Badiou: The Communist Hypothesis
Posted by Mike E on July 7, 2008
Thanks to the Chicago Badiou study circle for passing on these excerpts. As usual, Kasama’s posting of these thoughts does not represent endorsement, but the circulation of the thoughtful and provocative for discussion.
The Communist Hypothesis
by Alain Badiou
New Left Review 49, January-February 2008
If we posit a definition of politics as `collective action, organized by certain principles, that aims to unfold the consequences of a new possibility which is currently repressed by the dominant order’, then we would have to conclude that the electoral mechanism is an essentially apolitical procedure. This can be seen in the gulf between the massive formal imperative to vote and the free-floating, if not non-existent nature of political or ideological convictions…
What is the communist hypothesis? In its generic sense, given in its canonic Manifesto, `communist’ means, first, that the logic of class—the fundamental subordination of labour to a dominant class, the arrangement that has persisted since Antiquity—is not inevitable; it can be overcome. The communist hypothesis is that a different collective organization is practicable, one that will eliminate the inequality of wealth and even the division of labour. The private appropriation of massive fortunes and their transmission by inheritance will disappear. The existence of a coercive state, separate from civil society, will no longer appear a necessity: a long process of reorganization based on a free association of producers will see it withering away.
`Communism’ as such denotes only this very general set of intellectual representations. It is what Kant called an Idea, with a regulatory function, rather than a programme. It is foolish to call such communist principles utopian; in the sense that I have defined them here they are intellectual patterns, always actualized in a different fashion. As a pure Idea of equality, the communist hypothesis has no doubt existed since the beginnings of the state. As soon as mass action opposes state coercion in the name of egalitarian justice, rudiments or fragments of the hypothesis start to appear. Popular revolts—the slaves led by Spartacus, the peasants led by Müntzer—might be identified as practical examples of this `communist invariant’. With the French Revolution, the communist hypothesis then inaugurates the epoch of political modernity…
At this point, during an interval dominated by the enemy, when new experiments are tightly circumscribed, it is not possible to say with certainty what the character of the third sequence will be. But the general direction seems discernible: it will involve a new relation between the political movement and the level of the ideological—one that was prefigured in the expression `cultural revolution’ or in the May 68 notion of a `revolution of the mind’. We will still retain the theoretical and historical lessons that issued from the first sequence, and the centrality of victory that issued from the second. But the solution will be neither the formless, or multi-form, popular movement inspired by the intelligence of the multitude—as Negri and the alter-globalists believe—nor the renewed and democratized mass communist party, as some of the Trotskyists and Maoists hope. The (19th-century) movement and the (20th-century) party were specific modes of the communist hypothesis; it is no longer possible to return to them. Instead, after the negative experiences of the `socialist’ states and the ambiguous lessons of the Cultural Revolution and May 68, our task is to bring the communist hypothesis into existence in another mode, to help it emerge within new forms of political experience. This is why our work is so complicated, so experimental. We must focus on its conditions of existence, rather than just improving its methods. We need to re-install the communist hypothesis—the proposition that the subordination of labour to the dominant class is not inevitable—within the ideological sphere…
In many respects we are closer today to the questions of the 19th century than to the revolutionary history of the 20th. A wide variety of 19th-century phenomena are reappearing: vast zones of poverty, widening inequalities, politics dissolved into the `service of wealth’, the nihilism of large sections of the young, the servility of much of the intelligentsia; the cramped, besieged experimentalism of a few groups seeking ways to express the communist hypothesis . . . Which is no doubt why, as in the 19th century, it is not the victory of the hypothesis which is at stake today, but the conditions of its existence. This is our task, during the reactionary interlude that now prevails: through the combination of thought processes—always global, or universal, in character—and political experience, always local or singular, yet transmissible, to renew the existence of the communist hypothesis, in our consciousness and on the ground.
back to the 19th century? said
“In many respects we are closer today to the questions of the 19th century than to the revolutionary history of the 20th. A wide variety of 19th-century phenomena are reappearing: vast zones of poverty, widening inequalities, politics dissolved into the `service of wealth’…”
When mentioning reappearing 19th Century phenomena Badiou might also include with them the utopian socialist idea of “politics without the Party,” that Marxists should somehow go backward to the 19th century where the achievement of communist consciousness and the overthrow of one class by another were thought to be achievable without a vanguard party.
I like some of what I’ve read from Badiou—I really have tried to understand it, for example his work on ethics and critiques of today’s liberal and postmodernist discourse. When he gets into politics proper as above, it’s far less interesting—been there, done that. But perhaps many radicals and some people on this site find this notion and LINE convenient for the time being?
