gemini://beyondneolithic.life/badiou_archive/in_praise_of_politics/what_is

> What a strange idea, we'll be told, to be coming out in praise of politics in the year of a presidential election [2017], when that election was distinguished above all by its exposure of a broken-down landscape ever more shockingly abandoned to the free play of the forces of capital. One really has to wonder what might still be of interest to a philosopher in such a case. How do you respond to people, young people in particular, who can't imagine politics as anything other than an arena for cynicism and opportunism?

That kind of feeling can only be understood by asking, first, what exactly is meant by the word "politics." It's a long story. From the beginning of the story, several millennia ago, the idea was that politics was power, the issue of the assumption and exercise of state power vis-à-vis established communities, communities whose members were known and identified. The first definition therefore considers that the central — indeed, sole — issue of politics is state power. It's a simple definition but one that nevertheless runs through all of history: it was still Lenin's definition, for example, and is still ours as well, in a rudimentary form, when politics is reduced to the electoral choice of a president.

This definition may give rise to a very cynical conception of politics as consisting of competition, rivalry, and ruthlessness, with the aim of seizing power, assuming it, and wielding it as one sees fit. There are theorists of politics so conceived, foremost among them being undoubtedly Machiavelli. Machiavelli described in an extremely sophisticated, positivistic, one might even say "technical," way the various methods of struggle for the seizure and assumption of power as well as the qualifications needed for engaging in that kind of fight. He occupies a unique position as a theorist of politics, if it is conceived in these terms. Admittedly, we see little else today than that fight, with all that entails in terms of baseness, corruption, deceit, violence, and so on.But then, the author of "The Prince" had already showed that these elements were strongly associated with the question of politics and its exercise.

In contrast to this vision there developed, over a very turbulent, complex history, and in close connection with philosophy, another conception of politics: one that holds that politics has a constitutive relationship with justice. Throughout their historical existence (admittedly not a very long one, about twenty centuries), philosophers have endeavored to give a precise definition of justice. But whatever the definition, if the idea of justice is involved in the definition of politics then it can no longer be defined simply as the struggle for power. The central question becomes: "What is a just power?" And the debate over politics is less about the exercise of power than about the norms to which power is subject, its relationship to the community, and its objectives.

Between politics defined as power — focused entirely on the power of the state — and politics defined as justice — focused on questions like "What of the community, the relationship among its members, its aspirations? What of categories like equality and freedom?" — there is both a connection and a conflict. There is a connection because, ultimately, justice cannot remain a purely abstract idea with no bearing on the reality of the state. So, the question of justice is also, necessarily, the question of a just power. And, on the other hand, there is a conflict, because power divorced from the concept of justice is subject to the degradations that have occurred throughout history and of which the 2017 presidential election in France is but one episode. And hardly a brilliant one, considering all the corruption and sinister developments it involved.

The conflict between justice and power itself has a long history. Plato had already attempted to establish the standards for a state governed by the idea of the Good and had shown, through a very sophisticated analysis of the different "types" of government — oligarchy, democracy, timocracy, and anarchy — that it was no easy task. Relatively late in the day, no doubt around the eighteenth century, with Rousseau in particular, and later through the efforts of such nineteenth century revolutionary thinkers as Marx and Engels, of course, but also Proudhon, Fourier, and Feuerbach, not to mention Auguste Comte and Blanqui, the hypothesis that justice may actually be incompatible with power emerged. Consequently, the perspective on politics changed: state power might only be a transitory instrument, one that was necessary for a whole period of history but would be replaced by the establishment of a justice that would be, as it were, in the hands of humanity itself. This might be the dialectical movement that overcomes the opposition between justice and power.

Sure, and as a matter of fact Machiavelli defined politics broadly as a sovereign art of lying. An ability to lie has always been considered a necessity for politicians in general, if only to win power by making promises that won't be kept. When I define politics as a "truth procedure," I obviously mean politics in the second sense we've just considered, namely when it is organically linked to the category of justice.

Is this an idealistic vision? I don't think so at all. I know — I had firsthand experience of this for many years — that politics is also, and perhaps above all, a practice, a process. It requires participants, activists, organizations, and popular movements, and all those things combined make for a very complex process, which yields the truth about what the community deserves to be, based on its political activity. Namely, a community no longer subject to arbitrary authorities or inexplicable divisions but a community, a collectivity, that is its own guide and provides its own direction, based on a shared standard of justice.

