badiou-highly speculative reasoning on the concept of democracy

8/3/2019 BADIOU-Highly Speculative Reasoning on the Concept of Democracy

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Highly Speculative Reasoning on the Concept of Democracy

Alain Badiou

The word "democracy" is today the main organizer of consensus. What the

word is assumed to embrace is the downfall of Eastern Socialists States, the

supposed well being of our countries as well as Western humanitarian crusades.

Actually the word "democracy" is inferred from what I term "authoritarian

opinion." It is somehow prohibited not to be a democrat. Accordingly, it furthers

that the human kind longs for democracy, and all subjectivity suspected of not

being democratic is deemed pathological. At its best it infers a forbearing

reeducation, at its worst the right of meddling democratic marines and paratroopers.

Democracy thus inscribing itself in polls and consensus necessarily arouses

the philosophers critical suspicions. For philosophy, since Plato, means breakingwith opinion polls. Philosophy is supposed to scrutinize everything that is

spontaneously considered as "normal." If democracy designates a normal state of

collective organization, or political will, then the philosopher will ask for the norm

of this normality to be examined. He will not allow for the word to function within

the frame of an authoritarian opinion. For the philosopher everything consensual

becomes suspicious.

To confront the visibility of the democratic idea with the singularity of a

particular politics, especially revolutionary politics, is an old practice. It was

already employed against Bolsheviks well before the October Revolution. In fact,

the critique addressed to Lenin his political postulate viewed as nondemocratic

is original. However its still interesting today to peruse his riposte.

Lenins counter-argument is twofold. On the one hand he distinguishes,

according to the logic of class analysis, between two types of democracy:

proletarian democracy and bourgeois democracy. He then asserts the supremacy, in

extension and intensity, of the former over the latter.

Yet his second structure of response seems to me more appropriate to the

present state of affairs. Lenin insists in this that with "democracy," verily, you

should always read "a form of State." Form means a particular configuration of the

separate character of the State and the formal exercise of sovereignty. Positing

democracy as a form of State, Lenin subscribes to the classical political thinking

filiation, including Greek philosophy, which contends that "democracy" must

ultimately be conceived as a sovereignty or power trope. Power of the "demos" or

people, the capability of "demos" to exert coercion by itself.

If democracy is a form of State, what preordained philosophical use proper

can this category have? With Lenin the aim or idea of politics is the withering ofany form of State, democracy included. And this could be termed generic


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Communism as basically expressed by Marx in his Economic and Philosophical

Manuscripts. Generic Communism designates a free associative egalitarian society

where the activity of polymorph workers is not governed by regulations and

technical or social articulations but is managed by the collective power of needs. In

such a society, the State is dissolved as a separate instance from public coercion.

Politics much as it voices the interests of social groups and covets at the conquest

of power is de facto dissolved.

Thus, the purpose of Communist politics aims at its own disappearance in

the modality of the end of the form separated from the State in general, even if it

concerns a State that declares itself democratic.

If philosophy is predicated as what identifies, legitimizes or categorizes

politics ultimate goals, much as the regulating ideas acting as its representation,

and if this aim is acknowledged as the withering of the State which is Leninsproposition then it can be termed pure presentation, free association; or again if

politics final goal is posited as authority in-separated from infinity or the advent of

the collective as such, then, with regard to this supposed end, which is the end

assigned to generic Communism, democracy is not, cannot be regarded as a

category of philosophy. Why? Because democracy is a form of the State; let

philosophy assess politics final goals; and let this end be as well the end of the

State, thus the end of all relevance to the word "democracy."

The "philosophical" word suitable to evaluate politics could be, in this

hypothetical frame, the word "equality," or the word "Communism," but not the

word "democracy." For this word is traditionally attached to the State, to the form

of the State.

From this results the idea that "democracy" can only be considered a

concept of philosophy if one of these three following hypotheses is to be rejected.

All three are intertwined and somehow uphold the Leninist view on democracy.

