1.8 - Lefort, Claude - Rennaisance of Democrarcy¿ (EN)

7/30/2019 1.8 - Lefort, Claude - Rennaisance of Democrarcy (EN)

1/14

The following ad supports maintaining our C.E.E.O.L. service

Rennaisance of Democrarcy?

Rennaisance of Democrarcy?

by Claude Lefort

Source:

PRAXIS International (PRAXIS International), issue: 1+2 / 1990, pages: 001-014, on www.ceeol.com.
http://www.ceeol.com/http://www.ceeol.com/http://www.ceeol.com/http://www.dibido.eu/bookdetails.aspx?bookID=81e7094f-4b22-4aa4-8124-0e322953a745http://www.ceeol.com/


2/14

THINKING THE PRESENT:DEMOCRACY AND TOTALITARIANISM, AND THE NATION

*Claude

For a long time the Communist regimes appeared inalterable. Many (need webe reminded of how many?) of those who ignored their cruelly oppressive naturebelieved they were, on the contrary, the models of planned, organized, harmonioussocieties emerging from an old capitalist world in decay. Although they had toadmit that reality was lagging well behind the ideal, slowly but surely, they insisted,History was giving birth to Communism. Gradually this image deteriorated to thepoint of abjection. Those people discovered a state l exclusively concerned withspreading its power, peoples enslaved and ravaged by unbridled domination orcruelly suppressed if they rose up. The insurrection in East Berlin, quickly crushedin 1953, hardly bothered anyone's conscience. Then there was the invasion ofHungary and the reestablishment of order in Poland in 1956, and then, in 1968,the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Not only did Khruschev's refornls fail, but hisfamous report on the terror of the Stalin era and his inventory of the vices of thebureaucracy were also disclosed. Finally, the testimony of camp survivors andof dissidents especially shook up public opinion.Although the model had now changed its valence, it was no less fascinating.

Totalitarianism, it was said, could not be uprooted, because in it were concentrated all the ills of politics and because in it State power attained its highest level.Zinoviev's perverse argument pleased many of his readers and nlade them forgetSolzhenitsyn. The Soviet citizens, Zinoviev claimed, had adopted the cynicismof their leaders, ignoring the notion of law and, in their poverty, had become mastersin the art of making do [debrouillardise]: they came to love corruption as theycame to love their regime. The system proved air-tight, top to bottom. As for EasternEurope" it was obviously rivetted to Russia. The heroic efforts of Solidamosc couldonly end up clashing with a state power that would compronlise on nothing. Thelightening of economic constraints and tolerance for private initiative in Hungaryhad brought along increased consun1ption and unleashed individualism. Thisdepoliticization of society went hand in hand with maintaining the Party's monopoly.In short, realism seemed to imply that Europe was forever split. The Soviet statepower held n1astery over its eB1pire and was itself solidly entrenched. Westernintellectuals could nlerely condemn violations of hUI11an rights in the East, whilepoliticians could only speculate on the virtues of comnlcrce and on the ITIoderation that the needs of their economy Blight inspire in leaders of the Kremlin.Today the Communist regimes are in turmoil. And where does this turmoil come

from? The land of socialisn1. What we refused to i lnagine is today taking placeat a more and more precipitous pace. The Polish leaders are retreating before thereformist advance. Solidarnosc has in1posed its proposal for government. InPraxis International 10:1/2 .'lpril & July 1990 0260-8448 $2.00


