RennaisanceofDemocrarcy?

RennaisanceofDemocrarcy?

byClaudeLefort

Source: PRAXISInternational(PRAXISInternational),issue:1+2/1990,pages:001014,onwww.ceeol.com.
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THINKING THE PRESENT: DEMOCRACY AND TOTALITARIANISM, AND THE NATION

*
Claude

For a long time the Communist regimes appeared inalterable. Many (need we be reminded of how many?) of those who ignored their cruelly oppressive nature believed they were, on the contrary, the models of planned, organized, harmonious societies emerging from an old capitalist world in decay. Although they had to admit that reality was lagging well behind the ideal, slowly but surely, they insisted, History was giving birth to Communism. Gradually this image deteriorated to the point of abjection. Those people discovered a state l exclusively concerned with spreading its power, peoples enslaved and ravaged by unbridled domination or cruelly suppressed if they rose up. The insurrection in East Berlin, quickly crushed in 1953, hardly bothered anyone's conscience. Then there was the invasion of Hungary 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 his famous report on the terror of the Stalin era and his inventory of the vices of the bureaucracy were also disclosed. Finally, the testimony of camp survivors and of 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 forget Solzhenitsyn. The Soviet citizens, Zinoviev claimed, had adopted the cynicism of their leaders, ignoring the notion of law and, in their poverty, had become masters in the art of making do [debrouillardise]: they came to love corruption as they came to love their regime. The system proved air-tight, top to bottom. As for Eastern Europe" it was obviously rivetted to Russia. The heroic efforts of Solidamosc could only end up clashing with a state power that would compronlise on nothing. The lightening of economic constraints and tolerance for private initiative in Hungary had brought along increased consun1ption and unleashed individualism. This depoliticization 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 state power held n1astery over its eB1pire and was itself solidly entrenched. Western intellectuals could nlerely condemn violations of hUI11an rights in the East, while politicians 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 ilnagine is today taking place at a more and more precipitous pace. The Polish leaders are retreating before the reformist advance. Solidarnosc has in1posed its proposal for government. In
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Hungary, the Communist Party has abdicated, repudiating its ideology. The state that called itself a Popular Democracy is turning into a Republic. The GDR bastion is showing cracks; the most arrogant of the parties admits to its problems; its head steps down while demonstrators by the tens, then the hundreds of thousands voice their demand for freedom. No doubt Czechoslovakia will not long resist the shock wave that is spreading from country to country. Totalitarianism is in a process of gradual decomposition. We are not witnessing a 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 explosion like the one experienced in Budapest in 1956. But the breath of History 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, and that, instead of taking stock of the changes under our noses, Western leaders calculate parsimoniously the loans required in order for a democratic politics in the East to succeed? One hears, for instance, the argument that the Polish or the Hungarian 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 only hope for the full legitimation of the democratic institutions is for them to modify social conditions, to satisfy, somehow, basic needs. Signs of getting too accustomed to things can be detected not just here but over there also. I am not referring to the skepticism of a fraction of the population which may 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 have this freedom seem to make very little of the current changes. I got this impression personally while listening to Soviet intellectuals speak about perestroika before a large audience in Geneva. Behind their words one could make out the turbulence of a population which was, until recently, still paralyzed by fear. One could feel the spiritual agitation, not only within the intelligentsia, but among a diversity of sectors. One could discern the effects of news diffused not only through the official press and television, but through a hundred little Moscow street newspapers and a profusion of leaflets. And, finally, one could sense the debacle of Communist ideology. Yet these men (with the exception of a euphoric and resolute Latvian deputy) expressed themselves in cold, disabused, or off-handed tones. Their mistrust of Gorbachev's policies is perhaps justified, but one could not help being disturbed by the way they flaunted the distance they maintain from the reforms. They complained about possessing only "freedoms granted from above," as if their own discourse did not bear witness to a certain independence with respect to the authorities and a radically new sense of personal security. They said nothing of the road travelled these last few years. Listening to them I thought of Nadja, Mandelshtam, of Koutnetzov, Solzhenitsyn and many others, of the afflicting accounts which, with my throat in knots, I had read in years past. It was a strange spectacle, at once reassuring and troubling. Aren't these freedoms granted from above really at the mercy of a mere wave of the hand on the part of the new master who might decree their abolition? No one can exclude that hypothesis. But weren't these speakers also revealing the still present weight of the totalitarian phantasm in imagining that a government could, on a whim, grant or rescind a freedom?

