alain badiou - is the word communism forever doomed?

8/9/2019 Alain Badiou - Is The Word Communism Forever Doomed?

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AlainBadiouIsTheWordCommunismForeverDoomed?

(A lecture at Miguel Abreu Gallery in New York, November, 6, 2008.

www.lacan.com/essays/?page_id=323)

Thank you for being here today. Its a real brave gesture to talk of Communism just after

he victory of Barak Obama and when there is a violent crisis of capitalism. However, to dot

that in a theater in New York is magnificent.

I begin by two very different things. On the one hand some very abstract definitions, on the

other hand some very concrete points in concern with the victory of Obama. And its from

he point of view of the position between the two, philosophical definitions and concretetstudy of contemporary thought, that I shall introduce the old word Communism.

So first the definitions. I name event, a rupture in the normal disposition of bodies andnormal ways of a particular situation. Or if you want, I name event a rupture of the laws of

the situation. So, in its very importance, an event is not the realization/variation of a

possibility that resides inside the situation. An event is the creation of a new possibility. An

vent changes not only the real, but also the possible. An event is at the level not of simpleepossibility, but at the level of possibility of possibility.

I name state or state of the situation the system of constraints, which precisely limit the

possibility. For example today I name the state of our situation, capitalist economy,

constitutional form of government, veridical laws about the order of labor, army, police,and so on all that composes the state of our situation. The state defines what is possible

nd what isnt. So an event is always something which happens beyond the state. Anda

therein lies the difference between an event and a simple fact.

name truth procedure or truth an organization of consequences of an event. The

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process or the fact of naming the process of what follows an even

And I name facts the consequences of the existence of the state.

So the truth is not purely composed of facts. Its my own position to complete. The truth isalso the becoming of the new subject, the new collective subject, when the event is political.

Concerning this new collective subject, I can speak of the creation of the truth. Concerningthe state, I can speak of historical facts. For example, the revolution of October 1917 in

Russia is the creation of a new political truth. In the same country, the victory of the Soviet

nion over Nazi Germany in 1945 is a historical fact. Towards the same history, whichU

happens at times from an event and at times from a historical fact.

And finally a historical point. In fact when it transforms the relationship between the

identities of individuals and the identity of the power. For example when Lula became the


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president of Brazil, it was a simple fact and not an event of historical transcendence.

Because it was the first time a simple worker occupied the head of the state.

Identities like worker, gay, black, woman, Jew, youth, small, redhaired, etc., are of

no importance in the true political being which is universal or general. But the relationship

etween these predicates, this identity and the power, can be of some simple valuebconcerning the action of the state.

With all that in mind we can say some words about the great victory of Obama, though it isimpossible for me to say anything concerning a fact, here and today. First, and I hope its

not too sad for you, its clear that Obamas victory is not a political event. To hard

comparison, with the same feel for the movement of the civil rights, under the direction of

Martin Luther King during the 60s, has been a great popular event. But the success ofObama is for the moment, of the moment, straight inside the apparatus of the state, the

great capitalist economy, huge social inequalities, the war outside in Afghanistan, etc, twoolitical parties. So Obamas victory is a fact maybe an important fact of the history ofp

the state, but not, at least for the time being, a political event.

Second, Obamas victory is certainly a very important symbolic point of the state, of thehistory of the state. The development of this real from Africa of black people, in the name

f slavery, of cultural domination, of racism and poverty is an enormous event, a strongo

symbol, and not only for African Americans, but also for humanity as such.

But the symbolic level of the state is different from political truth. This strong symbol canperfectly be, at the political level, empty or even negative. The decision will be, finally, not

in the hands of Obama, but in the subjective determination of the symbol. Could you accept

the advice from an old philosopher, from an old country? I just can say to you, separate the

evels. Dont confuse them. Enjoy the Symbolic. Dont trust the state. And concerninglpolitics rely only on yourself, on the collective action.

