownership not as a religious practice but as a matter of thephilosopherrsquos relation to the world Remember the deductive consequences of the proverb sinceall things are in common among friends everything belongs to the wise because the wise arefriends of the gods and all things belong to the gods But what does it mean to say that the wiseare friends of the gods

Although Spinoza uses the word ldquofriendshiprdquo often in his writings he never supplies aformal definition However we can reconstruct the wordrsquos meaning from the contexts in whichhe uses it So for example Proposition 35 of Part III of the Ethics reads

If anyone thinks that there is between the object of his love and another person the sameor a more intimate bond of friendship than there was between them when he alone usedto possess the object loved he will be affected with hatred toward the object loved andwill envy his rival

According to the proposition friendship is an intimate bond between a person and the

object he loves I hate an object of love that I alone once possessed when it wounds my vanity byloving someone else more than me So the object of love must be capable of loving whichmeans that the bond of friendship is a relation of reciprocal love between persons Nowaccording to Spinoza I love something when I have the idea of that thing as the cause of myexperience of joy Joy is an increase in conatus which Spinoza defines as the tendency to persistin being or equivalently the ability to exist and act So friendship is a relation in which Iidentify the other person as the cause of an increase in my conatus and the other personidentifies me as the cause of a similar increase in his or hers Two things each of which causesan increase in the ability to exist and act of the other are said by Spinoza to be in harmony Sincetwo entities in harmony have more combined power than either does singly it is to the advantageof each to be in harmony with the other There is even greater advantage in entering intoharmonious connection with a third individual and the greatest advantage in combining with asmany individuals as possible This is a universal metaphysical principle For example it pertainsjust as much to chemical combination or herding among animals as it does to social relationsbetween people In the case of human relationships it is the fundamental basis of politics orrather one of its two bases the other one being the tendency human beings have to conflict withone another When the state is functioning well it involves not a random collection ofindividuals and certainly not the war of each against all but a group whose members are boundto one another by friendship the human form of harmony Thus for Spinoza friendship is apolitical virtue as it was for Plato and Aristotle

The opposite of friendship is enmity That person is my enemy whom I regard as thecause of my sadness or pain which is the same as saying the cause of a decrease in my abilityto exist and act Like friendship enmity is a reciprocal relationship If I identify you as the causeof my sadness I will seek to injure or eliminate you But that means I will be identified in yourmind as the cause of your sadness Enmity is a relation of reciprocal hatred just as friendship is arelation of reciprocal love Just as there is harmony between friends there is discord betweenenemies The fundamental task of a rational politics is easy to state it is to extend and intensifyfriendship and to reduce and mollify enmity

We have already seen that Spinoza identifies solidarity (generositas) as one of the twoforms of strength of mind (fortitudo) which is the virtue that belongs to the exercise of theintellect Solidarity is the desire to assist others and foster friendship on the basis of reason aloneThe friendship fostered by solidarity is a bond of active love The love of friends for one anotheris active when each person who loves is the adequate cause of his or her love To say that theperson is the adequate cause means that the cause of love is internal to the person who feels it inother words that the love is self-generated Active love differs from passive love in that thecause of passive love is at least partially something that exists outside the person who has theemotion The problem with passive love is that it need not be constant If the bodily dispositionof the person changes in a particular way then the object of erstwhile love will have a differentemotional effect Passive love can change into boredom or indifference or even hatred This isnot possible in the case of active love because it is self-generated Since love involves theexperience of joy no one actively abandons it

There seems to be something odd about the idea of a love between persons that isinternally generated by each of the partners in the relationship Is it not the case that part of theessence of love is the fact that the object of my love is the cause of my love Without denyingthis Spinoza identifies two forms of love that are self-generated in the Ethics One is myintellectual love of God It is indeed true that God is the cause of my love but only insofar as myintellect is part of the infinite intellect of God Thus the object that causes my love - ie God - isinternal to my mind and conversely my mind is internal to it Such reciprocal internality ndash hardas it is to visualize ndash is what Spinoza means by immanence God he tells us is the immanentcause of everything that exists Nothing can exist apart from God while God expresses himselfin all of the things that exist My love of God and Gods love of himself are one and the samebecause Godrsquos intellect is immanent in mine The second form of self-generated love is the