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Yes, it sufficed for Gorbachev to lift censorship for the debate to be possible! But these men had now seized the floor. Does anyone believe that the freedom to speak can be rationed like potatoes? It was recently learned that Gorbachev had severely reprimanded some journalists and demanded that one of them resign. Unless I am mistaken,until this day, the latter has not complied. This fact speaks louder than words. Have we forgotten what the times of silence and fear were like? Some sovietologists claim that the Soviet State has ceased to be a totalitarian State a long time ago, and that, consequently, to judge what is happening now by comparison to the Stalinist era is senseless. From that point of view, the regime would be simply slipping from one mode of bureaucratic management to another - excessive authoritarianism having been found incompatible with production demands. The amazing aspect of this interpretation is that after having been widely denied during the period when Stalin reigned, totalitarianism is now given a central role post-mortem. There are still those who defend another hypothesis which states that totalitarianism is a concept with no scientific relevance. In this case it would be even more erroneous to speak of its decomposition. The theoretical support of this position too implies that Soviet society was never homogeneous. Already under Stalin it was the stage of numerous conflicts and leadership itself was the seat of dissension. Far from reigning over all{ the Supreme Guide maintained himself through his art of manoeuver and cunning. But this assessment conflates principle and fact, i.e. it treats the principle on which the regime is based as simple empirical necessity. 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 the survival of elements from the former regime - the so-called Kulaks or the bourgeoisie, or both of them at the same time. Yet the analyst not blinded by ideology 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 masses against each other but which appear at the core of bureaucracy itself as well as in 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; the conflicts which they necessarily give rise to can be expressed only indirectly; they break through to the sphere of leadership only after having been filtered by the flunkies of the Party's petty tyrants who themselves form the clientele of some Great 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 nourished on Marxism, although it is not accidental that the latter can be so used. There is no public space in totalitarian society: it is eliminated when freedom of speech is stifled, and when conflict is made impossible by principle. But the official discourse 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 what they define as true at a given moment. The official discourse does not proclaim that

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law is a fiction invented by the bourgeoisie: law is simply in the hands of state power. Consequently, positive laws have no value in themselves and judges exploit or violate them in accordance with instructions they receive or with the way they conceive the intentions at the summit. The concept of totalitarianism entails this double phenomenon: a divisionless society and a state power that condenses into one unity police power, knowledge and the law founding the social order. Totality gets its contemporary relevance from the fact that the whole system is based on a logic of identification: no divergence is conceivable between the people, the Party, the Political Bureau and the Egocrat. Spiritually, if I may use the expression, they are but one. We know that such a system can only establish itself by mass mobilization. It needs also a relatively widespread collective faith in common ends. Terror is another crucial ingredient. But the ebbing of belief, disenchantment through the test of reality (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, one cannot 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 of History . 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 is in principle irreversible. It creates a society which is self-sufficient. All possibilities beyond that self-sufficiency are out of the question. A voice from on high announces~ lyrically at first, "Here is the new world and the new man." Later the voice becomes more 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. What are 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 force us to pose again and again, are without answer. Perhaps Gorbachev himself doesn't have the answer. He seems to be one of those politicians who know very well what 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 hand in hand. This explains his oscillating trajectory and foreshadows further uncertainties. But however one interprets his policy, one must recognize the unparalleled aspects of his action: he has shattered the image of the irreversible. Another phenomenon which deserves attention turns out to be inseparable from the decomposition of totalitarianism: the awakening of democratic aspirations. It is true that this phenomenon has been observed for years in Latin America, in countries subjected to military dictatorships that are bolstered by technocracy. In Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo and Santiago, in Budapest and Warsaw the very same language has been understood. In both hemispheres the key formulation is democratic transition. Yet this is not a simple coincidence. Marxist ideology, which used to mobilize opposition groups in Argentina, Brazil and Chile disintegrated, while the Soviet model, followed by the Chinese one, were losing their allure.