3/14

2 Praxis InternationalHungary, the Communist Party has abdicated, repudiating its ideology. The statethat called itself a Popular Democracy is turning into a Republic. The GDR bastionis showing cracks; the most arrogant of the parties admits to its problems; its headsteps down while demonstrators by the tens, then the hundreds of thousands voicetheir demand for freedom. No doubt Czechoslovakia will not long resist the shockwave that is spreading from country to country.Totalitarianism is in a process of gradual decomposition. We are not witnessinga revolution in the strict sense of the term: until now there has been no mass uprising,no direct confrontation between established state power and insurgents, no explosionlike the one experienced in Budapest in 1956. But the breath ofHistory is passing.Is there not some danger that, as extraordinary as they are, we become accustomed here in the West to these events, that we lose the sense of surprise, andthat, instead of taking stock of the changes under our noses, Western leaderscalculate parsimoniously the loans required in order for a democratic politics inthe East to succeed? One hears, for instance, the argument that the Polish or theHungarian Government must prove its efficiency before receiving the aid it seeks.But the first proof it must provide is the one that the population is waiting for.One must invert the old saying, for the people don't just live off hope. The onlyhope for the full legitimation of the democratic institutions is for them to modifysocial conditions, to satisfy, somehow, basic needs.Signs of getting too accustomed to things can be detected not just here but overthere also. I am not referring to the skepticism of a fraction of the population whichmay tire of the right of freedom of speech whose effects do nothing to alter poverty.If the reports from the Soviet Union can be believed, many of those who havethis freedom seem to make very little of the current changes. I got this impressionpersonally while listening to Soviet intellectuals speak about perestroika beforea large audience in Geneva. Behind their words one could make out the turbulenceof a population which was, until recently, still paralyzed by fear. One could feelthe spiritual agitation, not only within the intelligentsia, but among a diversityof sectors. One could discern the effects of news diffused not only through theofficial press and television, but through a hundred little Moscow street newspapersand a profusion of leaflets. And, finally, one could sense the debacle ofCommunistideology. Yet these men (with the exception of a euphoric and resolute Latviandeputy) expressed themselves in cold, disabused, or off-handed tones. Their mistrustofGorbachev's policies is perhaps justified, but one could not help being disturbedby the way they flaunted the distance they maintain from the reforms. Theycomplained about possessing only "freedoms granted from above," as if theirown discourse did not bear witness to a certain independence with respect to theauthorities and a radically new sense of personal security. They said nothing ofthe road travelled these last few years. Listening to them I thought of Nadja,Mandelshtam, of Koutnetzov, Solzhenitsyn and many others, of the afflictingaccounts which, with my throat in knots, I had read in years past. It was a strangespectacle, at once reassuring and troubling. Aren't these freedoms granted fromabove really at the mercy of a mere wave of the hand on the part of the new masterwho might decree their abolition? No one can exclude that hypothesis. But weren'tthese speakers also revealing the still present weight of the totalitarian phantasmin imagining that a government could, on a whim, grant or rescind a freedom?


4/14

Praxis International 3Yes, it sufficed for Gorbachev to lift censorship for the debate to be possible! Butthese men had now seized the floor. Does anyone believe that the freedom to speakcan be rationed like potatoes? It was recently learned that Gorbachev had severelyreprimanded some journalists and demanded that one of them resign. Unless I ammistaken,until this day, the latter has not complied. This fact speaks louder thanwords. Have we forgotten what the times of silence and fear were like?Some sovietologists claim that the Soviet State has ceased to be a totalitarianState a long time ago, and that, consequently, to judge what is happening nowby comparison to the Stalinist era is senseless. From that point of view, the regimewould be simply slipping from one mode of bureaucratic management to another- excessive authoritarianism having been found incompatible with productiondemands. The amazing aspect of this interpretation is that after having been widelydenied during the period when Stalin reigned, totalitarianism is now given a centralrole post-mortem.There are still those who defend another hypothesis which states thattotalitarianism is a concept with no scientific relevance. In this case it would beeven more erroneous to speak of its decomposition. The theoretical support ofthis position too implies that Soviet society was never homogeneous. Already underStalin it was the stage of numerous conflicts and leadership itself was the seat ofdissension. Far from reigning over all{ the Supreme Guide maintained himselfthrough his art ofmanoeuver and cunning. But this assessment conflates principleand fact, i.e. it treats the principle on which the regime is based as simple empiricalnecessity. By "principle" I mean ideas which generate the constitution of society.But the society being described here is conceived of as having no internal divisions:any sign of division is imputed either to the influence of external forces or to thesurvival of elements from the former regime - the so-called Kulaks or thebourgeoisie, or both of them at the same time. Yet the analyst not blinded byideology has to see that, in reality, society is not homogeneous, that it does contain diverse interests: interests which not only pit the bureaucracy and the massesagainst each other but which appear at the core of bureaucracy itself as well asin the population at large. What is more, these interests take the form of aspirations founded on local and ethnic traditions - giving us a whole spectrum of differences. Nonetheless, these divisions, this heterogeneity are not recognized; theconflicts which they necessarily give rise to can be expressed only indirectly; theybreak through to the sphere of leadership only after having been filtered by theflunkies of the Party's petty tyrants who themselves form the clientele of someGreat One of the regime or another.Is it ideological to emphasize the principle of the constitution of the social?Perhaps, if one accepts that ideology not be conflated with propaganda nourishedon Marxism, although it is not accidental that the latter can be so used. Thereis no public space in totalitarian society: it is eliminated when freedom of speechis stifled, and when conflict is made impossible by principle. But the officialdiscourse doesn't reject it: rather, the state power simply makes it its private domain.It encourages freedom of speech: everyone has the right and even the duty to speak- critique and autocritique are praised. The problem is that one's duty is to speak"truly," that is, in conformity with the wishes of those who govern, with whatthey define as true at a given moment. The official discourse does not proclaim that


