Conclusion
Throughout this essay, it has been argued that Althusser, Macherey, and Deleuze have a idiosyncratic take on Spinoza's philosophy, making the latter a philosophy of contingency. There were specific philosophical and political reasons behind this move to a contingent Spinoza – an anti-teleological Marxism, a non-Hegelian dialectic, an affirmation of life, and so on. By re-reading Spinozian substance in a way that emphasizes the immanence of attributes and modes in substance, these thinkers sought to provide a more materialist understanding of the contemporary situation that allows for the contingency of events, i.e. that political actors are not defined by a Subject but can make their own history and construct their own politics. But as I argued, this move toward a substance that is causally constituted by its attributes and modes makes the unity of these aspects of substance spurious at best, unthinkable at worst. For the emphasis on immanence that makes the modes the primary concepts of concern runs the risk of making each its own substance without being able to relate to one another – the modes are not an expression of substance but are causally constitutive of it. Thus, the modes are not infinite in kind (and therefore, unified in substance) but become absolutely infinite, each acting as its own self-cause.
Although my focus has been on the more abstract theoretical aspects of Spinoza and the contingent Spinozists via the latter's readings of the Ethics, there are political consequences to these theoretical problems. While Althusser, Macherey, and Deleuze each have their own emphases and subtle differences, they are unified in some key conceptual moves. Substance is no longer causally prior; substance is not important but rather the modes are what are most real; the attributes are substances themselves; contingency or pluralism is privileged over necessity or monism. What their readings of Spinoza have trouble addressing is the way the modes (such as political actors) relate to one another; or their relationships are absolutely contingent without any explanation as to why a certain political, social, or economic organization is preferable over another. The affections one person experiences (their political “preference” or “belief”) are absolutely infinite from others. Thus, a person's commitments cannot be articulated through a connection to the necessity of substance, i.e. what unifies one with an infinity of others, and becomes an assertion, making any kind of democratic politics (yet alone a communist politics) unthinkable. Another related aspect is that a critique of capitalist social relations also becomes an arbitrary assertion of one's will, since the thoughts that occur in one's head are not shown to be a part of substance's unity. Althusser and Macherey's attempt at a critique of ideology runs the risk of becoming a Nietzschean will to power, and Deleuze's attempt to think the singularity of a life runs the risk of turning into its opposite: a violent conception asserted on a life.
Most of this paper has been spent tracing the arguments of Althusser, Macherey, and Deleuze about Spinoza with little explicit references to the work of the lens maker himself. While these comments are cursory, here are some suggestions toward reading Spinoza as necessitarian monist and how such reading could provide a framework to think a radical politics.
Spinoza has already a provided a way to think the unity of all finite modes, and this requires a serious reading of the first five definitions of the Ethics, especially D3 and D5, which Gueroult, Macherey, and Deleuze say are tentative or speculative, and not to be taken too seriously.104 From definitions three and five, Spinoza puts forward the following as his first proposition: “A substance is prior in nature to its affections.”105 For Spinoza, the unity of substance is cause of the affections of the modes, i.e. the plurality is derived from the unity or monism. The knowledge of the modes is dependent upon the knowledge of substance as their cause, since modes are known through another with substance as the ultimate referent. Given Spinoza's definitions, propositions, and demonstrations, the modes are capable of being thought as unified because substance is their infinite absolutely necessary cause; thus, the modes can relate to one another because each is a modification of absolutely infinite substance. This unity should not be confused with acosmism because as Spinoza argues, “From the necessity of the divine nature there must follow infinitely many things in infinitely many modes, (i.e., everything which can fall under an infinite intellect).”106
Each mode or thing strives to persevere in its being,107 and although each is affected in different ways, they are not absolutely different since they express God's or substance's power, which is the unity of them. As a result each individual seeks the increase of his or her power. As Spinoza puts it, “To man, then, there is nothing more useful than man. Man, I say, can wish for nothing more helpful to the preservation of his being than that all should so agree in all things that the minds and bodies of all would compose, as it were, one mind and one body; that all should strive together, as far as they can, to preserve their being; and that all, together, should seek for themselves the common advantage of all.”108 Through Spinozian substance and its causes it is possible to promote solidarity amongst different groups in different places and times and to criticize any condition in which their ability to preserve their being is degraded because all modes adhere in substance. Political concepts such as these are shown as necessary, moving away from any arbitrary or contingent relation, i.e. away from any moralizing or voluntarism that has no basis.
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