They are:

Hypothesis 1: The ultimate goal in politics is generic Communism, thus the

pure presentation of the collectives truth, or the withering of the State.

Hypothesis 2: The relation between philosophy and politics entails the

evaluation of a certain politics final goal, its general or generic meaning.

Hypothesis 3: Democracy is a form of the State.

Under these three hypotheses "democracy" is not a necessary concept of

philosophy. It can only become such provided one of these three hypotheses is

dropped.

Three abstract possibilities follow:


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1. Let generic Communism not be the ultimate goal in politics.

2. Let the relation between philosophy and politics not be one of scrutiny,

enlightenment or legitimization of the final aims.

3. Let "democracy" imply something else than a form of the State.

Under any of these three possibilities the structure according to which

"democracy" is not a concept of philosophy is put into question. I would like to

analyze one by one these three provisions which allow for the consideration or

reconsideration of "democracy" as a category of philosophy proper.

Lets assume that the ultimate goal of politics is not the pure assertion of

collective presentation, is not the free association of men, disengaged from the

States principle of sovereignty. Lets assume that generic Communism, even as an

idea, is not the ultimate goal of politics. What can then be the goal of politics, its practices finality, much as this practice involves, or questions, or challenges,

philosophy?

I think two main hypotheses can be construed in light of what is viewed as

the history of this question. According to the first hypothesis, politics aim would be

the configuration, or the advent, of what can be termed "the good State."

Philosophy would be brought forward as an examination of the legitimacy of the

States various possible forms. It would seek to name the preferable character of

state configuration. Such would be the final stake of the debate on politics goals.

This is indeed related to the great classical tradition in political philosophy, from

the Greeks onwards, devoted to the question of sovereigntys legitimacy. Now, of

course, a norm appears on the scene. Whatever the regime or the status of the norm,

an axiological preference for a distinct type of state configuration relates the State

to a normative principle as, for instance, the superiority of a democratic regime over

a monarchic or an aristocratic one, for any particular reason. That is, the convening

of a general system of norms sanctions this preference.

As a passing remark lets say this situation does not apply to the hypothesis

in which the ultimate goal in politics is the withering of the State, since you are not

dealing with "the good State." For the case you are dealing with the political

process as self-cancellation, that is as engaged in the cessation of the principle of

sovereignty. It does not concern a norm associated with the state configuration. It

rather concerns the idea of a process that would bring about the withering of the

entire state configuration. The singularity of withering does not belong to the

normative question as it can be exerted upon the persistence of the State. On the

other hand, if politics ultimate goal is "the good State" or the preferable State, then

the emergence of a norm seems ineluctable.


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Now, this poses a difficult question in that the norm is inevitably external or

transcendent. The State, in itself, is objectivity without norm. It is the principle of

sovereignty, or of coercion, endowed with a separate functioning necessary to the

collective as such. It will obtain its determination in a set of regulations stemming

from subjective topics. These are precisely the norms that will introduce the subject

of "the good State" or the preferable State. In our present situation, that is, the

circumstance in our parliamentary States, the subjective relation to the issue of the

State is regulated according to three norms: the economy, the national question and,

precisely, democracy.

Lets consider the economy first. The State is accountable for assuring a

minimal functioning of the circulation and distribution of goods; it falls into

disrepute as such if it proves exaggeratedly incapable of complying with this norm.

In the sphere of the economy broadly, whatever its organic relation to the State, thelatter is subjectively accountable for the functioning of the economy.

The second norm is the national question. The State is under a set of

regulations such as the nation, the representation on the world scene, national

independence, etc. It is accountable for the very existence of the national principle

at home and abroad.

Thirdly, today democracy is itself a norm as its considered within the

subjective relation to the State. The State is accountable for knowing wether it is

democratic or despotic, for its relation towards instances such as freedom of speech,

freedom of association, freedom of action.

The opposition between dictatorship and democracy is something that

functions as a subjective norm in the evaluation of the State.

Thus the actual situation of the question subordinates the State to the

normative threesome of economic functioning, national evaluation and democracy.