5/14

4 Praxis Internationallaw is a fiction invented by the bourgeoisie: law is simply in the hands of statepower. Consequently, positive laws have no value in themselves and judges exploitor violate them in accordance with instructions they receive or with the way theyconceive the intentions at the summit.The concept of totalitarianism entails this double phenomenon: a divisionlesssociety and a state power that condenses into one unity police power, knowledgeand the law founding the social order. Totality gets its contemporary relevancefrom the fact that the whole system is based on a logic of identification: nodivergence is conceivable between the people, the Party, the Political Bureau andthe Egocrat. Spiritually, if I may use the expression, they are but one.We know that such a system can only establish itselfby mass mobilization. Itneeds also a relatively widespread collective faith in common ends. Terror is anothercrucial ingredient. But the ebbing of belief, disenchantment through the test ofreality (whose reasons need not be listed here), or terrorless coercion do not imply

the end of totalitarianism. Once the matrix is in place, Brezhnev could exercise,by different methods, the same type of power as his predecessors. After all, onecannot define a political, economic or sociological concept (like monarchy,despotism, democracy or totalitarianism; feudalism or capitalism; aristocracy,bourgeoisie or bureaucracy, etc.) without taking into account the data ofHistory.Their meanings are modified by their times.To assimilate the totalitarian model (or its latest version) to the model of a militarybureaucratic dictatorship is quite useless. Unlike dictatorships claiming legitimacy

in particular circumstances, e.g. to save a nation (even if dictatorship is its price),totalitarian state power claims absolute legitimacy and institutes an order that isin principle irreversible. It creates a society which is self-sufficient. All possibilitiesbeyond that self-sufficiency are out of the question. A voice from on high a n n o u n c e s ~lyrically at first, "Here is the new world and the new man." Later the voice becomesmore sober, "You may desire what you will, but you will never get out."But today we are assailed by every doubt conceivable regarding the future. Whatare the limits of Gorbachev's power? What are his intentions? To what extent is

he ready to tread the road of reform? Perhaps these questions, which events forceus to pose again and again, are without answer. Perhaps Gorbachev himselfdoesn'thave the answer. He seems to be one of those politicians who know very wellwhat to break with but who improvise once the adventure is underway. In all events,for him the necessity of movement and that of the conservation of power go handin hand. This explains his oscillating trajectory and foreshadows further uncertainties. But however one interprets his policy, one must recognize the unparalleledaspects of his action: he has shattered the image of the irreversible.Another phenomenon which deserves attention turns out to be inseparable fromthe decomposition of totalitarianism: the awakening of democratic aspirations. Itis true that this phenomenon has been observed for years in Latin America, incountries subjected to military dictatorships that are bolstered by technocracy. InBuenos Aires, Sao Paulo and Santiago, in Budapest and Warsaw the very samelanguage has been understood. In both hemispheres the key formulation isdemocratic transition. Yet this is not a simple coincidence. Marxist ideology, whichused to mobilize opposition groups in Argentina, Brazil and Chile disintegrated,while the Soviet model, followed by the Chinese one, were losing their allure.


6/14

Praxis International 5Coming to grips with the totalitarian fact has given rise to the conviction that thedefence of the Rights of Man was the road to the struggle against dictatorship.Paradoxically, here, in this country where we enjoy civil and political freedom,what is no less than the renaissance ofdemocracy hardly phases anyone. Of course,politicians of all stripes - from Le Pen to Marchais -label themselves democratic.But this consensus is not very enlightening when it comes to grasping the specificityof a regime whose virtues seem so precious to those who have known only thevices of totalitarian state power or dictatorship. There is an odd contrast betweenthe warmth expressed for Eastern opposition leaders, for the currents of reformand the reticence that these compelling movements inspire in Western societies.This contrast seemed particularly tangible to me when tens of thousands of EastGermans fled toward the FRG.In an homage to Vaclav Havel,2 Andre Glucksman quite rightly observed, byadopting the slogan "Refugees vote with their feet," that this exodus was nottouched off by poverty. Glucksman's assessment is partially convincing: "Eachindividual, each people is taking a risk and thereby making the most difficult ofchoices. They have no idea what the near or the distant future hold for them. Theyare not embarking for Cythera3 and they no longer believe in paradise, even theliberal paradise." Glucksman however deems essential to add that "they aremotivated solely by what they are fleeing. They enter our history, they come over

to our side as people backing away from something. " Is this image of people backingaway a good one? To free oneself from totalitarianism is certainly, as Glucksmansays, to deny the lie Of, as Havel says, to not wish to "die stupid." But isn't theresomething more? Commenting on Havel, Glucksman further declares that "to leaveCommunism is to re-enter history - not to jump from one system to another. Onenever begins to leave Communism, perhaps one never finishes doing so. " I shallsidestep the second statement on account of its obscurity. Limiting myself to thefirst, however, I wonder what Glucksman designates by the term' 'system. " Thefact is that he balks at naming democracy. What a strange omission when the wordis voiced everywhere. Now, if it is true (as I have been arguing for a long time)that the Comnlunist regime has, in order ostensibly to build a new world and anew man, announced the closure of history and denied that anything could cometo question party dognla, it seems to me no less certain that democracy is thatvery regime which, by welcolning conflict and debate both political and social,opens a space for possibilities, for innovation on all registers and exposes itselfto the unknown. In short, it seems certain that democracy is historical society inits essence.I have used the term "renaissance'" because I think that democracy issued forthand was conquered at the breaking point of an ordered, hierarchical world governedby principles assumed natural and because I think that those who presently aretrying to free themselves from totalitarianism are devoting themselves once againto a task of creation. It is not enough to say that Western societies establish a neutralspace within whose borders individuals nlight be afforded the opportunity to breatheand to not die stupid: their institutions and, notably, their system of representation nlakes these societies distinctive. As Tocqueville already observed, individual

liberties would soon be snuffed out if political liberties were lacking or if universalsuffrage and the public character of political debate came to be abolished.