friendship that exists between me and others who love God through the exercise of the intellectThe reason is that the joy I feel in loving God is by the imitation of affects augmented by thejoy you feel in loving God But your love as well as mine is joy caused by the same immanentbeing Another way of saying this is that your intellect and mine are parts (ie finiteexpressions) of the infinite intellect of God Thus the relationship between friends who are boundtogether by the common exercise of the intellect and the love of God that flows from it is basedon an internal bond an internal object and cause of love In this kind of love you and I as itwere discover one another internally You are inside of me and I am inside of you Thus whenyou augment my love and I augment yours it is Gods power as the intellect immanent in us boththat causes the augmentation even though we remain finite individual beings In this state ofaffairs which is admittedly difficult to grasp we can see the rational meaning of the command tolove God by loving the neighbor In intellectual love God not insofar as he is infinite butinsofar as he expresses himself in my finite intellect loves God as he expresses himself in yourfinite intellect

For Spinoza the exercise of the intellect is very different than our ordinary experience ofthe world In the course of ordinary experience we encounter objects in a way that appearshaphazard disordered and incomplete This is so first of all because our encounters are part ofan infinitely complex chain of natural causes and effects of which we know only very limitedparts In addition our experience of objects has as much to do with the condition our bodies arein when we encounter them as it does with the nature of the objects themselves By contrast inexercising the intellect we arrange our ideas in an intelligible pattern that is internal to the mindand entirely different than the images we accumulate through sensory experience The ideas arean expression of our power while the images result from our hapless deliverance to chanceEmotions caused by objects we encounter in the course of ordinary experience are externallydetermined and therefore passive while emotions caused by acts of intellectual comprehensionare internally generated and therefore active That is why love as an active emotion has its originin the exercise of the intellect and the most satisfying form of friendship is based on thereciprocal experience of such love In a letter to Willem van Blyenberg Spinoza provides themost complete description of this kind of friendship to be found in his writings

For my part of all things that are not under my control what I most value is to enterinto a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth For I believe that such a lovingrelationship affords us a serenity surpassing any other boon in the whole wide worldThe love that such men bear to one another grounded as it is in the love that each hasfor knowledge of truth is as unshakable as is the acceptance of truth once it has beenperceived It is moreover the highest source of happiness to be found in things notunder our command for truth more than anything else has the power to effect a closeunion between different sentiments and dispositions

Spinoza says that a friendship based on the love of truth is not under our control But how

can that be if intellectual friendship involves a form of love internally generated by each friendIt would seem that the love we generate through the exercise of the intellect is fully under ourcontrol Spinoza however is referring to the fact that we are able to become friends only withpeople we actually meet which is something that occurs in the course of ordinary haphazarddisordered experience To a large extent our friendships are a matter of chance By way ofillustrating this point it turned out that Spinoza decided his initial judgment of Blyenberg wasmistaken He broke off their correspondence when he realized that the infinite chain of causesand effects had brought his way not a lover of truth but a dogmatic worshipper of the ldquopaperand inkrdquo of the Bible

People create commonwealths because the power of each to exist and act is increased byall others who transfer their rights to the sovereign For reasons we have already considered thepolitical bond is one of friendship ldquoIt is of the first importance to men to establish closerelationships and to bind themselves together with such ties as may most effectively unite theminto one body and as an absolute rule to act in such a way as serves to strengthen friendshiprdquo If

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

According to the proposition friendship is an intimate bond between a person and the

