http://www.why-war.com/news/2003/01/01/philosop.html
Passive and active number
The reason for the paradoxes of the vote are well known: its technical rationality means the result is gotten from a pure count, which authorises the infinite attentions of sociologists and political scientists -- as concerned with numerical details and variations as the specialists of climactic history -- and works to cover over massive irrationality. For why would number have political virtue? Why would the majority, modifiable at will thanks to the ruse of infinite modes of balloting, be endowed with the attributes of a norm? Such approximations are simply not tolerated in other domains where human thought is at stake. Great scientific creators and innovative artists have been right contrary to dominant opinion. Even violent amorous passions affirm themselves against mediocre social judgement. Is politics, and it alone, to be condemned to the conservatism of numerical means? Everything indicates that this is not the case. Since each time a capital political decision is to be taken, by everyone in their own name, the partisans of the just and the true are initially entirely in the minority, indeed, electorally insignificant. The résistants of the 1940's, those of the 1950's opposed to the sordid colonial wars, the "leftists" of the 60's and 70's: all of them were absolutely in the minority just as are those who today see imperialistic ambitions and the spirit of servitude hide beneath the mask of "humanitarian interventions", or the "war against terrorism". And, basically, everyone knows that number, the majority, won as it is from blind lists upon leaving the ballot box, has no real meaning.
The refuge then is the ambivalence of number. For it is necessary to distinguish passive number, such as it functions in the ballots, from an entirely other number, active this time, pertaining to demonstrations, mass strikes, and indeed insurrections.
The active number, as large as it may be, is in truth always minuscule with regard to the passive number. The demonstrators of May 1st 2002 boasted to have numbered 500, 000. That was nothing compared either with the total number of voters or with Le Pen's 6 million voters. In fact, the active number is not capable of being valorised except if the power of the collective will traverses it, such that it takes the risk of an act, or of a tenacity of organisation, above and beyond any consideration of averages or majority.
Between April 21st and May 5th, the democrats having realised that a monster prospered in the fields of passive number -- in fact, their intimate monstrosity -- and without wondering whether such is not the law of this kind of number -- all passivity is, I believe, politically suspect -- attempted to console themselves with a production of active number. They "took to the streets". But their power was derisory, for by love of the vote they proclaimed the servitude of the active to the passive number.
The active number must be detached from any correlation to the passive number. A meeting, a demonstration, an insurrection -- all proclaim their right to existence outside any consideration not immanent to that existence. Scoundrels have never found it difficult to prosper in obscure content, passivity, and the secrecy and anonymity of numbers. Hitler himself came to power through elections, and it was a regular assembly which elected Pétain.
Making the active number play the role of hollow auxiliary to the passive number, as was done on May 1st 2002, indicates a state of consciousness without hope. And all things considered, the effect of that demonstration was, as one knows today, simply nil. We got Chirac without the slightest democratic bonus. And the youth, like a small torrent in a dry region after a storm, just disappeared into its bed.