7/14

6 Praxis InternationalEastern Europe's democratic aspirations seem less astounding when the origins

of totalitarianism are reexamined. I do not identify Nazism or fascism withCommunism. Not only are they founded on irreconcilable principles, but it is afact that one of the motors of Nazi or fascist propaganda was anti-Communismand, starting in the 1930's, one of the motors of Communist propaganda was antifascism. However, this antagonism cannot obliterate the fact that both types oftotalitarian power targeted the democratic constitution and a way of life. Fascismand Communism took part in an identical counter-revolution: they undertook toreverse the course of the "democratic revolution." It is no longer even worthrefuting the characterization of Nazism as the agent of capitalism. Although thatcharacterization was used to conceal from innumerable Leftist militants therelationship between Nazism and the political project of its rival: namely, an attemptat subjugating all social activities to common norms and creating a state powerthat would incarnate the People United. Hitler's target was democratic anarchyand, at a deeper level, the "monstrous" heterogeneity of a world of which hewould make the Jew both the symbol and the evil agent. What would have remainedof Marxist science if the Communists had not been able to assign the functionof saving capitalism to the Nazis? How could they have continued to justify theirapproval of Stalin's power if they had fully measured the changes which in Germanywere coming about simultaneously in the power structure and in the social structure?What is more, anyone who considers the manner in which totalitarianism implanteditself in the Soviet Union must agree that this implantation was under way wellbefore the complete transformation of the means of ownership and that thebureaucracy proliferated due to the resources it could extract from political management. That Lenin wished to inaugurate socialism there can be no doubt, but thisstopped him neither from being fascinated by the German industrial model norfrom compromising with the market system when he deemed it necessary. On theother hand, he could not tolerate the principle of a public debate or for the majority'sright to decide. He destroyed all representative institutions - not only the Parliament,but the Soviets too. He would not brook the idea of social divisons or organizations,whatever they might be, or sources of thinking that manifested their independence.He wanted an ordered society and intellectuals (in general all those who demandedfreedom of speech) were, to his mind, demagogues and parasites. As we know,it was he who created the first camps in Russia to lock up suspicious elements.It should therefore not be surprising that the renaissance of democracy is beingcarried out concurrently with the decomposition of totalitarianism. What is astounding is that the few lucid intellectuals who understood Nazism and Stalinism at theirorigins were not the least bit inspired to reflect upon the essence of that democraticregime which stirred the hatred of the new masters of Germany and Russia, andalone offered the opportunity of living free. In vain would one search for suchreflection in the thought of Souvarine or Simone Weil, for example, or in thatofAdorno, Horkheimer or Hannah Arendt. They were all more bent on detectingthe germ of totalitarianism in Western societies. And this tendency persists today.The only questions considered fundamental do not concern the character of ourpolitical societies or their ability to maintain themselves by making room for social,

economic and technological change or changes in custom. Those questions concernmodernity, or, more precisely, the "crisis of our time" which is considered


8/14

Praxis International 7indicative ofmodernity or even of the break with modernity sometimes called theentry into "postmodernity." As if, precisely, the antagonism between democracyand totalitarianism were only secondary to the grand tendencies of History. Thesole questions considered fundamental concern capitalism (although the term ishardly ever used any more because of the decline of Marxism), the power oftechnology, the expansion of the Welfare State, mass culture and individualism.These questions are not foreign to the question of democracy, but, as formulated,they lead us astray from the central question, or, at best, make it unrecognizable.There is indeed a way of impugning this paradox. Some people contend that,under the cloak of a quest for democracy, those who are attempting to reform