But here we have a new operation: How can we be prepared for a political event? How can

we believe in something which is really a political event and not a fact of the state of

history? Generally, in those acts we live in a sort of political activity. We accept the general

laws of the state as a necessity. To anticipate the creation of the new possibility, thepossibility which is not the simple development of the state facts, at least at an intellectual

or ideological level, we must have an idea of the possibility, a general idea of the possibility

of a different possibility. We have the ideal of the formal possibility of other possibilities.And during more than one century, Communism has been the name of this ideal. And it was

a great name at first. When we find this name which was the name of the possibility ofsomething else, we have to return to the signification it had originally in two texts of Karl

arxs. One is from 1844 the manuscripts of 1844 and the other is from 1848, theM

famous ManifestooftheCommunistParty.In these texts Communism first signified negativity. It signified that the logic of place, of the

fundamental subordination of global workers to a dominating class, could be surmounted.

The structure of domination, which is that of history in its antiquity, is not to be


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confounded. Consequently, said Marx, the oligarchic power created in the corrupt state,

although theyre paying the workers in an organized situation, is not ineluctable. Other, the

negative part of the word Communism. The Communist idea, the good word, and I quotenot for Marx, but as a hypothesis. The Communism hypothesis is that another collective

organization can go on. Each an every one that has this, this new organization will

eliminate the inequality of worth and even, for Marx, the division of work. People who wereseparated between manual work and intellectual work, in other words between the city

and the country, each and everyone will be polyvalent workers: this is the expression in

Marxs Manifesto. The private appropriation of monstrous fortunes and their transmissionof within their means by the very existence of the political state apparatus, protected by the

ilitary and the police, separated from the civil society, will no longer appear to be anm

obvious necessity.

There will be, after Marx set up, after a brief sequence of what he names the plusvalue,

charged with destroying working men or the poor workers, a long sequence of theorganization in the ways of free association of producing wealth, which would support

hat Marx named the Decline of the State. And it was the most important definition ofwCommunism, which was the process of the decline of the state.

et me remind you that the state is here not only the state of government, police, army, andL

so on, but all that limits the possibility of collective creation.

So Communism in the middle of the 19th century designated the very general fact of

intellectual reorganizations. And this fact is the horizon for any action, although local andlimited in time, as it may be, which breaking with the order of the established state

composes a fragment of the new politics, fragment of politics of mobilization. It is in short

Communism, an idea whose function is regulatory and not a program. It is absurd to

categorize the Communist hypothesis to be a petitobjet a because it serves to produce,between different politics, lines of demarcation for a given political sequence. It is extra

compatible with the hypothesis of equality with which Communism is an ideal, and it ismancipating, on the one hand, as directly opposed to the Communist identity and itse

reactionary stance.

Communism in fact is a heuristic hypothesis frequently used in politics even if the wordoes not appear. And so its a useful idea for the political determination and not thed

concrete program of these politics.

Maybe you know the violence and kinds of ferocity with JeanPaul Sartre who, in the 50s of

the last century, said that any anticommunist is a dog. If we correctly read these abruptcontents its true. Any action of the state, because it can, any action of the state that appears

formally contradictory with the communist hypothesis in the general sense must be judged

s opposed to the recognition of the goal of humanity. And so its opposed to the properly

nited destiny of humanity.

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As we know, the contemporality of, as we should say, capitalism, a name of social existence,

s the correct name of social existence is competition. That is to say, it is the war within the

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capital and outside it, t at the war as real is certainly the intrahuman part of humanity.

In another interview, the same Sartre says, in such terms, I quote; If the Communist

ypothesis is not right, if it is not applicable, this means that humanity is not in itselfhsomething very different from ants or ferrets.

What he is saying there is that if competition, free markets, the search for little jouissancend the walls that protect you from the desires of the weak are collectivified, the humana

being is not worth scum.

So only, to be a real actor, the real activity of the becominghuman of the human beast, weave to know the history of the Communist hypothesis. And we have to study the question:h

is really the Communist hypothesis right or completely wrong?