object he loves I hate an object of love that I alone once possessed when it wounds my vanity byloving someone else more than me So the object of love must be capable of loving whichmeans that the bond of friendship is a relation of reciprocal love between persons Nowaccording to Spinoza I love something when I have the idea of that thing as the cause of myexperience of joy Joy is an increase in conatus which Spinoza defines as the tendency to persistin being or equivalently the ability to exist and act So friendship is a relation in which Iidentify the other person as the cause of an increase in my conatus and the other personidentifies me as the cause of a similar increase in his or hers Two things each of which causesan increase in the ability to exist and act of the other are said by Spinoza to be in harmony Sincetwo entities in harmony have more combined power than either does singly it is to the advantageof each to be in harmony with the other There is even greater advantage in entering intoharmonious connection with a third individual and the greatest advantage in combining with asmany individuals as possible This is a universal metaphysical principle For example it pertainsjust as much to chemical combination or herding among animals as it does to social relationsbetween people In the case of human relationships it is the fundamental basis of politics orrather one of its two bases the other one being the tendency human beings have to conflict withone another When the state is functioning well it involves not a random collection ofindividuals and certainly not the war of each against all but a group whose members are boundto one another by friendship the human form of harmony Thus for Spinoza friendship is apolitical virtue as it was for Plato and Aristotle

The opposite of friendship is enmity That person is my enemy whom I regard as thecause of my sadness or pain which is the same as saying the cause of a decrease in my abilityto exist and act Like friendship enmity is a reciprocal relationship If I identify you as the causeof my sadness I will seek to injure or eliminate you But that means I will be identified in yourmind as the cause of your sadness Enmity is a relation of reciprocal hatred just as friendship is arelation of reciprocal love Just as there is harmony between friends there is discord betweenenemies The fundamental task of a rational politics is easy to state it is to extend and intensifyfriendship and to reduce and mollify enmity

We have already seen that Spinoza identifies solidarity (generositas) as one of the twoforms of strength of mind (fortitudo) which is the virtue that belongs to the exercise of theintellect Solidarity is the desire to assist others and foster friendship on the basis of reason aloneThe friendship fostered by solidarity is a bond of active love The love of friends for one anotheris active when each person who loves is the adequate cause of his or her love To say that theperson is the adequate cause means that the cause of love is internal to the person who feels it inother words that the love is self-generated Active love differs from passive love in that thecause of passive love is at least partially something that exists outside the person who has theemotion The problem with passive love is that it need not be constant If the bodily dispositionof the person changes in a particular way then the object of erstwhile love will have a differentemotional effect Passive love can change into boredom or indifference or even hatred This isnot possible in the case of active love because it is self-generated Since love involves theexperience of joy no one actively abandons it

There seems to be something odd about the idea of a love between persons that isinternally generated by each of the partners in the relationship Is it not the case that part of theessence of love is the fact that the object of my love is the cause of my love Without denyingthis Spinoza identifies two forms of love that are self-generated in the Ethics One is myintellectual love of God It is indeed true that God is the cause of my love but only insofar as myintellect is part of the infinite intellect of God Thus the object that causes my love - ie God - isinternal to my mind and conversely my mind is internal to it Such reciprocal internality ndash hardas it is to visualize ndash is what Spinoza means by immanence God he tells us is the immanentcause of everything that exists Nothing can exist apart from God while God expresses himselfin all of the things that exist My love of God and Gods love of himself are one and the samebecause Godrsquos intellect is immanent in mine The second form of self-generated love is the

friendship that exists between me and others who love God through the exercise of the intellectThe reason is that the joy I feel in loving God is by the imitation of affects augmented by thejoy you feel in loving God But your love as well as mine is joy caused by the same immanentbeing Another way of saying this is that your intellect and mine are parts (ie finiteexpressions) of the infinite intellect of God Thus the relationship between friends who are boundtogether by the common exercise of the intellect and the love of God that flows from it is basedon an internal bond an internal object and cause of love In this kind of love you and I as itwere discover one another internally You are inside of me and I am inside of you Thus whenyou augment my love and I augment yours it is Gods power as the intellect immanent in us boththat causes the augmentation even though we remain finite individual beings In this state ofaffairs which is admittedly difficult to grasp we can see the rational meaning of the command tolove God by loving the neighbor In intellectual love God not insofar as he is infinite butinsofar as he expresses himself in my finite intellect loves God as he expresses himself in yourfinite intellect

