What should we do with the ideals of internationalism? How should we react to the withering away of the state and the rise of horizontality? These are some of the central questions addressed by leading French radical intellectual Frédéric Lordon. Humanity, argues Lordon, exists neither as a dust cloud of separate individuals nor as a unified worldwide political community. What are the forces that produce this fragmentation, engender such groupings, and prevent them from being perfectly horizontal, exposing them to capture and shaping them over time? Drawing on Spinoza's political philosophy and especially his two central concepts of multitudo and imperium, this penetrating analysis has implications for how we think about states, political organizations and social movements. Book jacket.