or to escape from the totalitarian regime are seeking to rationalize the economy,to appropriate technological resources, to efficiently manage a State laid to wasteby bureaucracy. Or perhaps the so-called reformers merely yearn for what themajority in the West possess: namely, access to free enterprise and consumer goods.Yet this interpretation cannot explain why Gorbachev must have recourse to the"myth" of democratization, why he needs to mobilize the intelligentsia, why alsohe had to create a forum whose public debates have fired the imagination of tensofmillions of citizens (who had previously been bombarded by Marxist-Leninistdogma), why he has been working to separate State power from Party power a unity heretofore required by the totalitarian system. Why go to all this troubleif it were merely a question of restoring the rational management of the economy,technology and public administration? Even if glasnost, i.e. the freedom to speakpublicly, were nothing more than the means toward modernization, one wouldstill have to ask why political reform was necessary to get there. Such an interpretation is no less hollow than the previous one, considering the calls for politicalpluralism, the demand made to the leadership to account for the penalties metedout in the past in the name of Communism, the moves to rehabilitate the victimsof terror and the recognition of the importance of memory. Moreover, the questfor democracy is not by nature linked to the desire for an improvement in thematerial conditions of life nor does this desire in any way obliterate the value ofpolitical freedoms. How could one separate the social question (and thus the questionof economic organization) from democracy without joining the ranks of a mostreactionary liberalism?Let us not oversimplify: after all, our society is not unreservedly attractive inRussia. I am not referring to the hostility of Party conservatives toward it, butto the hostility of the oppositionists we admire. We already knew about theirexpressions of disappointment - even repulsion - at a civilization in which everything is uniformly accepted and thus nothing truly respected or respectable. Somewho have been able to flee and benefit from exile make sure they live together,dissociating themselves as much as possible from the environment in which chancehas placed them and guarding against whatever they feel infringes upon theirintegrity, sometimes refusing to learn the language of the host country. They haveno illusions about what they have rejected, but also feel their losses. Besides theirhomeland, which they do not confuse with the regime that kept it in bondage, whatthey have lost is a certain quality of social bond - a religiosity that was often,though not always, fed by a belief in God and which in all events was expressedin their sense of community. Invisible, this community existed on the level of the


9/14

8 Praxis Internationalvirtual. It was composed of the persecuted, the resisters (even if they were reducedto impotence), and, more broadly, of the men and women who carried a memory- not so much of specific events, but of a culture, a sensitivity to things, others,and time, a memory of customs which the reign of dogmatism, brutality, cynicismand lies never gave up trying to bury. Before the exile, a sharing of thoughts,memories, lust for life and forbidden longings was possible for the members ofthis community.. . But another reason contributed to the perpetuation of thisreligiosity. While still in their homeland, the persecuted and the silent resistersmight very well entrench themselves (if not in fact, at least in thought) from asociety perverted by reciprocal mistrust, betrayal, lying and corruption, theynonetheless felt at one with a people suffering daily from poverty. The vices ofthe subjugated are not the same as the vices of those who dominate, even if theyresemble them and ground them in the final analysis. Making everyone a strangerfor everyone else is not the only effect of poverty; contradictorily, it becomes thesign of the common destiny.In response to the aspirations now dawning in the East and the resistances they

are provoking, do we have to retreat into a narrow position where we are resignedto something like Isaiah Berlin's notion of "negative liberties"? Is not the taskto think democracy as a form of political society - a regime within which we couldexperience our humanity, freed from the myths which concealed the complexityof History? Like all other regimes, this one is characterized by a constitution anda way of life. Yet one should not take the term' 'constitution" in its purely juridicalsense, nor treat "way of life" as a simple fact. Democracy is not reducible toa set of institutions and rules of behavior for which a positive definition couldbe given by comparing it to other known regimes. It requires the participationofmen - but a participation not necessarily formulated in strictly political terms.Those who exercise public responsibility are under no obligation to swear allegianceto the constitution. It is possible, for example, that a certain individual's disdainfor elections, for the majority's decisions, for party demagoguery be combinedwith desire for independence, freedom of thought and speech, sensitivity for others,self-examination, curiosity for foreign or extinct cultures - all of which bear themark of the democratic spirit.In order to appraise the limits of a sociological interpretation, let us refer to

the lessons ofRaymond Aron, published under the title Democratie et totalitarisme(Gallimard, "Idees," 1965). The author defines democracy as the constitutionalpluralistic regime and totalitarianism as the regime of the monopolistic party. Hisintent is to show that democracy is unique in its willingness to accept competitionand to organize it according to the rules of the game. It would be pointless to try toelevate freedom to the status of principle, for this would be to choose between philosophical conceptions, both ofwhich are debatable. The value of democracy lies inits ability to adapt to a differentiated and conflictual society, its ability to set up theconditions for peaceful competition between groups each claiming eligibility toexercise power, and to set up the conditions for a peaceful resolution of conflicts atthe heart of society. Aron stresses that democracy is imperfect, that it contains oligarchies, that it lends itself to party demagoguery, that it is exposed to the doublethreat of anarchy and tyranny. But he believes that these are incidental imperfections. On the other hand, the imperfection of totalitarian power seems to him to