For Spinoza the exercise of the intellect is very different than our ordinary experience ofthe world In the course of ordinary experience we encounter objects in a way that appearshaphazard disordered and incomplete This is so first of all because our encounters are part ofan infinitely complex chain of natural causes and effects of which we know only very limitedparts In addition our experience of objects has as much to do with the condition our bodies arein when we encounter them as it does with the nature of the objects themselves By contrast inexercising the intellect we arrange our ideas in an intelligible pattern that is internal to the mindand entirely different than the images we accumulate through sensory experience The ideas arean expression of our power while the images result from our hapless deliverance to chanceEmotions caused by objects we encounter in the course of ordinary experience are externallydetermined and therefore passive while emotions caused by acts of intellectual comprehensionare internally generated and therefore active That is why love as an active emotion has its originin the exercise of the intellect and the most satisfying form of friendship is based on thereciprocal experience of such love In a letter to Willem van Blyenberg Spinoza provides themost complete description of this kind of friendship to be found in his writings

For my part of all things that are not under my control what I most value is to enterinto a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth For I believe that such a lovingrelationship affords us a serenity surpassing any other boon in the whole wide worldThe love that such men bear to one another grounded as it is in the love that each hasfor knowledge of truth is as unshakable as is the acceptance of truth once it has beenperceived It is moreover the highest source of happiness to be found in things notunder our command for truth more than anything else has the power to effect a closeunion between different sentiments and dispositions

Spinoza says that a friendship based on the love of truth is not under our control But how

can that be if intellectual friendship involves a form of love internally generated by each friendIt would seem that the love we generate through the exercise of the intellect is fully under ourcontrol Spinoza however is referring to the fact that we are able to become friends only withpeople we actually meet which is something that occurs in the course of ordinary haphazarddisordered experience To a large extent our friendships are a matter of chance By way ofillustrating this point it turned out that Spinoza decided his initial judgment of Blyenberg wasmistaken He broke off their correspondence when he realized that the infinite chain of causesand effects had brought his way not a lover of truth but a dogmatic worshipper of the ldquopaperand inkrdquo of the Bible

People create commonwealths because the power of each to exist and act is increased byall others who transfer their rights to the sovereign For reasons we have already considered thepolitical bond is one of friendship ldquoIt is of the first importance to men to establish closerelationships and to bind themselves together with such ties as may most effectively unite theminto one body and as an absolute rule to act in such a way as serves to strengthen friendshiprdquo If

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

friendship that exists between me and others who love God through the exercise of the intellectThe reason is that the joy I feel in loving God is by the imitation of affects augmented by thejoy you feel in loving God But your love as well as mine is joy caused by the same immanentbeing Another way of saying this is that your intellect and mine are parts (ie finiteexpressions) of the infinite intellect of God Thus the relationship between friends who are boundtogether by the common exercise of the intellect and the love of God that flows from it is basedon an internal bond an internal object and cause of love In this kind of love you and I as itwere discover one another internally You are inside of me and I am inside of you Thus whenyou augment my love and I augment yours it is Gods power as the intellect immanent in us boththat causes the augmentation even though we remain finite individual beings In this state ofaffairs which is admittedly difficult to grasp we can see the rational meaning of the command tolove God by loving the neighbor In intellectual love God not insofar as he is infinite butinsofar as he expresses himself in my finite intellect loves God as he expresses himself in yourfinite intellect

For Spinoza the exercise of the intellect is very different than our ordinary experience ofthe world In the course of ordinary experience we encounter objects in a way that appearshaphazard disordered and incomplete This is so first of all because our encounters are part ofan infinitely complex chain of natural causes and effects of which we know only very limitedparts In addition our experience of objects has as much to do with the condition our bodies arein when we encounter them as it does with the nature of the objects themselves By contrast inexercising the intellect we arrange our ideas in an intelligible pattern that is internal to the mindand entirely different than the images we accumulate through sensory experience The ideas arean expression of our power while the images result from our hapless deliverance to chanceEmotions caused by objects we encounter in the course of ordinary experience are externallydetermined and therefore passive while emotions caused by acts of intellectual comprehensionare internally generated and therefore active That is why love as an active emotion has its originin the exercise of the intellect and the most satisfying form of friendship is based on thereciprocal experience of such love In a letter to Willem van Blyenberg Spinoza provides themost complete description of this kind of friendship to be found in his writings