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Coming to grips with the totalitarian fact has given rise to the conviction that the defence 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 specificity of a regime whose virtues seem so precious to those who have known only the vices of totalitarian state power or dictatorship. There is an odd contrast between the warmth expressed for Eastern opposition leaders, for the currents of reform and the reticence that these compelling movements inspire in Western societies. This contrast seemed particularly tangible to me when tens of thousands of East Germans fled toward the FRG. In an homage to Vaclav Havel,2 Andre Glucksman quite rightly observed, by adopting the slogan "Refugees vote with their feet," that this exodus was not touched off by poverty. Glucksman's assessment is partially convincing: "Each individual, each people is taking a risk and thereby making the most difficult of choices. They have no idea what the near or the distant future hold for them. They are not embarking for Cythera 3 and they no longer believe in paradise, even the liberal paradise." Glucksman however deems essential to add that "they are motivated 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 backing away a good one? To free oneself from totalitarianism is certainly, as Glucksman says, to deny the lie Of, as Havel says, to not wish to "die stupid." But isn't there something more? Commenting on Havel, Glucksman further declares that "to leave Communism is to re-enter history - not to jump from one system to another. One never begins to leave Communism, perhaps one never finishes doing so. " I shall sidestep the second statement on account of its obscurity. Limiting myself to the first, however, I wonder what Glucksman designates by the term' 'system. " The fact is that he balks at naming democracy. What a strange omission when the word is 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 a new man, announced the closure of history and denied that anything could come to question party dognla, it seems to me no less certain that democracy is that very regime which, by welcolning conflict and debate both political and social, opens a space for possibilities, for innovation on all registers and exposes itself to the unknown. In short, it seems certain that democracy is historical society in its essence. I have used the term "renaissance'" because I think that democracy issued forth and was conquered at the breaking point of an ordered, hierarchical world governed by principles assumed natural and because I think that those who presently are trying to free themselves from totalitarianism are devoting themselves once again to a task of creation. It is not enough to say that Western societies establish a neutral space within whose borders individuals nlight be afforded the opportunity to breathe and 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 universal suffrage and the public character of political debate came to be abolished.

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Eastern Europe's democratic aspirations seem less astounding when the origins of totalitarianism are reexamined. I do not identify Nazism or fascism with Communism. Not only are they founded on irreconcilable principles, but it is a fact that one of the motors of Nazi or fascist propaganda was anti-Communism and, starting in the 1930's, one of the motors of Communist propaganda was antifascism. However, this antagonism cannot obliterate the fact that both types of totalitarian power targeted the democratic constitution and a way of life. Fascism and Communism took part in an identical counter-revolution: they undertook to reverse the course of the "democratic revolution." It is no longer even worth refuting the characterization of Nazism as the agent of capitalism. Although that characterization was used to conceal from innumerable Leftist militants the relationship between Nazism and the political project of its rival: namely, an attempt at subjugating all social activities to common norms and creating a state power that would incarnate the People United. Hitler's target was democratic anarchy and, at a deeper level, the "monstrous" heterogeneity of a world of which he would make the Jew both the symbol and the evil agent. What would have remained of Marxist science if the Communists had not been able to assign the function of saving capitalism to the Nazis? How could they have continued to justify their approval of Stalin's power if they had fully measured the changes which in Germany were coming about simultaneously in the power structure and in the social structure? What is more, anyone who considers the manner in which totalitarianism implanted itself in the Soviet Union must agree that this implantation was under way well before the complete transformation of the means of ownership and that the bureaucracy proliferated due to the resources it could extract from political management. That Lenin wished to inaugurate socialism there can be no doubt, but this stopped him neither from being fascinated by the German industrial model nor from compromising with the market system when he deemed it necessary. On the other hand, he could not tolerate the principle of a public debate or for the majority's right 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 demanded freedom 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 being carried out concurrently with the decomposition of totalitarianism. What is astounding is that the few lucid intellectuals who understood Nazism and Stalinism at their origins were not the least bit inspired to reflect upon the essence of that democratic regime which stirred the hatred of the new masters of Germany and Russia, and alone offered the opportunity of living free. In vain would one search for such reflection in the thought of Souvarine or Simone Weil, for example, or in that of Adorno, Horkheimer or Hannah Arendt. They were all more bent on detecting the germ of totalitarianism in Western societies. And this tendency persists today. The only questions considered fundamental do not concern the character of our political societies or their ability to maintain themselves by making room for social, economic and technological change or changes in custom. Those questions concern modernity, or, more precisely, the "crisis of our time" which is considered

