This chapter argues that in Spinoza’s philosophy, popular movements do not necessarily testify to an underlying popular power driving political life; nor is efficacious political power necessarily popular. First, it argues that a collectivity’s own proper power, its power sui juris, is not some underlying disposition waiting to be expressed, but rather is manifested in the actual effects it durably produces. Correspondingly, it is a mistake to take social movements challenging oligarchy as exemplars of the power of the people, unless and until they durably consolidate an egalitarian social order. Second, it argues that within Spinoza’s metaphysics, nonideal regimes may well endure, either due to the support of an external power, or from their own power, but where that power is internally structured in an oligarchic or repressive manner. In sum, Spinoza accepts Chapter 6’s first two Hobbesian problems, and acknowledges the all-too-common divergence between ethics and efficacy in politics.