For my part of all things that are not under my control what I most value is to enterinto a bond of friendship with sincere lovers of truth For I believe that such a lovingrelationship affords us a serenity surpassing any other boon in the whole wide worldThe love that such men bear to one another grounded as it is in the love that each hasfor knowledge of truth is as unshakable as is the acceptance of truth once it has beenperceived It is moreover the highest source of happiness to be found in things notunder our command for truth more than anything else has the power to effect a closeunion between different sentiments and dispositions

Spinoza says that a friendship based on the love of truth is not under our control But how

can that be if intellectual friendship involves a form of love internally generated by each friendIt would seem that the love we generate through the exercise of the intellect is fully under ourcontrol Spinoza however is referring to the fact that we are able to become friends only withpeople we actually meet which is something that occurs in the course of ordinary haphazarddisordered experience To a large extent our friendships are a matter of chance By way ofillustrating this point it turned out that Spinoza decided his initial judgment of Blyenberg wasmistaken He broke off their correspondence when he realized that the infinite chain of causesand effects had brought his way not a lover of truth but a dogmatic worshipper of the ldquopaperand inkrdquo of the Bible

People create commonwealths because the power of each to exist and act is increased byall others who transfer their rights to the sovereign For reasons we have already considered thepolitical bond is one of friendship ldquoIt is of the first importance to men to establish closerelationships and to bind themselves together with such ties as may most effectively unite theminto one body and as an absolute rule to act in such a way as serves to strengthen friendshiprdquo If

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

friendships were based wholly on reason they would be enduring and there would be no need forlaw or punishment However not all members of a polity are lovers of rationality and truthMany remain driven predominantly by passive emotions and so enter into conflict with oneanother The only thing able to prevent them from doing each other harm is an emotion greaterthan the other emotions that drive them Like Hobbes Spinoza identifies that emotion as fearincluding fear of the ultimate sanction of death And yet in Spinozarsquos view the purpose of thestate is freedom rather than fear

It follows quite clearly from my earlier explanation of the basis of the state that itsultimate purpose is not to exercise dominion nor to restrain men by fear and deprivethem of independence but on the contrary to free every man from fear so that he maylive in security as far as is possible that is so that he may best preserve his own naturalright to exist and to act without harm to himself and to others

In the Ethics Spinoza argues that freedom lies in the exercise of the intellect But that is

not possible ndash or at least it is extraordinarily difficult ndash without civil peace The imperfectfriendships of the political bond and the sanctions necessary to preserve it when friendships failcreate the conditions required for pursuing the kind of friendship Spinoza describes in his letterto Blyenberg friendship grounded in the love that each friend has for the knowledge of truth

In a letter to Henry Oldenburg of 1661 Spinoza formulates the proverb he cites in hisletter to Jelles in a fashion that takes into account in a general way this ground of friendship inthe common love of truth ldquohellipbetween friends all things and particularly things of the spiritshould be sharedrdquo While the formulation is reminiscent of the passages in Acts that portray themembers of the apostolic Church as united in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit Spinozarsquos idea ofsharing spiritual things is philosophical rather than religious in a conventional sense This bringsus back to his treatment of the ancient Greek proverb and its deductive consequences ldquoThe wiseare the friends of the Gods and all things belong to the Gods therefore all things belong to the

wiserdquo Since Spinoza is not a polytheist we can begin by making the word ldquoGodsrdquo singular The

claim then is that the wise are the friends of God Given the nature of friendship the claimimplies that the wise and God are connected by a bond of reciprocal love In the Ethics Spinozademonstrates that the wise love God because wisdom consists in acts of the intellect that areassertions of the mindrsquos power to exist and act and so are accompanied by feelings of joy Sincewhat the wise understand is absolutely infinite substance its attributes and its modes (ie God)they identify God as the cause of those feelings And since people love what they believe causesjoy in them the wise love God But in Part V of the Ethics Spinoza hedges on whether Godreciprocates this love Strictly speaking God is incapable of love because love involves joy andjoy is a transition from a lessor to a greater degree of the power to exist and act But Godrsquos powerto exist and act is always infinite so that there can be no such transition in his case For thatreason Spinoza says that those who love God cannot desire that God love them in return withoutat the same time desiring that God cease to be God But that is only half of the story By lovingGod in acts of intellectual comprehension the mind achieves its highest degree of activity and tothe extent that the mind is active it is an expression of the power of God It follows that the actsof understanding in which the finite mind loves God are acts in which God loves himself throughthe medium of the finite mind Thus the idea of God that accompanies the experience of joy inthe intellectual love of God includes the idea of the mind that has that experience In that senseGod loves us in our love for him ldquoFrom this we clearly understand in what our salvation orblessedness or freedom consists namely in the constant and eternal love toward God that is inGods love toward menrdquo The love of the wise for God is indeed reciprocated and it thereforemakes sense to say that the wise are the friends of God