Here "democracy" acts as a normative characterization of the State, precisely as

what can be termed the category of "a politics," not of politics in general. "A

politics" is what regulates a subjective relation to the State. Lets say that the state

configuration regulating its subjective relation to the State under the three

aforementioned norms economy, national question, democracy may be dubbed

parliamentarism, though I prefer to call it parliamentary-capitalism. However, since

"democracy" is here summoned as the category of a particular politics a particular

politics whose universality is quite problematic we should refrain from defining it

as being in itself a philosophical category. At this level of analysis then

"democracy" unfolds as a category characterizing by means of the formulation of

a subjective norm in relation to the State a particular politics, which I deem to call

"parliamentarism."


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So much for the case with regard to the hypothesis that politics ultimate

goal is in determining "the good State." What you get at most is that "democracy"

turns out to be the category of a particular politics, parliamentarism. This is not a

definite reason to posit "democracy" as a philosophical concept.

What we are examining here is the ultimate goal of politics when this goal is

not generic Communism. Our first consideration was that politics aimed at

establishing the best possible State. It follows from there that "democracy" is not

necessarily a concept within philosophy.

The second possible reasoning leads you to the notion that the ultimate goal

of politics is none other than itself. In this case politics would not address the issue

of "the good State" but would be its own goal for itself. Conversely to what has

been reflected previously, politics would then become a movement of thought and

action that freely eludes the dominant state subjectivity and propounds, convenes,and organizes projects ill-suited for consideration and representation within the

norms under which the State functions. In this case politics is presented as a

singular collective practice estranged from the State. Again that kind of politics, in

its essence, is not the carrier of a State agenda or a state norm but is instead the

development of what can be termed the dimension of collective freedom, precisely

in that it avoids the normative consensus represented by the State provided the

State is assessed by this organized freedom.

"Democracy," is it thus relevant? Yes, "democracy" is relevant "if

democracy is to be understood in a sense other than a form of the State." If politics

is thus to itself its own goal insofar as it is able to withdraw from state consensus, it

could eventually be termed democratic. Yet in this case the category will not

function in a Leninist sense, as a State form. And this brings you back to the third

negative condition with regard to the three Leninist hypotheses.

Here concludes the first part of our discussion, that is: what if the goal of

politics is not generic Communism?

The second part of the discussion concerns philosophy itself. Lets assume

that philosophy is not related to politics as much as it is the representation or the

seizure of politics ultimate ends, that philosophy has another rapport to politics and

that it is not intended to evaluate the appearance before a court or legitimate

politics ultimate ends. How does philosophy then relate to politics? What is the

name of that relation? How are we to prescribe it?

There is a first hypothesis, namely that the task of philosophy would be what

I call the formal description of politics, its typology. Philosophy would set up a

space where politics are discussed in accordance with their sort. All in all,

philosophy would be a formal apprehension of States and politics as it pre-elaborates or exposes the said typology to possible norms. Yet, when this is the case


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indubitably this is part of the work of thinkers such as Aristotle or Montesquieu

it becomes apparent that "democracy" acts upon philosophy as the description of a

form of the State. There is no doubt about it. Accordingly, the categorization starts

from state configurations, and "democracy" becomes, from the viewpoint of

philosophy, the description of a form of the State, as opposed to other forms such as

tyranny, aristocracy and so on.

But if "democracy" designates a form of the State, the premise would then

be asserted, regarding this form, about "the goals of politics." Is it a matter of

"willing" this form? If so, we are inside the logic of "the good State," which is what

was previously analyzed. Or is it a matter of going beyond this form, dissolving

sovereignty, even democratic sovereignty? In this case we relapse inside the

Leninist frame, the withering hypothesis. In any event, this option brings you back

to the first part of the discussion.The second possibility implies philosophys attempt to apprehend politics as

a singular activity of thinking, of politics itself as providing for the historical

collective a modality of thinking which philosophy must take in as such. Here

philosophy should be understood consensual definition as the cogitative

apprehension of thinking operational conditions in their different registers. If

politics is deemed as an operative thinking, in a register of its own (Lazarus central

thesis), then philosophys task is the grasping of thinking operational conditions in

this particular register named politics. It follows that if politics is an operative

thinking, it cannot be subservient to the State, it cannot be reduced to or reflected on

its state dimension. Lets venture a rather spurious proposition: "the State does not

think."