Whenever a novelty of this kind occurs in the political field, that is, whenever a new opportunity arises of doing away with an old, unjust, inegalitarian, and divided order in favor of an order that could be regarded as humanity's exerting of control over its own destiny — whenever something like that occurs, it's an innovation, a creation, in the domain of history. And that innovation has a very special destiny because it is an exception to the general regime: state administration and indifference to any idea of justice. It is well known that revolutions have always enthralled huge crowds precisely because they offered such novelty. Their historical destiny is another story. But the revolutions I have in mind, from the most egalitarian phase of the French Revolution (1792-4) to the Cultural Revolution in China (1965-70), by way of the revolution in Haiti led by Toussaint Louverture (1791-1802), the Paris Commune (1871), and the Russian Revolution (1917-29), have already demonstrated historically — and this is an irreversible, established fact — that collective ownership of justice is possible. This is what I call a truth. A truth of what? Of a human community's ability to take control of its own destiny and form of organization.

> A moment ago, you mentioned a community that is its own guide, that takes control of its own destiny, as being the just system of government, the one we should strive for, the most desirable one. In our democracies, as everyone knows, the people's vole is usually Limited to choosing from among a handful of candidates and, once power has been handed over to one of them, the people disappear. More often than not, they even become nuisances ‘and have to be told to let the grown-ups handle things. When they are consulted, which is rarely the case, that decision is immediately regretted, and their input is usually ignored. So, I would simply ask you this question: in what sense are we still living in a democracy, in your opinion?

We need to go back to the definition given that word today. Ever since the invention of the parliamentary system by the English in the late eighteenth century, democracy has been conceived of not as a real figure of collective life but as a form of the state. That the word "democracy" actually ultimately means only one form of state among others is something Plato had already remarked on, and so did Lenin. What is the defining feature of that form of the state? Its defining feature is thar it presents itself *as a representation*: the representatives of the people, the elected officials, the members of legislative assemblies, are responsible for managing the affairs of the state.

In the eyes of this system's proponents, it operates "democratically" since the people are regularly consulted, and, after all, they are free to remove the leaders they don't like and elect ones they do. If that's all democracy is — the representative figure and the electoral organization of political life ~ then I'd say that we're living in a democracy, but I'd add… so much the worse for us. And so much the worse for democracy. There is obviously another conception of democracy that corresponds to its Greek etymology: *demos* (the people) / *kratos* (power). Rather than including the idea of representation, this "power of the people" makes it illegitimate. This issue has been debated for a long time: Rousseau, for example, who was one of the foremost theorists of democracy in the eighteenth century, thought that the English-type representative figure did not merit the name "democracy," that it wasn't democratic because it was the periodic designation of representatives who in actual fact did more or less whatever they felt like and lied through their teeth to the people.

In any case, if we use the word "democracy" we need to specify which meaning we're giving it: an electoral and representative system subordinated to state power, or actual processes that are the possible expression of a popular will on specific issues. The latter definition is clearly the operative one in certain circumstances. It emerges or has emerged, for example, in general assemblies during factory strikes or in the recent history of occupations of deliberative spaces in some countries. Large mass movements don't designate stable, electoral delegations. They decide on their ideological and practical orientation in various types of gatherings of the people themselves, and on their instruction — in small or mass meetings — by speakers and leaders in whom people have confidence, a confidence justified by their experience, not by representative procedures.

I think that we know, that everyone knows, that the system we live in isn't democratic in the authentic sense of the word. Especially since — and this is important — we're not even sure that the people we vote for in the electoral ritual, who are supposed to represent us, are really the ones who decide what's going to happen in the real world. It seems obvious that there are masters whose power is far greater than that of our elected officials. The heads of multinational corporations, who are not elected by anyone and are accountable only to shareholders concerned solely with their financial gains, have far more influence with our governments than any popular assembly. The economic and financial issue today, even in the opinion of the elected leaders, no matter who they are, is so tough in terms of governance that not only do our representatives ultimately do nothing but represent, but most of the time they're only doing it for show. They have no real power when it comes to most of the important issues. What with international pressure, organizations like the European Commission that are accountable to no one, the heads of major corporations, the transnational power of the banks, the threat posed by agencies that determine countries' financial "rating," not to mention the military and other state administration bodies, an entire apparatus of power revolves around the state, stringently limits its freedom of action, and reduces the ordinary citizen's contribution to a pathetic summons, every four or five years, to take part in something that is just a charade of decisions that have already been made elsewhere.