In Spinozarsquos view all things belong to God in the sense that nothing exists outside ofinfinite substance its attributes and modes In the intellectual love of God the wise recognizethis truth Everything belongs to the wise because everything belongs to (is an expression of) the

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

infinite object of their love Such possession does not take the form of private property becauseas intellectual comprehension and love it does not exclude anyone else from possessing theobject of their love More than that according to Spinoza whoever loves God wants others tolove him as well because by the imitation of affects the joy other people experience intensifieshis own joy That is why the wise wish for others the good that they seek for themselves eventhough they like everyone else continue to pursue their own advantage God Natura theuniverse as a whole is a special kind of good Not only is it incapable of monopoly or divisionbut the act of sharing it augments its goodness making it even more desirable than it was at theoutset It is capable of limitless expansion as something valuable to human beings It goeswithout saying that no other form of property has these characteristics The intellectual love ofGod can only be a form of communist possession and enjoyment

We will remember that in the letter to Jelles Spinoza describes a plan which he says hehas abandoned to write a short treatise opposing the conception of the highest good in HomoPoliticus as the achievement of wealth and honors He had planned to demonstrate what thehighest good for human beings genuinely is and ldquothen indicate the restless and pitiable conditionof those who are greedy for money and covet honorsrdquo That statement ndash which occursimmediately before he cites the proverb ldquoAll things are in common among friendsrdquo ndash is a bridgebetween his earliest work Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect (TIE) and his latemasterwork the Ethics

The TIE opens with an account of the spiritual crisis that led Spinoza to the study ofphilosophy It is squarely within the Collegiant tradition Like Spinoza several of his Collegiantfriends went through a spiritual crisis in which he rejected the pursuit of wealth and fame inorder to study philosophy And like his friends he wrote about the experience The following isthe way Spinoza describes his own path to philosophy in the TIE

After experience had taught me the hollowness and futility of everything that isordinarily encountered in daily life and I realized that all the things which were thesource and object of my anxiety held nothing of good or evil in themselves save insofaras the mind was influenced by them I resolved at length to enquire whether thereexisted a true good one which was capable of communicating itself and could aloneaffect the mind to the exclusion of all else whether in fact there was something whosediscovery and acquisition would afford me a continuous and supreme joy to all eternity

Following this passage Spinoza names three things that people commonly regard as the

highest good wealth honor and sensuous pleasure The first two are what he in the letter toJelles clams the author of Homo Politicus takes to be the highest good He does not mentionsensuous pleasure in that context presumably because its pursuit was more characteristic of idlearistocrats than of men pursuing political careers In any event each of the three candidates forthe highest good has limitations unique to itself that prevent it from qualifying for the titleSensuous pleasure obsesses the mind preventing it from thinking of anything else In additionits satisfaction is followed by a state of depression that depletes the mind of its power when itdoes not merely confuse it Although honor and wealth do not have these depressiveconsequences except when we fail to attain them they too obsess the mind and can lead to thedestruction of those who pursue them above all else The pursuit of honor has the additionaldisadvantage of forcing us to lead our lives so that others approve of us Beyond these specificlimitations there is one that all three pursuits share Each is a form of love for somethingperishable

Happiness and sadness depend entirely on the nature of the things we love ldquoFor strifewill never arise on account of that which is not loved there will be no sorrow if it is lost no envyif it is possessed by another no fear no hatred ndash in a word no emotional agitationhelliprdquo Spinozadoes not say why it is the perishable character of objects that is responsible for the emotionalagitation we experience as a result of loving them The reason is obvious in the case of theexperience of sorrow over loss since when something perishes we lose it But how are envy

