Marx, Spinoza, and “True Democracy”

Abstract

Abstract It is common to assimilate Marx’s and Spinoza’s conceptions of democracy. This chapter assesses the relation between Marx’s early idea of “true democracy” and Spinozist democracy, both the historical influence and the theoretical affinity. Drawing on Marx’s student notebooks on Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise, the chapter shows that there was a historical influence. However, at the theoretical level, it argues that a sharp distinction must be drawn. Philosophically, Spinoza’s commitment to understanding politics through real concrete powers does not align with Marx’s anti-institutional conception of true democracy. And as a matter of social theory, the gap between civil society and the state which so troubles Marx is a development of modernity that has not entered Spinoza’s premodern field of view. Marx’s true democracy was also influenced by his study of Rousseau, and theoretically, it is just as close if not closer to Rousseau as to Spinoza.