10/14

Praxis International 9be essential since in imposing the notion of a homogeneous society, it denies itselfthe possibility of justifying its own existence. Yet in acknowledging that it is notyet homogeneous, it can only claim falsely to be the expression of the whole people.But doesn't this way of defining democracy and totalitarianism dissolve theirantagonism by reducing it to the juridico-politicallevel? Doesn't the appraisal oftheir imperfections lead to the conclusion that the two regimes are variants of thesame society, i.e. the industrial society? In fact, according to Aron, the superiority

of democracy becomes clear when we observe that it best translates the characteristics of the infrastructure onto the logic of the superstructure. Thus, this everso lucid thinker who was attentive at such an early stage to the mystification ofthe Socialist State concludes that: "These Soviet and Western societies (note thatthe words 'democracy' and 'totalitarianism' are avoided, C.L.) which believe thatthey are each other's enemy are, because they are industrially developed, lessdifferent from each other than either type is from the societies just entering theindustrial trajectory. " Earlier he declared: "I do not believe that the oppositionbetween the two types of regime is that of two fundamentally divergent ideologies. ' ,And, in discussing the varied nlultiplicity of modern societies, he specifies "thatthere is, to a certain extent, a conflict of myths in this diversity of ideologicalconflicts, and that myths resist the lesson of facts for an extended period of time.' ,Nevertheless, it is not enough to observe industrial society's constants. To accountfor the emergence of a competitive society, Aron must appeal to an argument thathe only fOflTIulates once, as if in passing, in his conclusion: "Competition isinevitable because governors named by God or by tradition no longer exist. " Butis this a n1ere observation? Is there really no relation between the rejection of anauthority who demanded unconditional obedience and the representation that humansconstruct of what is just and unjust, true and false, or even what conforms or notto the human condition? In the passage cited, Aron himself considers "the potentialparticipation of all citizens in public life to be essential, " noting that' 'in the regimeof many parties, discussion on what should be done and on the best constitutionof the City is also essential . " He even goes so far as to add that "it seems tolne in keeping with our societies and with the human vocation (my emphasis, e.L.)that all nlen who want to can participate in debate. " This is as much as to recognizethat, beyond the rules of cOlnpetition and, more generally, the constitutional creation,democracy requires a change of philosophical import. Even though he refuses tosettle between conceptions of freedom, the author tacitly allies himself with thespirit the Rights ofMan. Why, one then wonders, is the question of legitimacynot at the core of his thoughts?Let us return to this change that den10cracy demands. The institution of democracycame about by the rejection of any ultimate standpoint. This implies that the statepower ceased to embody the law and exhaustive knowledge of society. This alsoimplies an irreducible rift between the concept of law and positive laws and betweenthe concept of truth and the actual development of knowledge. The whole of sociallife undergoes, by the san1e stroke, a profound change. The demand for legitimization imposes itself in the very movement of action and thought. Men are put tothe task of interpreting events, conduct and institutions without being able to haverecourse to the authority of a grand judge. The necessity for governors and representatives to prove their competence and aptitude for responding to collective


11/14

10 Praxis Internationalexpectations and to manage public affairs should not obliterate the fact that thisnecessity is all the more imposing when the certainty of Reason and ethics whichhad been substituted for the certainty of faith is put into question. When this happens,all authority figures in civil society are affected. The latter (which, as is oftenobserved, acquires independence following the dismantling of former hierarchiesin which the political, the religious and the economic were interwoven) - this civilsociety gradually becomes the theater of an upheaval in customs and in the guidelinesfor behavior. Such a revolution must be taken into consideration in thinking theseparation of the political and the non-political which characterizes the essenceof democracy. We are using the term "political" [le politique] in its everydaymeaning where it indicates the set of activities whose goal is the regulation of publicaffairs. In this sense, politics [la politique] comes up against a limit which governorsdo not have the right to transgress since they do not embody law and ultimateknowledge. They cannot establish the norms by which the economy functions.They must respect the independence of justice. They cannot prescribe to scientists,historians or sociologists conclusions which they judge useful for society, norcensure information, nor encroach on the freedom of writers and artists.Is this simply a question of empirical rules of behavior? Yet their violationconstitutes an attack on the democratic ethos. The separation between the politicaland the non-political is not a contrivance to ensure the functioning of a societystripped of an ultimate standpoint. It expresses a new understanding of law andfreedom and of their interrelationship which is constantly being formed and reformedthroughout society: transforming the sense of rights for the individual and for thecollectivity .Let us suppose here and now, in some field of action or thought, a questionrequiring a response and let us suppose also that the question and answer escapereduction to some common external standard. This situation characterizes thedemocratic experience. But must one, consequently, accept the image of an explodedworld? We denounce the formation of a neutral State implying the destruction ofthe community. Pedagogy incapable of forming a citizen and the decay of an artworld confused about how to inscribe itself in the shared space are deplored. Butwe must understand that the limits by which action and thought are bound cannotbe projected upon the real, for democracy proves to be a political society at thevery moment when politics [la politique] is circumscribed. The fragmentation towhich we have referred is the sign of a unique constitution. The indivisibility ofthe social is yielded through the test of alterity. In other terms, the world presentsitself thus from the vantage point of each unique locus. Impossible to encompass,it nevertheless requires debate about what is legitimate and what is not as wellas, in each individual, a ceaseless effort at judgment.I was recalling that Raymond Aron distinguishes democracy's imperfections indeed from the essential imperfection of totalitarianism. Thus he observes thatdemocracy makes room for oligarchies (which may acquire disproportionate power),that it countenances party demagoguery because parties must seek the favor ofthe electorate, that it hinders the effectiveness of the Government and is threatenedby anarchy, and finally that this very threat conceals the threat of tyranny. Howevercorrect these remarks may be, they only pertain to the strongly political aspectsof the regime and thus cannot take account of the danger of a fissure that results