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

fear and hatred related to the perishable character of the things we love Spinoza has paintedonly half the picture We get a clue about what the other half looks like when he describes thekind of object we able to love without emotional agitation ldquolove towards a thing eternal andinfinite feeds the mind with joy alone unmixed with any sadnessrdquo The opposite of eternal isperishable but the opposite of infinite is finite From this we can infer that it is not just theperishability of objects that is responsible for the emotional agitation of those who love them buttheir finite character as well Only finite goods are capable of being owned exclusively only theycan serve as private property The fact that others can withhold them from us is what elicits ourenvy hatred and fear By contrast an infinite good is neither exhausted nor diminished whenpossessed and so can belong in its entirety to everyone

Although enjoyment of the highest good lies beyond the sphere of politics politicalassociation nevertheless makes it possible In participating in the creation and preservation of acommonwealth I combine my power with that of others by transferring it to a sovereignauthority able to adopt laws and enforce them with threats of punishment With others I effect atransition from enmity to friendship from discord to harmony But political association alsocreates the condition of social peace necessary for the cultivation of reason If the sovereign is ademocratic council it encourages the development of rationality in the greatest number ofpeople permitting the replacement of fear with freedom which is the same as rational self-determination In the TPT Spinoza identifies it as the real purpose of political association Buthe already makes this point in a general way in his first and unfinished treatise the TIE

This then is the end for which I strive to acquire the nature I have described[permitting achievement of the highest good] and to endeavor that many should acquireit along with me That is to say my own happiness involves my making an effort topersuade many others to think as I do so that their understanding and their desire shouldentirely accord with my understanding and my desire To bring this about it isnecessaryhellip to establish such a social order as will enable as many as possible to reachthis goal with the greatest possible ease and assurance

What we might call the political good is a condition of the possibility of the highest good

Like Marx Spinoza attempts to unify theory and practice For Spinoza the philosopher mustchange the world in order to understand it But philosophers cannot change the world on theirown At most they can enter into a dialogue with what Gramsci called organic social groupspositioned to undertake the project of social and political transformation In the United Provincesof Spinozas day there were three groups so positioned the aristocracy - with its pinnacle in theHouse of Orange and its allies in the Reform Church the wealthy burghers and their free-thinking associates and the peasants artisans wage-workers and small merchants Spinozareferred to as the plebs vulgus or multitudo In the TPT Spinoza vacillates between appealing tothe second group to limit the political power of the first in the name of freedom and arguing thatfreedom demands that the third group replace the second as sovereign This is not the vacillationof the petite-bourgeois intellectual caught between the rock of the big bourgeoisie and the hardplace of a developed proletariat It is the reflection in thought of the gelatinous ensembles ofsocial classes in transition as the Netherlands was leaving the medieval period behind andassuming its place at the dynamic center of the global market When all that is solid melts intoair politics becomes as gelatinous as the shifting class ensembles No wonder Spinoza failed todiscover the programmatic formula that would make the state into an instrument of humanemancipation in the last decades of the seventeenth century

By the time Spinoza wrote Part V of the Ethics - following the year of disaster - he hadrecognized the programmatic failure of the TPT and was beginning to reframe his politics Tosome extent this is already evident in Part 4 of the Ethics and to a much greater degree in theunfinished Political Treatise Although we do not have the space necessary to explore this newprogrammatic orientation we can say in a general way that its purpose was to maximize thefreedom of the multitude given the existence of any of the three classical forms of the state -monarchy aristocracy or democracy However Part V of the Ethics - or rather its second half -

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1

lies beyond politics entirely its double theme is the eternity of the mind and the intellectual loveof God But although lying beyond politics it does not lie beyond communism ldquoThe highestgood of those who pursue virtue is common to all and all can equally enjoy itrdquo The intellectuallove of the infinite and the eternity of the mind that loves it constitute the ultimate form ofcommon ownership In the final analysis this is the meaning of the ancient proverb Spinozadiscusses in his letter to Jelles The friends of Truth indeed have all things in common Butgenuinely understanding this commonality requires that we undertake a journey through some ofthe deepest waters of Spinozarsquos metaphysics

1