Machines de travail: Constituent power and the order of labor in Sieyes's thought

The notion of constituent power, that is the power of the multitude to create a new political order, has intensely pervaded modern political discourses. For instance, during and after the American and French Revolutions, influential political actors repeatedly evoked the idea of constituent power to confer legitimacy on their newly drafted constitutions (Kalyvas, 2005; Klein, 1996; Loughlin & Walker, 2008, pp. 1-8; Negri, 2009, ch. 1). In this sense, the concept of constituent power has functioned as a powerful rhetorical device to support the emerging political powers of the epoch (Hamilton, Madison, & Jay, p. 249). However, the meaning of constituent power was far from being agreed. On the contrary, this notion was deeply disputed by the various social forces at play in modernity. In fact, it seems fair to say that at the center of modernity lay an intense quarrel over the concept of constituent power, a quarrel that still remains unresolved. This dispute might be expressed in the following simplified terms.