The concept of the multitude in Marsilius, Machiavelli and Hobbes

Abstract

Over the last years defined by collective action and protests, a new emancipatory agent was excitedly welcomed into the political arena: the multitude. In the attempt of identifying this agent, a new framework was introduced that harmonizes populist radicalism, anti-capitalism and a break from the dialectical approach of Hegel and Marx in a way that does not put the proletariat at the center of emancipation. Yet, attempts of theorization unavoidably overlapped with the debates over modern state, and inevitably landed in a number of thinkers. This dissertation examines what are often considered the main texts of the multitude. Adopting a perspective that avoids the presumption that these concepts are mutually exclusive, the work aims to develop a genealogy of the concept of the multitude. It engages with the chief works of Marsilius of Padua, Niccolò Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes. This endeavor has several objectives. Primarily, it shows that what is declared as a novel political subject is actually present since the early modern debates of popular sovereignty. Secondarily, it identifies the borders of the space in which the multitude exists in regard to the theories of legal and political boundaries of the state and of popular sovereignty. Thirdly, it intends to demonstrate that the multitude, regardless of every independent popular sovereignty attempt to limit it, has always preserved its de facto capacity as a political agent. Lastly, it seeks to contribute to current debates on the concept by developing a fresh perspective on how multitude should be treated as a political agent in its own right. The conclusions are bound with the scope of the thinker. My analysis shows that Marsilius is an absolutist who designed a highly elitist and exclusionary popular sovereignty that excludes the multitude’s existence in the political field. I claim that Machiavelli’s strongest point concerning the concept of the multitude is his depiction of it as a phenomenon that can never be ruled out as an agent by any sovereignty theory, because it serves to express the majority’s desires. Further, Machiavelli’s political thought demarcates the space in which the multitude resides, that is, between legal and illegal, political and non-political. Hobbes’s political thought shows itself as an ultimate submission to the power of the multitude, the author coming to admit that the inalienable rights of individuals equip them with the right to collectively reject the orders of a sovereign. Hobbes’s popular sovereignty theory reveals itself as a justification for the ineradicable existence of the multitude, no matter how harshly the sovereign intends to exclude it as a political agent within the modern state.