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indicative of modernity or even of the break with modernity sometimes called the entry into "postmodernity." As if, precisely, the antagonism between democracy and totalitarianism were only secondary to the grand tendencies of History. The sole questions considered fundamental concern capitalism (although the term is hardly ever used any more because of the decline of Marxism), the power of technology, 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 waste by bureaucracy. Or perhaps the so-called reformers merely yearn for what the majority 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 also he had to create a forum whose public debates have fired the imagination of tens of millions of citizens (who had previously been bombarded by Marxist-Leninist dogma), 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 trouble if 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 speak publicly, were nothing more than the means toward modernization, one would still 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 political pluralism, the demand made to the leadership to account for the penalties meted out in the past in the name of Communism, the moves to rehabilitate the victims of terror and the recognition of the importance of memory. Moreover, the quest for democracy is not by nature linked to the desire for an improvement in the material conditions of life nor does this desire in any way obliterate the value of political freedoms. How could one separate the social question (and thus the question of economic organization) from democracy without joining the ranks of a most reactionary liberalism? Let us not oversimplify: after all, our society is not unreservedly attractive in Russia. I am not referring to the hostility of Party conservatives toward it, but to the hostility of the oppositionists we admire. We already knew about their expressions of disappointment - even repulsion - at a civilization in which everything is uniformly accepted and thus nothing truly respected or respectable. Some who 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 chance has placed them and guarding against whatever they feel infringes upon their integrity, sometimes refusing to learn the language of the host country. They have no illusions about what they have rejected, but also feel their losses. Besides their homeland, which they do not confuse with the regime that kept it in bondage, what they 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 expressed in their sense of community. Invisible, this community existed on the level of the

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virtual. It was composed of the persecuted, the resisters (even if they were reduced to 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, cynicism and 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 of this community.. . But another reason contributed to the perpetuation of this religiosity. While still in their homeland, the persecuted and the silent resisters might very well entrench themselves (if not in fact, at least in thought) from a society perverted by reciprocal mistrust, betrayal, lying and corruption, they nonetheless felt at one with a people suffering daily from poverty. The vices of the subjugated are not the same as the vices of those who dominate, even if they resemble them and ground them in the final analysis. Making everyone a stranger for everyone else is not the only effect of poverty; contradictorily, it becomes the sign 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 resigned to something like Isaiah Berlin's notion of "negative liberties"? Is not the task to think democracy as a form of political society - a regime within which we could experience our humanity, freed from the myths which concealed the complexity of History? Like all other regimes, this one is characterized by a constitution and a way of life. Yet one should not take the term' 'constitution" in its purely juridical sense, nor treat "way of life" as a simple fact. Democracy is not reducible to a set of institutions and rules of behavior for which a positive definition could be given by comparing it to other known regimes. It requires the participation of men - but a participation not necessarily formulated in strictly political terms. Those who exercise public responsibility are under no obligation to swear allegiance to the constitution. It is possible, for example, that a certain individual's disdain for elections, for the majority's decisions, for party demagoguery be combined with desire for independence, freedom of thought and speech, sensitivity for others, self-examination, curiosity for foreign or extinct cultures - all of which bear the mark of the democratic spirit. In order to appraise the limits of a sociological interpretation, let us refer to the lessons of Raymond 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. His intent is to show that democracy is unique in its willingness to accept competition and to organize it according to the rules of the game. It would be pointless to try to elevate freedom to the status of principle, for this would be to choose between philosophical conceptions, both of which are debatable. The value of democracy lies in its ability to adapt to a differentiated and conflictual society, its ability to set up the conditions for peaceful competition between groups each claiming eligibility to exercise power, and to set up the conditions for a peaceful resolution of conflicts at the 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 double threat 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