In fact, there are two great historical sequences of this hypothesis. And it is quite a questionboth of them. The sequence of the creation, the creation of the power itself and that of the

first attempt to realize the theory. The first sequence begins with the French Revolutionand goes to the Paris Commune. Let us say, from 1792 to 1871. The first sequence of the

Communist hypothesis: it is that of the creation of the hypothesis. This sequence links (and

develops) the idea of Communism as a popular mass movement with the notion of thesavior of all. That is, the concrete form of the idea during this sequence, mass movement on

one side and on the other side the savior of all. Because it was a mobilizing popularmovement, under multiple forms demonstrations, strikes, uprising, armed action, and so

on around the figure of overthrowing the state we know, the state was, within its walls,

not only the government, the state was the form of the reduction of possibility it must be

strong to emancipate the possibility as such. And the only possible actor of this destructions the mass movement, and, first, the mass movement of workers. And this overthrowing ofi

the state is an insurrectional overthrowing, which is called, as you know, revolution.

So finally, there is a strong lesson achieved between the Communist idea and the practical

upheaval, revolution. This revolution must suppress the existing forms of society private

property, private means of ownership, the separation of humans into nations, thedistribution of work, and so on and establish Communist equality, or what the working

class thinkers of the 19th century, as my friend Jacques Rancire was so well inclined to,

ames the community of peoples. Communism was, by insurrection, the realization of thencommunity of peoples.

This sequence closes with the astonishing newness and radical flavor of the Paris

Commune in 1871. The Commune represented a different alternative, a rare combination

of popular movement, workingclass direction, and augmented insurrection. It showed the

economy of modernism of this formula, namely who was murdered, as you know, orexercised the power of the completely new tying of two moments, in one of the largest

capitals of Europe. But it also showed it for what it was worth, for it was not able either to


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extend the revolution to a national scale, or the capacity to organize resistance to the

lution, which was en r m ecounterrevo tirely supported by the F ench iddl class.

The second sequence of the Communist hypothesis goes from 1917, the Russian

Revolution, to 1976, the end of the Cultural Revolution in China, which also marks the end

of the militant youth movements in Europe and America (and Latin America of course),which arose all over the world, somewhere between 1966 and 1975, and whose center,

from the point of view of political innovation, was May 1968 in Paris and consequently

during the years that followed. But as you know during the late 60s we have many of thehings forming political resistance to the Vietnam War in America and also the movementt

of the youth practically in all countries all over the world.

This second sequence lasts about 60 years, but notice that it is separated from the first by agap of about the same length, more than 40 years. The history of the Communist hypothesis

s not a continuous history; its a continuity by sequences, which are separated. It isiimportant for us, for maybe we are right now between two sequences.

So this second sequence, which begins with the Russian Revolution, is dominated by one

thing and its (betting on it): How can we be victorious? That is the somber and practicallyunique question during the revolution. How contrary to the Paris Commune can we endure,

mbracing the sanguine revelation, the rich people and their mercenaries? How can wee

organize the new power, the new state, in such a way that its enemies would not destroy it?

Lenin recognized it, since under Lenin it the first answer to this question was founded. Andits certainly not for nothing that Lenin responded to the problem, when the insurrection

lasted in Russia one day longer than the Paris Commune. This official victory and the real,

what concerned Lenin were the problems of organization and indifference and was entirely

contained, starting with 1902 and of course in What is tobe done?, Lenins famous textWhatistobedone?, in the theory and the practice of the centralism and organization of a

lass party. We can say that the Communist Party only gives body in their thesis to thecrealization of the Communist hypothesis.

This construction of the second sequence of the hypothesis, the Party, actually restores the

question initiated in the first sequence, the question of the victory, in Russia, in China, inlbania, in Korea, in Vietnam, and sometimes in Cuba, and thus gives directions to the

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Communist Par y, the com lete revolution of the political and social order at once.

After the first sequence, whose dividing line was the formulation of the Communist

hypothesis, and of the reality of the movement, of the mass movement, there wasffectively a second sequence whose very line was a harsh and militaristic organization,e

local victory, duration, and construction of the new state.