12/14

Praxis International 11from the destruction of the former networks of dependence, or (what amounts tothe same thing) the affirmation of the absolute principle of freedom. This fissure(Le. the points at which freedom reverts back into its opposite) can perhaps bedetected in the wake of Tocqueville, although he largely passed over the economicand technical transformations that were just appearing in his time. As we know,Tocqueville was less concerned with the perils of oligarchy, demagoguery andanarchy than with the force acquired by opinion and with the birth of a new typeof despotism in the guise of the Tutelary State. The key idea, which he only outlined,is that the shared will to obey no person results in enslavement to an impersonalpower which is all the more daunting because of its invisibility. I would dare saythat Tocqueville glimpsed a new form of "voluntary servitude." While for LaBoetie "voluntary servitude" was seen as originating in the allure of the nameof the One, for Tocqueville it is engendered from the absence of a personal name.In democratic society, no one rises up over the rest to captivate the attention ofall, to figure a body of which each - forgetting that he is an individual - imagineshe is a part. Yet an anonylnous force [puissance] - "social power" [pouvoir] -absorbs men who think they are free. Isn't this social power, which Tocquevilleattributes to the State, the one which (following a similar outline) Marx attributedto Capital and which was later invested in technology? In the three figurations,domination is not the product of one will: rather it bends all wills under it - thoseof its agents and those of the people who merely submit.Certainly democracy didn't invent the State, capitalism, science, or technology.Yet we cannot be blind to the fact that it frees them from the fetters that arrestedtheir expansion. Here is where the flaw ofmy brief analysis arises. The democraticregime does not just inaugurate a differentiated symbolic field, such that all practicesand tTIodes of learning [connaissance] (and, through them, all world experience)get pushed to their limit, it also creates the image of a reality in itself. The negativityoperating in the rejection of a state power that has absolute legitimacy goes handin hand with a totally positive being over whom men have no control. Thus theidea of a necessity external to the order of law imposes itself simultaneously. Yet,as important as it is to observe how democracy lends itself to the representationof the on1nipotence of the State, of capitalism or, as we hear today, of the marketand of technology, one must also resist the temptation of attributing this omnipotenceto them in reality. One must recognize that this omnipotence is precisely held atbay by the dissociation of the political and the non-political and by the irreducibledivisons of civil society. Two factors simultaneously curtail State expansion: 1) thatthe state is cut off frOITI the source of public authority, and 2) that its administration, in each of its departments, is subjected to demands from a variety of groupswhose representatives must not ignore. If State bureaucracies cannot be consolidated,it is because they themselves are caught in a turbulent society which rendersin1possible the petrification of positive laws and regulations. And it is still worthrecalling that where bureaucracy reigns in a totalitarian system, its efficiency isdrastically reduced: the State per se finds itself dismantled by the Party's intrusionin all areas of social life.What guards against the oInnipotence of capitalism is that it is increasingly obligedto negotiate with the den1ands of salaried workers who enjoy rights guaranteedby the Constitution and engrained in custom (the right to assemble, the right to


13/14

12 Praxis Internationalstrike, a variety of social rights) and who have acquired, through universal suffrage,the possibility of seeing their interests validated on the political stage. Also whatguards against that omnipotence is a certain resistance, which is more difficultto define, founded today on the refusal to be totally determined by the workercondition, or, on the desire to avail oneself to the multiplicity of spaces in life:a refusal and a desire of which the disaffection from militantism is a notableconsequence. The wild capitalism still extant in the big countries of Latin Americawhere democracy has never succeeded in rooting itself deeply should be enoughto convince us that there is no set dynamic for the mode of production (that is,one that is independent of political institutions) or for the mode of expression forsocial conflicts and the state of customs. Finally, what guards against the omnipotence of technology is that it cannot be constrained by ends decided upon by thosewho govern. Not only is it disseminated in the most diverse areas, but (and thisis crucial) it gets assimilated by an eminently heterogeneous society which yieldsto modes of existence, modes of thought, discordant beliefs, and, which is,consequently, not at all a tool in the hands of those who own the means ofproduction, ths means of administration or the means of information. It affordsindividual new abilities for initiative. It contributes in the extraordinary adventure of the exploration, on many registers, of unknown continents - what wisemen foolishly reduce to a project of domination of nature by man. Nothing tellsus more about the phantasm of a world ruled entirely by technology than Heidegger'sargument - Heidegger, who disdaining to distinguish among the argument'stheoretical levels, its uses and its effects and who, responding to what he calledits ' 'challenge," lent his support to Nazism, i.e. to a totalitarianism that claimedto weld each person to his function and to destroy all signs of independence insociety, that claimed to realize, under the disguise of a moral revolution, that strictintegration ofman and thing which Heidegger imputed to the artificialist philosophyof the West.Is it so difficult to hold to two ideas at once? To recognize that the history ofdemocracy cannot be disunited from the history of the State, the history ofcapitalism, the history of technology, and that it is ruled by principles that arepeculiar to it. When we claim that democracy is a form of society, this does not