As a passing remark, the fact that the State does not think is the source of all

sorts of difficulties for philosophical thinking as far as politics is concerned. All

"political philosophies" adduce evidence that the State does not think. And when

these political philosophies posit the State as leading the research on politics as

thought, difficulties increase. The fact that the State does not think leads Plato, at

the end of book IX in Republic, to declare that as a last resort you can pursue

politics everywhere except in your own fatherland. And the same eventuality brings

Aristotle to the distressing conclusion that once the ideal types of politics have been

isolated, only pathological types are left in the real. For instance, for Aristotle

monarchy implies a kind of State that does think and is reputed to be thinkable. Yet,

in the real there are only tyrannies, which do not think, which are unthinkable. The

normative type is never achieved. This also leads Rousseau to ascertain that in

history all that exists is dissolved States, and no legitimate State. Finally, these

postulates, which are extracted from within utterly heterogeneous politicalconceptions, agree on one point: namely, it is not possible to envision the State as


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the doorway to politics research. Perforce one comes up against the State as a non-

thinking entity. The problem should be pursued from another angle.

Therefore, if "democracy" is a category of politics-as-thought, that is if

philosophy needs to use "democracy" as a category to get hold of the political

process as such, then this political process eludes the pervasive injunction of the

State, since the State does not think. It follows that "democracy" is not here

understood as a form of the State but differently, otherwise, or in another sense.

And this is how you are brought back to the proposition positing "democracy" as

something other than a form of the State.

Lets then advance a provisional conclusion: "democracy" is a category of

philosophy only when it indicates something other than a form of the State. Yet

what is "something other"?

There lies the core of the question. It is a problem with conjunction. Towhat, other than the State, is "democracy" to be conjoined in order to become a real

approach to politics-as-thought? There is a large political tradition pertinent to this,

and I wont go further into it. Lets suffice to mention just two examples concerning

the attempt to conjoin "democracy" to something other than the State thus allowing

the meta-political (philosophical) re-examination of politics-as-thought.

The first instance concerns the direct conjoining of "democracy" to the

political activity of the masses not to the state configuration but to its immediate

antagonism. For usually the masses political activity, its spontaneous mobilization,

comes about under an anti-state drive. This produces the syntagm of mass

democracy, which Ill style romantic, and the opposition between mass democracy

and democracy as state configuration, or formal democracy.

Whoever happens to have experienced mass democracy historical events

such as collective general assembling, crowded gatherings, riots, and so on

manifestly notices an immediate point of reversibility between mass democracy and

mass dictatorship. Inevitably the essence of mass democracy is translated into a

mass sovereignty, and this mass sovereignty becomes in turn a sovereignty of

immediacy, of assembling itself. The sovereignty of assembling exerts pattern

formations Sartre termed "group-in-fusion" a fellowship of terror. Here Sartrian

phenomenology persists indisputably. There is an organic correlation between the

practice of mass democracy as internal principle of the group-in-fusion and a point

of reversibility with the immediate authoritarian or dictatorial element at work in

the fellowship of terror. Looking into the issue of mass democracy itself notice that

it is not possible to legitimate the principle after the sole appellative of democracy,

since this romantic democracy immediately includes, in theory as well as in

practice, its reversibility into dictatorship. You are dealing thus with a pairdemocracy/dictatorship that avoids an elementary designation, or eludes a


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philosophical apprehension, under the concept of democracy. And what does this

entail? It entails that whoever assigns legitimacy to mass democracy, at least today,

does so on the basis, or rather from the viewpoint of the non-state perspective of

pure presentation. The appraisal, even under the appellation of democracy, of mass

democracy as such, is inseparable from the subjectivity of generic Communism.