> Isn't the sense of democratic dispossession we feel an inevitable evil in countries as large as ours, though? You mentioned Rousseau a moment ago, and that happens to be one of his objections to the idea of mass democracy in The Social Contract. He thought that true democracy could not exist other than in small communities, small countries, where the people could be consulted frequently and in a very direct way…

Here we're getting into an examination of the political process conceived of not as periodic state-mandated appointments but as a thought-practice exercised by the people themselves for specific purposes. To my mind, that's what politics is about, first and foremost. I think we need to conceive of politics without immediately connecting it to the state. If we're completely fixated on the state, the first thing we'll say is: politics is about seizing control of the state, because if we don't seize control of the state we can't do anything, we have no power. But that's not true. Politics includes, for example, the crucial element that is the vision we have and uphold of what humanity, or at least the community to which we belong, should become. This community exists in the form of large countries, of course, but it also exists on a wide variety of scales. It is represented at the national level, at the town or village level, in large companies, in foreign worker hostels, and so on. So, society is actually a complex network, within which there is always the possibility of calling meetings and discussing what people want to do.

Who can do this? Who can organize such discussions, and the practical decisions that result from them, on every possible level? Obviously, the people with a strategic vision of what society should become. After all, in its practical reality, politics is a relationship formed between the people who have a pretty clear vision of society's future, on the one hand, and, on the other, the real and concrete existence of that society itself, at a particular level. This was what was called "mass work" during the "red years," from 1965 to 1975. The activist is someone who has an idea about the community's destiny; who in his or her own life explores new paths in society; who meets as many people living in different circumstances as possible; who discusses their circumstances with them; who helps to explain those circumstances from a global perspective; who engages in a simultaneous work of education, discussion, and clarification; who listens to the ideas of the people living in those circumstances; and who ultimately works with them to change those circumstances, on whatever level he or she happens to be. That level may very well be a market, a city, or in certain circumstances, a region or a country; it depends on the circumstances, which are circumstances of history.

The intersection of politics and history is a major issue. Politics only becomes historical, strictly speaking, in exceptional circumstances, during what I would call political events, events that create unprecedented opportunities for people on a large scale. This was certainly the case with the advent of democracy in Athens, with significant reformers like Solon or Cleisthenes, amid tremendous unrest linked to the agrarian problem. Another example is the extraordinarily turbulent period of civil wars in England, between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, from which the invention of the parliamentary system of government ultimately emerged. I could also mention what the great popular uprisings of 1936 meant to my father, or what the totally unexpected May 1968 meant to me. Or, to take a more recent example, consider the massive, sustained protests of "the Arab Spring." But even if opportunities like these don't exist in a given situation, well, we'll just have to work on a smaller scale then. There has to be political conviction, and we know that if it exists on a small scale, that will greatly boost its existence on a large scale when an event seizes and mobilizes a large part of the population. What I think is that politics comes down to making an idea exist in a given situation. To "be involved in" politics, you not only need to have a sound vision based on a general discussion of what the community can and should become, but you also need to try out that idea, that vision, on whatever level you can.

A major political event, in my opinion, is the moment when that possibility begins to exist on a large scale. That's when the people who will express their views, steer the course of events, and make decisions emerge from all the places where there had been small-scale discussions and initiatives. The state should not necessarily be regarded as something that must absolutely be taken over. However, if in a context like this the state strongly and vigorously opposes the flourishing of such democracy, which is the *real* kind of democracy, then the necessary conclusions will have to be drawn from that. Fight it? Retreat? ‘Wait and see? ‘These are decisions that depend on the situation itself.

At this point, we need to initiate a more intense discussion. Indeed, I think thar in the contemporary world — and probably since the French Revolution, in fact — there are two basic orientations, or let's say two alternatives, and only two, at the level that I call the Idea, And I think that politics is ultimately the conflictual dialectic between these two sole orientations, where they both exist.

On the one hand, there's the dominant orientation — overwhelmingly dominant, alas, today — whereby the true masters of societies are,inevitably, the masters of the economy, that is,the owners of the means of production and other such gatekeepers of the financial sphere. This alternative implies that, to a large extent, political

And then there is — minimally, or barely, or there was once more forcefully — another alternative. It holds that the community must take back all its means of existence and that it must especially take back all the economic, productive, and financial means. This is the alternative that used to be called "the communist way." Not only do I think that we should continue to call it that but giving up the term would be tantamount to accepting defeat. That term, understood in its original sense, says exactly what should be said. Indeed, the alternative I'm talking about involves putting things in common and placing ourselves under the imperative of the common good. If that is the case, then politics in no way consists in choosing the best managers of contemporary capitalism's health. It is the putting into practice of the conviction that what is common, the common good, should, in effect, be enjoyed in common.