mean that it carries within it the significance of everything that happens to anddefines a people. If, for example, we examined the phenomenon of the nation,we would have to agree that it too is irreducible and yet inextricably linked tothe development of democracy. A tension exists between one's identification witha nation and the democratic ethic, an even sharper tension to the extent that thenation is less and less able to close upon itself.No doubt the critique of mass society on the one hand, and the critique of the

growth of individualism on the other, pertain to another mode of argumentation,although these critiques may easily be linked to the critique ofmarket economy'smisdeeds, of technological product inflation and of the reign of consumerism. Forthose critiques, Tocqueville is the mandatory reference. It may be objected thatequality of conditions is responsible for making individuals want to conform, forleaving no other criterion for judgment than the decrees of the majority, forceaselessly accentuating the uniformity of opinions, tastes and conduct. Is it notthe same process that deprives the individual of a sense of his roots, of his insertion


14/14

Praxis International 13in the space and time of the institution (be it the family or the City)? Is it not thesame process that prevents him from distinguishing his own desire from the needsthat some milieu or another instill in him? It is beyond my scope here to returnto Tocqueville's analyses. But it is worth recalling that Tocqueville never placeddemocracy and equality of conditions on the same theoretical level. He strivedto decode the opposite effects it gave rise to. After having insinuated it was possible,he explicitly impugned the thesis that democracy could be maintained without civiland political freedoms. Finally, if we assert that Tocqueville considered the, 'democratic revolution" irresistible, we should also agree that the contradictionsto which it gave rise demanded, to his thinking, ceaseless invention - an "art,"as he put it - for contradictions are of the essence of democracy. To indict massculture or individualism without understanding that these phenomena themselvesare irresistible, without attempting to locate the counterpart of their vices, to makeup one's mind that the diffusion of information, travel to foreign countries, curiosityfor cultural works formerly reserved for the few as well as the considerable wideningof the public space have no other consequence than to bring to light modern man'sstupidity is to display an arrogance which itself is not exempt from stupidity. Isit not remarkable that the intellectual discourse incessantly propounded about thelevelling of our society is itself bent on levelling everything, on excluding all signsof the doubt which haunts the individual's life, his relationship with others andthe functioning of the institution? Is it not remarkable that the commonplaces ofa certain intellectual aristocracy echo the commonplaces that assail us daily?Democracy need not be ashamed of its ambiguities. Critique is healthy as longas it doesn't reduce itself to the vain pretense ofhauling Reason orUnreason beforea court of final appeal. It must be vigilant to denounce relativism without givingup the sense of relativity which the totalitarian system strived to destroy.

translated by Robert HarveyNOTES

This text was written in early November 1989 and appeared in January 1990 in the journal, Pouvoirs.It could therefore not address the events in Germany and in Czechoslovakia, except to point outthat the second of these two countries would certainly not escape the antitotalitarian stonn. Obviouslyone year later, other aspects of reality and other questions should concern us: the sporadic reappearance of nationalist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic tendencies in the East, and the wider reappearanceof debates with a pre-totalitarian cast. It is as if, with the Communist state powers uprooted, allof the old vegetation were shooting up from the soil of society. Another examle would be theextraordinary difficulties in establishing the conditions of free enterprise. Contrary to a commonlyheld opinion, these difficulties reveal the economy's dependence upon the political regime and thecustoms corresponding to it much more than they do simply a dark side ofmarket logic. The difficulties also cast doubts upon the viability of implanting capitalism where organizations and socialmovements capable of defending the rights of a population from which they might freely developdo not exist. To conclude, I think that one must seriously reexamine the likelihood of corruptedpeoples attaining free institutions (a problem of classical political philosophy) and try to detect anysigns of the possibility of democratic invention of a new type.1. Lefort uses pouvoir which, with the exception of this sentence (to avoid redundancy), I havetranslated as "state power" throughout. [Transl.]2. Excerpts of this homage were published in Le Monde, 13 October 1989.3. This is a reference to Warteau's famous allegorical painting, "L'Embarquement pour 1'lIe de

Cythere, " which depicts the difficulties of arriving at a utopia of love [Transl.].

Documents

1.8 - Lefort, Claude - Rennaisance of Democrarcy¿ (EN)