Spinoza's biopolitics : commodification of substance and secular immortality

At this point, then, we are forced to address one of the thorniest questions regarding Spinoza’s political theory, namely: what is the status of absolute power or democracy? The most evident alternatives seem to be to consider Spinoza’s democracy to be either an ideal in the sense of an unrealizable utopia (something like a Kantian regulative idea) or in the sense of a realizable goal. But these alternatives are further complicated by the possibility that Spinoza’s absolute power or democracy is realizable – and even, possibly, necessarily to be realized under certain circumstances – but in a modulation that can hardly be called the realization of a liberating ideal or utopia. Therefore, before we continue to examine what Spinoza’s ontology entails about the exact nature of democracy qua biopower, let us linger further on its analysis in the Theologico-Political Treatise with regard to this particular question.