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be essential since in imposing the notion of a homogeneous society, it denies itself the possibility of justifying its own existence. Yet in acknowledging that it is not yet 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 their antagonism by reducing it to the juridico-politicallevel? Doesn't the appraisal of their imperfections lead to the conclusion that the two regimes are variants of the same 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 ever so lucid thinker who was attentive at such an early stage to the mystification of the Socialist State concludes that: "These Soviet and Western societies (note that the words 'democracy' and 'totalitarianism' are avoided, C.L.) which believe that they are each other's enemy are, because they are industrially developed, less different from each other than either type is from the societies just entering the industrial trajectory. " Earlier he declared: "I do not believe that the opposition between the two types of regime is that of two fundamentally divergent ideologies. ' , And, in discussing the varied nlultiplicity of modern societies, he specifies "that there is, to a certain extent, a conflict of myths in this diversity of ideological conflicts, 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 account for the emergence of a competitive society, Aron must appeal to an argument that he only fOflTIulates once, as if in passing, in his conclusion: "Competition is inevitable because governors named by God or by tradition no longer exist. " But is this a n1ere observation? Is there really no relation between the rejection of an authority who demanded unconditional obedience and the representation that humans construct of what is just and unjust, true and false, or even what conforms or not to the human condition? In the passage cited, Aron himself considers "the potential participation of all citizens in public life to be essential, " noting that' 'in the regime of many parties, discussion on what should be done and on the best constitution of the City is also essential. " He even goes so far as to add that "it seems to lne 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 recognize that, beyond the rules of cOlnpetition and, more generally, the constitutional creation, democracy requires a change of philosophical import. Even though he refuses to settle between conceptions of freedom, the author tacitly allies himself with the spirit the Rights of Man. Why, one then wonders, is the question of legitimacy not at the core of his thoughts? Let us return to this change that den10cracy demands. The institution of democracy came about by the rejection of any ultimate standpoint. This implies that the state power ceased to embody the law and exhaustive knowledge of society. This also implies an irreducible rift between the concept of law and positive laws and between the concept of truth and the actual development of knowledge. The whole of social life 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 to the task of interpreting events, conduct and institutions without being able to have recourse to the authority of a grand judge. The necessity for governors and representatives to prove their competence and aptitude for responding to collective