The existence of these two alternatives, the capitalist one and the communist one, is the key principle underlying the actual existence of political discussion. If the discussion of the analyses and decisions among the people — in meetings, demonstrations, and rallies — fails to take place in the context of a struggle between the two alternatives, then it will inevitably turn into a purely managerial and ultimately apolitical discussion.

The candidates who ran in the last election all proposed slightly different ways of managing existing capitalism, but that's all. Some said the rules should be tightened, while others said they should be relaxed, but they all agreed that it was ultimately a matter of administering the existing system of capitalist domination, regarded as inescapable.

In my view, the conflation of administration and politics today is totally disastrous for politics. Politics begins when there are two main orientations, two alternative paths, and when, most of all, the choice is about the path we are taking and how it can and must exist in the situation, at every level.

Between the communist orientation and the right, there's the left. The non-communist left, at least in Europe, has in practice meant, in terms of the facts and the practical realities of stare power — in other words, for most of its history, from its inception in the latter half of the nineteenth century — socialist or social-democratic parties. Can you deny that those parties are responsible for the biggest disappointments we've ever experienced? Let's not forget that the newly emerging left, which claimed to be republican, radical, and socialist — the left of Jules Ferry, Jules Favre, Gambetta, and Jules Guesde, but also that of Bernstein and Kautsky and Noske in Germany — overwhelmingly supported the crushing of the Paris Commune, the worst kind of colonialism, and ultimately the chauvinistic frenzy that led to the bloodbath of World War I. I got my political education during the Algerian War, under a socialist government that significantly increased the war's inconceivable brutality. And what about the whole sorry scam that the Mitterrand escapade turned out to be from 1983 on? Or the liberal "reforms" of Schröder in Germany, the most notable effect of which was that 30 percent of the population in that country, whose economic exploits are vaunted by our ruling caste, was reduced to extreme poverty?

> But still, historical socialism, the real one, the socialism of a Pierre Leroux or a Jean Jaurès (I'm obviously not talking about Solférinian socialism,' which recently expired), or even anarchism, the anarchism of a Proudhon or a Bakunin, are leftwing traditions that exist, after all. They have no merit as far as you're concerned?

OK, there are some exceptions, but ultimately very few. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were without a doubt great figures of social democracy. But look at what happened to them: they led a defeated uprising, which was actually inspired far more by communism than socialism, and they were murdered, on the orders of a socialist minister. You mentioned Jaurès: he was a very decent man, thanks in particular to his antiwar stance, his support for miners' strikes, and his justifiable suspicion of colonial expeditions. But did he represent a real political movement, a "hypothesis" forged in real popular processes? He was primarily a great parliamentary orator, with no real influence over the government's actions. He embodied that simultaneously necessary and useless attribute of our "democracies": the opposition. Because "opposition" implies that you actually agree with the majority on the rules of the political game and that you'll peacefully make way for your worst enemies. And to return to Jaurès, look at what happened to him, too."

Actually, there has always been a left wing of the left, usually located within a socialist party or behind some small parties or organizations. That's where I myself come from: I started out in the SFIO [the French Section of the Workers' International] and, as a result of our complete disagreement with the party leadership regarding the Algerian War, 1 took an active part in the "far-left" split that eventually led to the creation of the PSU [the Unified Socialist Party}. I'll grant you that some of the organized forces and practices of a vibrant communism often emerge, on the left, from deep within mediocre social democracy. Even Lenin and the Bolsheviks, even Rosa Luxemburg and the Spartacists, came from schisms within a "big," blatantly opportunistic socialist party. But that's precisely the proof that political vitality can only ever exist, in the established left, as something that breaks away, often violently, from that left. For the most part, the left has always been an institution of the dominant power; it's one variation of it. At best, the left is the womb from which a newborn baby of communism at times emerges.

Anarchism is a different matter. Bakunin and Marx were in agreement on any number of things when they created the First International together, not least the idea of the end of the state. And there are any number of issues that need to be analyzed and discussed regarding the way the Catalan anarchists attempted a radical reorganization of their province during the Spanish Civil War. What I believe is that anarchy is an ideology of the movement, a creative negativity, but it's never a politics per se. There's a festive, existential dimension to anarchism that often conceals a brutal kind of intolerance and only feels comfortable in intermittent activism.

1 — What Is Politics?