The legitimization of this couple of immediacy democracy/dictatorship is only

conceivable if the pair is thought, and valorized, from the generic point of the

withering of the State, or from the perspective of a radical anti-state attitude.

Actually, the opposite pole to State consistency, which precisely shows up in the

immediacy of mass democracy, is a provisional representative to generic

Communism. We are now brought back to our first major hypothesis: if

"democracy" is conjoined to "mass," the goal of politics is actually generic

Communism, whence "democracy" is not a category of philosophy. This conclusionis empirically and conceptually established by the fact that from the perspective of

mass democracy it is impossible to differentiate democracy from dictatorship. It is

what has obviously enabled Marxists to employ the expression "dictatorship of the

proletariat." It should be our understanding that the subjective valorization of the

word "dictatorship" thus rested on the presence of such reversibility between

democracy and dictatorship as it historically appears in the figure of mass

democracy, or revolutionary democracy, or romantic democracy.

We are left with another hypothesis, a quite different one: "democracy"

should be conjoined with the political regulation itself. "Democracy" would not be

related to the figure of State or to the figure in political mass activity, but would

rather relate organically to political regulation, provided that political regulation is

not subservient to the State, to "the good State," when it is not systematized.

"Democracy" would be organically tied to the universality of political regulation, to

its capability of universality, and thus the word "democracy" and politics as such

would be bound. Again, it is politics in the sense that it is something other than a

State program. In this case, there would be an intrinsically democratic

characterization of politics, insofar as its self-determination is posited as a space of

emancipation removed from State consensual figures.

There is some evidence of this in Rousseaus Social Contract. In chapter 16,

book III, Rousseau discusses the issue of the establishment of the State apparently

the opposite topic we are discussing here the issue of the institution of the State.

He comes up against a well-known difficulty, namely that the causative instrument

of government cannot be a contract, cannot proceed from the dimension of a social

contract in the sense that this contract acts as founder of the nation as such. The

institution of the State concerns specific individuals, and this cannot be carried out


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by means of a law. For Rousseau a law necessarily implies a global association

relating the people to the people and thereby cannot involve specific individuals.

The institution of the State cannot be a law. And this suggests that it also

cannot be the practice of sovereignty. For sovereignty is precisely the generic form

of the social contract and it always connotes a relation of totality to totality of the

people to the people. Apparently, we face an impasse here. A decision is needed, a

decision that should be at the same time special (since it establishes the

government) and general (since its taken by the "totality" of the people and not by

the government, which does not yet exist and will eventually be established).

However, it is impossible for Rousseau that this decision result from the general

will, since every decision of this kind should be manifested in the shape of a law or

a deed of sovereignty. And this can only be the contract agreed upon by all the

people and all the people, a contract that bears no particular character. You can also posit the question this way: the citizen votes for the laws, the governmental

magistrate takes the concrete measures. How are particular magistrates to be

appointed when there arent yet any magistrates, but only citizens? Rousseau pulls

himself out of this difficulty by stating that "the institution of government is

accomplished by the sudden conversion of sovereignty into democracy so that

without sensible change, and merely by virtue of a new relation of all to all, the

citizens become magistrates, and pass from general to particular acts, from

legislation to the execution of the law." For many this was a singular conjuring

trick. What does this sudden conversion without any modification of the organic

relationship between totality to totality mean? How does a mere displacement of

this relation, which is the social contract as instituting the general will, allow for the

proceeding to the possibility of initiating particular political acts? Basically this

means leaving aside the formal argumentation that democracy originally refers

"to the particular character of the interests at stake in political regulation." Political

regulation with its particular interests at stake in the last resort it only has

particular stakes is confined to democracy. Rousseaus case for the establishment

of government is but one symbolic example. Generally speaking, the universality of

political regulation much as it evades the singular holding of the State can be

deployed as such only when particular interests are at stake and is constrained,

when deployed under particular stakes, if only to invest the democratic form in

order to remain political. Here a primary conjunction between democracy and

politics effectively takes place.

