On The Multitude and Mexico's Presidential Elections:

The Dangers to the Multitude
Alejandro Nadal
La Jornada, Mexico City, July 19, 2006

Translation: El Kilombo Intergalactico

Last week the functionaries of the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) assigned
themselves a very generous compensation for the arduous work they did during
this electoral year. The total prize of 404,000 pesos (approximately 40,000
USD), which should be added to a monthly salary of 161,000 pesos
(approximately16,000 USD) for each functionary (the head council of the IFE
receives more than that). Perhaps with the help of these emollients the
functionaries of the IFE can now explain to us the manipulation of the PREP
(the IFE's system for electronic preliminary results) and all the other
irregularities of the 2006 elections.

But the highlight is not in these functionaries' exorbitantly high salaries in
and of themselves; rather, it is in the political and moral erosion that these
imply. Since its birth the IFE was driven by the absurd notion that its
functionaries should earn extremely high salaries. What was the justification
for such a notion? The answer to this question was never made explicit but it
flowed like a river during rainy season nonetheless: this way the
functionaries of the IFE would not be bought and we would have a clean
election.

In reality, things can work exactly the reverse. The astronomical salaries of
the IFE officials can be a perverse incentive for corruption. With these
salaries there now exists a long line of would-be officials willing to do
anything to occupy this position. With awards this big the last thing an IFE
official wants is to lose his job. For this reason it is not that hair-brained
to think that the logic of astronomical salaries is in fact the preamble to
corruption. So that no one can buy you, you make sure to sell yourself first.
The anachronistic vision of the "democratic" institutions crystallized in
the instruments of Power is the enemy of democratic reason. Why couldn't
there have been an electoral institute truly under citizen control and without
monumental remuneration for its functionaries? This reveals one of the dangers
of the technological conceptions of democracy, in which the multitude is
nothing and the electoral moment is everything.

However, this is not the principal danger to the multitude. The worst corruption
is that which liquidated civic life and annulled the moral of the public
"thing." That is why what is at stake today is nothing less than the
reconstitution of the republic. Yes, of course, in the short term there is the
issue of the vote recount. But the demands of the multitude go far beyond this
immediate step.

In order to understand this it is important to reread the Treatises by Spinoza
on democracy. We are referring here to the most radical and brilliant political
thinker on this very topic. His definition of democracy weighs today more than
ever on the multitude: Omnino Absolutum Imperium. Democracy is the absolute
empire of all. But take note, the term "absolute" refers to that which is
eternal, and not to that ideological entelechy* of absolute Power.

Democracy is not a form of government analogous in its essence to other forms of
organizing the political. It is the space internal to which all forms of
political structure must earn its sense. Or, in the words of Antonio Negri,
democracy is no longer defined merely as one of the possible forms of
government, but much more radically as the schema of legitimation of all
possible forms of the political organization of the social.

Spinoza's position is contrary to the technical efficacy of the
contractarians, from Hobbes to Locke. It is also the antithesis of that
political economic project that wishes to cement the social order through the
mechanisms of the "invisible hand" (that tradition founded by Smith). In
his Political Theological Treatises Spinoza writes:

"From the principles of the State it follows that its ultimate purpose is
not to dominate men nor to subject them through fear to the rule of another,
but on the contrary to free them all from fear so that he may best preserve
his own natural right to exist and to act without harm to himself or others. It
is not the purpose of the State to transform men from rational beings into beasts
or puppets, but rather, to enable them to develop their mental and physical
capacities in safety, to use their reason without restraint and to refrain from
the strife and the vicious mutual abuse that are prompted by hatred, anger and
deceit. Thus the purpose of the State is, in reality, freedom."

In order to rescue this vision it is absolutely necessary to recognize the
dangers that surround the multitude. Today in Mexico those dangers exist on at
least three levels. First, is the risk of corruption of political life and the
evacuation of public space. This danger leads to the distortion of democracy,
which is then reduced to a mere ideological instance and an electoral moment.
The second danger lies in the risk of violence and manipulation. The multitude
must act intelligently and be able to teach the path of its pacifist nature
(never to be confused with passive). The multitude is not scared, but it also
does not suffer from the arrogance of Power. Finally, the third danger, perhaps
the most serious, is to lose itself in the immeasurability of its quantity. This
path can lead it to a certain "pragmatism" and back to a technological
reason. The multitude is one and it does not have to be gathered in a plaza to
feel its power. When the multitude loses its way the Power of domination
thrives.

*Note: Entelechy is used by Aristotle to refer to the condition of a thing whose
essence is already fully realized.