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expectations and to manage public affairs should not obliterate the fact that this necessity is all the more imposing when the certainty of Reason and ethics which had 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 often observed, acquires independence following the dismantling of former hierarchies in which the political, the religious and the economic were interwoven) - this civil society gradually becomes the theater of an upheaval in customs and in the guidelines for behavior. Such a revolution must be taken into consideration in thinking the separation of the political and the non-political which characterizes the essence of democracy. We are using the term "political" [le politique] in its everyday meaning where it indicates the set of activities whose goal is the regulation of public affairs. In this sense, politics [la politique] comes up against a limit which governors do not have the right to transgress since they do not embody law and ultimate knowledge. 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, nor censure information, nor encroach on the freedom of writers and artists. Is this simply a question of empirical rules of behavior? Yet their violation constitutes an attack on the democratic ethos. The separation between the political and the non-political is not a contrivance to ensure the functioning of a society stripped of an ultimate standpoint. It expresses a new understanding of law and freedom and of their interrelationship which is constantly being formed and reformed throughout society: transforming the sense of rights for the individual and for the collectivity . Let us suppose here and now, in some field of action or thought, a question requiring a response and let us suppose also that the question and answer escape reduction to some common external standard. This situation characterizes the democratic experience. But must one, consequently, accept the image of an exploded world? We denounce the formation of a neutral State implying the destruction of the community. Pedagogy incapable of forming a citizen and the decay of an art world confused about how to inscribe itself in the shared space are deplored. But we must understand that the limits by which action and thought are bound cannot be projected upon the real, for democracy proves to be a political society at the very moment when politics [la politique] is circumscribed. The fragmentation to which we have referred is the sign of a unique constitution. The indivisibility of the social is yielded through the test of alterity. In other terms, the world presents itself 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 well as, in each individual, a ceaseless effort at judgment. I was recalling that Raymond Aron distinguishes democracy's imperfections in deed from the essential imperfection of totalitarianism. Thus he observes that democracy makes room for oligarchies (which may acquire disproportionate power), that it countenances party demagoguery because parties must seek the favor of the electorate, that it hinders the effectiveness of the Government and is threatened by anarchy, and finally that this very threat conceals the threat of tyranny. However correct these remarks may be, they only pertain to the strongly political aspects of the regime and thus cannot take account of the danger of a fissure that results

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from the destruction of the former networks of dependence, or (what amounts to the 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 be detected in the wake of Tocqueville, although he largely passed over the economic and technical transformations that were just appearing in his time. As we know, Tocqueville was less concerned with the perils of oligarchy, demagoguery and anarchy than with the force acquired by opinion and with the birth of a new type of 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 impersonal power which is all the more daunting because of its invisibility. I would dare say that Tocqueville glimpsed a new form of "voluntary servitude." While for La Boetie "voluntary servitude" was seen as originating in the allure of the name of 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 of all, to figure a body of which each - forgetting that he is an individual - imagines he is a part. Yet an anonylnous force [puissance] - "social power" [pouvoir] absorbs men who think they are free. Isn't this social power, which Tocqueville attributes to the State, the one which (following a similar outline) Marx attributed to 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 - those of 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 arrested their expansion. Here is where the flaw of my brief analysis arises. The democratic regime does not just inaugurate a differentiated symbolic field, such that all practices and 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 negativity operating in the rejection of a state power that has absolute legitimacy goes hand in hand with a totally positive being over whom men have no control. Thus the idea 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 representation of the on1nipotence of the State, of capitalism or, as we hear today, of the market and of technology, one must also resist the temptation of attributing this omnipotence to them in reality. One must recognize that this omnipotence is precisely held at bay by the dissociation of the political and the non-political and by the irreducible divisons of civil society. Two factors simultaneously curtail State expansion: 1) that the 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 groups whose representatives must not ignore. If State bureaucracies cannot be consolidated, it is because they themselves are caught in a turbulent society which renders in1possible the petrification of positive laws and regulations. And it is still worth recalling that where bureaucracy reigns in a totalitarian system, its efficiency is drastically reduced: the State per se finds itself dismantled by the Party's intrusion in all areas of social life. What guards against the oInnipotence of capitalism is that it is increasingly obliged to negotiate with the den1ands of salaried workers who enjoy rights guaranteed by the Constitution and engrained in custom (the right to assemble, the right to