Mike E said
I agree. I have found the discussion of conjuncture in Badiou (i.e. “event”) valuable, and also the discussion of the complexities of fidelity (and getting stuck in the dynamics and naming of previous ‘events” — as in the sixties).
But his theory of dismissing the “party state” and the party itself are, as you suggest, not helpful.
I don’t believe (as he claims) that the Cultural Revolution was a revolt against the party-state of Lenin-Stalin, or that mao betrayed the revolution by rejecting the commune form. that is a misread (which is not unique to Badiou, but is the common summation of his political trend in france, including then in the early 70s.) I don’t think it is correct about China, and I don’t think it is correct about our situation.
I think we can debate and discover forms of organization — i don’t think a single formula for advanced organization applies for all time, for all stages of the aggregations of revolutionaries, for all stages of the revolution, etc.
But i do think you need a leading core — or else revolution is inconceivable. And that core needs to be build from the advanced widely in society, with organic roots among the most discontented and conscious parts of the people, and with a militant form of organization that is prepared for political combat under extremely adverse hostile conditions.
Right now the Kasama Project is more of a “post-party formation,” than a “pre-party formation.” And that is fitting. Right now we are organized in rather primitive ways (not with much defined centralism, or structure etc). But that is not a principle.
What we need is a road to a new form of advanced organization. And in some ways, I don’t think Lenin proceeded from fixed organizational formulas either, he invented the party that his movement and moment needed — to serve the sweeping communist goals he had. We need to adopt the method, not the formula.
ShineThePath said
I actually do agree with Badiou in his formulation on the Party-State, I think such a route has showed itself to be highly problematic and I do think the Cultural Revolution in its period from 1966-1969 (which Badiou identifies as the real concrete manifestation of the struggle) was against the Party-State itself. The living form of the Shanghai Commune represented a break with what I would identify as a the ‘Stalinist’ (I use this term because its fulfillment was seen in the 1936 constitution, often dubbed the Stalin Constitution) model of Republic that existed in the Soviet Union and in China, as well as in all other ‘really existing socialist’ states. So let me be the first to have a little Two Line struggle here.
Did Mao go far enough, or was it possible to go far enough within the context of the Party-State’s existence in China? It was Mao, who under the basis of needing to have internal security in the face of possible Soviet aggression, that justified the end of the Shanghai Commune and the rehabilitation of the Party apparatus in that city. Whether we like it or not it was thereafter that ossification of that the political struggle within the Party, no major struggle like the one of the period of 1966-69 occurred with the same type of upheaval and rebellion amongst the masses of people.
To give another thought on this, is not Mao’s justification (whether or not sincere) fit perfectly within the logic of the center-rightist coalition around Three World’s Theory? I thyink it does and this for me seems problematic. Mao himself took up the position to win the center of the party, to be under the leadership of the revolutionary Left, but within doing this the political struggle was no longer on the streets in the same way as it was in the early 60s’.
So some ideas of Badiou himself, I think it is actually incorrect to see Badiou’s critique of the Part-State formation as a lived and dead experience of communism as essentially a return to a 19th century conception of struggle. Where is prescription to do just this, in fact if anything as Zizek criticizes Badiou, he is an ultra-Leninist in that revolutionary collectivity is the revolutionary subject that can make proper political cuts – Badiou’s conception of revolutionary subjectivity is a descriptive account of the need for revolutionary organization that is itself outside of the order of being, the murmur of capitalism.
But the question here mainly is will revolution look like the 20th century revolutionary episodes in mostly semi-feudal countries? Maybe is places where that is still readily the case, i.e. Nepal or the Philippines, but I just don’t think that is the reality any more.
Michael Hardt in a movie that has premiered in NYC tells of his account of FMLN revolutionaries telling him and other solidarity observers that the best thing they can do to support the revolution was to make revolution in the USA, something which resonated with him. Their experience though of how that was done (going to the jungles and mountains, fighting guerrilla protracted war) however didn’t resonate at all. Nor why should it, that can’t possible be how it works here, I have even a hard time imagining 1 Vanguard Party arising out of the 30-40 or more little sects of at best a few hundred people contending for the top spot actually getting what they want, the True Vanguard. There has to be a little bit of reconception of unity, what basis do we as revolutionaries find unity in organizational form. There also needs to be revision of what will be a united front to make revolution.
On the Party-State itself as the horizon of the future of the transitional phase to communism is just not an attractive sell. Just for example RCP’s anti-democratic “re-envisioning” of society just seems to be a call for people to have confidence they’ll get it right this time around, the King has things under control.
ShineThePath said
By the way- the movie that I’ve made reference to is the “Examined Life.” I wouldn’t recommend it till you can download it off bit torrents :)