Democracy can then be defined as what authorizes an individual investment

under the law of the universality of political will. "Democracy," in a way, names the

political figures of the conjunction between particular situations and politics. In thiscase, and in this case only, "democracy" can be recaptured as a philosophical


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category. Hereafter democracy will designate what can be termed as the

effectiveness in politics, meaning politics when it conjoins with particular interests.

Thus understood politics becomes free from its accountability to the State.

In order to pursue this contention you would expound on how "democracy,"

in this conjunction to political regulation as such, refers in philosophy to the taking

in of a specific kind of politics whose regulation is universal. Still this specific kind

of politics may conjoin to the particular in a figure wherein situations transform so

as to render impossible any other inequitable enunciation.

The reasoning of this position is rather complex and I present a brief outline.

Lets say that "democracy" posits the fact that politics with regard to a politics of

emancipation is sooner or later related to the special nature of peoples lives, not

to the State, but to people as they come forth in the public space. Again, politics

cannot be itself, which is being democratic, in its dealing with this particularity inpeoples lives, unless it dismisses all inequitable sense in the very dealing. For, if

politics allows for an inequitable acceptation in its dealing, then it introduces a

nondemocratic norm in the original sense I am addressing here and the

conjunction is cancelled. This means politics is no longer competent to deal with

the particular from the perspective of the universal regulation. Politics will deal

with the particular differently; it will deal with it from the perspective of the

particular regulation. Thus, the case would be that every particular regulation

redirects politics towards the State where it is subjected to the constraint of state

jurisdiction. Consequently, the word "democracy," in its philosophical significance,

presupposes a kind of politics insofar as the effectiveness of its emancipatory

process works at the impossibility proper of all inequitable enunciation in concern

with this situation. For the aim of this kind of politics to be real proceeds from the

fact that these enunciations are, by means of such politics, not forbidden but

impossible. Interdiction is always a rule of the State; impossibility is a regulation of

the real.

Also democracy as a philosophical category is what "brings forward

equality." Or, what excludes from circulating as political nominations or as

political categories any sort of predicate formally in contradiction with the

egalitarian idea.

In my view, this very fact drastically restricts the possibility of using in

politics, under the philosophical sign of democracy, any type of "communal"

designations. For the communal designation or the identity assignation to the

subsets as such cannot be dealt with after the idea of the impossibility of an

inequitable enunciation. Consequently, democracy" is that which regulates politics

in relation to communal predicates, to subset predicates. Democracy is that whichanchors politics to the element of universality proper to its destination. It will also


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expose articulations of race as well as sexual or social or hierarchic articulations, or

an enunciation such as: "there is a problem with immigrants," that would undo the

conjunction between politics and democracy. "Democracy" means that

"immigrant," "French," "Arab," "Jew" are words that inevitably bring calamity to

politics. For these words, and many others, necessarily refer politics to the State,

and the lowest and most essential function of the State is the inequitable breaking of

mankind.

Ultimately, the task of the philosopher consists of exposing a certain politics

to its evaluation. Neither in the sense of "the good State," nor in the sense of generic

Communism, but intrinsically, that is to say for itself. Politics sequentially defined

as that which attempts to create the impossibility of the inequitable enunciation,

might, by the slant of the word "democracy," be exposed through philosophy to

what Ill call a certain eternity. Lets say that by means of the word "democracy"thus conceived, by means of philosophy and philosophy alone, politics can be

evaluated after the rule of the eternal return. Then philosophy takes hold of politics,

not just as the particular or pragmatic avatar of human history, but as connected to a

standard of evaluation, which upholds without ridicule, or without crime, that the

return be foreseen.

In the end a very old word, a word very much worn, philosophically

nominates those politics that overcome this ordeal: its the word "justice."

badiou-highly speculative reasoning on the concept of democracy

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