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strike, a variety of social rights) and who have acquired, through universal suffrage, the possibility of seeing their interests validated on the political stage. Also what guards against that omnipotence is a certain resistance, which is more difficult to define, founded today on the refusal to be totally determined by the worker condition, 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 notable consequence. The wild capitalism still extant in the big countries of Latin America where democracy has never succeeded in rooting itself deeply should be enough to 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 for social 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 those who govern. Not only is it disseminated in the most diverse areas, but (and this is crucial) it gets assimilated by an eminently heterogeneous society which yields to 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 of production, ths means of administration or the means of information. It affords individual new abilities for initiative. It contributes in the extraordinary adventure of the exploration, on many registers, of unknown continents - what wise men foolishly reduce to a project of domination of nature by man. Nothing tells us more about the phantasm of a world ruled entirely by technology than Heidegger's argument - Heidegger, who disdaining to distinguish among the argument's theoretical levels, its uses and its effects and who, responding to what he called its' 'challenge," lent his support to Nazism, i.e. to a totalitarianism that claimed to weld each person to his function and to destroy all signs of independence in society, that claimed to realize, under the disguise of a moral revolution, that strict integration of man and thing which Heidegger imputed to the artificialist philosophy of the West. Is it so difficult to hold to two ideas at once? To recognize that the history of democracy cannot be disunited from the history of the State, the history of capitalism, the history of technology, and that it is ruled by principles that are peculiar 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 and defines 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 to the development of democracy. A tension exists between one's identification with a nation and the democratic ethic, an even sharper tension to the extent that the nation 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 of market economy's misdeeds, of technological product inflation and of the reign of consumerism. For those critiques, Tocqueville is the mandatory reference. It may be objected that equality of conditions is responsible for making individuals want to conform, for leaving no other criterion for judgment than the decrees of the majority, for ceaselessly accentuating the uniformity of opinions, tastes and conduct. Is it not the same process that deprives the individual of a sense of his roots, of his insertion

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in the space and time of the institution (be it the family or the City)? Is it not the same process that prevents him from distinguishing his own desire from the needs that some milieu or another instill in him? It is beyond my scope here to return to Tocqueville's analyses. But it is worth recalling that Tocqueville never placed democracy and equality of conditions on the same theoretical level. He strived to 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 civil and political freedoms. Finally, if we assert that Tocqueville considered the , 'democratic revolution" irresistible, we should also agree that the contradictions to 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 mass culture or individualism without understanding that these phenomena themselves are irresistible, without attempting to locate the counterpart of their vices, to make up one's mind that the diffusion of information, travel to foreign countries, curiosity for cultural works formerly reserved for the few as well as the considerable widening of the public space have no other consequence than to bring to light modern man's stupidity is to display an arrogance which itself is not exempt from stupidity. Is it not remarkable that the intellectual discourse incessantly propounded about the levelling of our society is itself bent on levelling everything, on excluding all signs of the doubt which haunts the individual's life, his relationship with others and the functioning of the institution? Is it not remarkable that the commonplaces of a certain intellectual aristocracy echo the commonplaces that assail us daily? Democracy need not be ashamed of its ambiguities. Critique is healthy as long as it doesn't reduce itself to the vain pretense of hauling Reason or Unreason before a court of final appeal. It must be vigilant to denounce relativism without giving up the sense of relativity which the totalitarian system strived to destroy.
translated by Robert Harvey
NOTES

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 out that the second of these two countries would certainly not escape the antitotalitarian stonn. Obviously one 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 reappearance of debates with a pre-totalitarian cast. It is as if, with the Communist state powers uprooted, all of the old vegetation were shooting up from the soil of society. Another examle would be the extraordinary difficulties in establishing the conditions of free enterprise. Contrary to a commonly held opinion, these difficulties reveal the economy's dependence upon the political regime and the customs corresponding to it much more than they do simply a dark side of market logic. The difficulties also cast doubts upon the viability of implanting capitalism where organizations and social movements capable of defending the rights of a population from which they might freely develop do not exist. To conclude, I think that one must seriously reexamine the likelihood of corrupted peoples attaining free institutions (a problem of classical political philosophy) and try to detect any signs 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 have translated 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.].