As it is known, the second sequence created in its turn a program that did not have themeans to dissolve, with the result that apparently it did not solve the problem left by the

first. And in fact, the Party, the Communist Party, which was the body of the Communist

hypothesis, the Communist Party adapted to the insurrectional and military history that


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was successful against fighting their supporters, opposed to the inept, for the construction

of the State around the dictatorship of the proletariat in the sense of Marx. That is, a state

organizing the transition towards another state. The power of organizing the nonpowered,the dialectical form of the decline of the state. Under the form of the partystate like in

Russia, China, and other places a new form of state, which was authoritarian and

imperialist, was instated. And this state was negative, very far from the practical law of thepeople, and very far from the ideal of the decline of the state. The deployment of, as some

would have put it, violence, was in no recognition in the state of the inertia of its internal

ureaucracy. When the peasant has competition imposed on him by a mercenary, with thebarmy taking more than its share to demonstrate it, you would never win.

The most important contemporary problem is that the political form of the party does not

equate with the certain reorganization and the creative transformation of the Communisthypothesis. And it is to this problem that participated the last important contributions of

the second sequence. The Cultural Revolution in China and its neighbor Russia, is named,for example, after Mao. In China, Maos maxim on this point was: No Communism without

the Communist movement. No Communism is without the Communist movement. Theparty is not sufficient: if you dont have the movement, you have nothing at all if any

cause can be taken in the name of, to resonate, to develop the power of the state, andconsequently the combination of the real world, the Cultural Revolution attempted to start,

and quickly becomes cowardly and violent. The definition of the enemy, being either

uncertain or directed against the unity the whole of society, the Communist Party Maoas something to do with this when he declares, and I quote: We do now know, in ourh

country, where the movement is, or whether the movement is in the Communist Party.

So, the struggle was finally between the party and the facts. And it destroyed the social

consistency. Finally, the old order had to be reestablished in the worst conditions. In

France, after May 68, the dominating motif was that the organized collective action shouldcreate new political space, and not reproduce the centralized management of the state. The

reinvigorated content would be new forms of organization and action, enveloping the samepolitical divisions, intellectuals and workers, and proposing the prolongation of the

Communist hypothesis even beyond the logic of size or of power. There is an event that

even if this experience were under new forms, at the end of May 68, it would be considered

hat on the whole the modern form of the reactionary state was once again dominant intmarkets, under the cover of democracy.

The word Communism is today a completely forgotten word, only practically identifiedwith a lost experience. It is why the political situation, and the ideological situation are so

confusing. Because in fact, the Communist hypothesis, with or without the wordCommunism, which is only a word, you can speak, for example of the egalitarian hypothesis

or the hypothesis of radical equality or whatever, but all that remains of the right

hypothesis, the right to think an idea of new possibilities, and not only of realization of old

possibilities inscribed in the state. I see no hope. If this hypothesis must be ours, once morewe need new words. But we know better to do anything whatsoever as far as the collective

action is concerned. Without the horizon of equality and Communism, without this idea,


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nothing in historical and political revolution is of the nature to interest the philosopher. Let

everyone mind his own business and talk no more about it.

In fact, what has become of it, or we can even say our philosophical duty, is to contribute

with finding a new mode of existence of the hypothesis we have, new kinds of political

organization this hypothesis can give rise to. We have learned from the second sequencend its fateful failure, we must return to the conditions of existence of the Communista

hypothesis, and not only to perfect the means of our struggle.

The lesson of the second sequence is that the question of victory cannot be the center of

our sequence. We have, and we must, experience something new, and, there is, after the

resistance, the question of the power. What is the politics which is not to be confused with

the question of the power? That is, the real one. We cannot be satisfied with the dialecticsituation between the state and the mass movement, with the preparation of the

insurrection, with the construction of the power pool and dialectic organization, with theconcept of revolution, which today is obscure. We must, in reality, reestablish first the

hypothesis, communist or egalitarian, with the ideological or militant fit. And with respectto this, we are closer to the powers already in mind in the 19th century. There we are with

the history of the revolution of the last century. We are much closer to the 19th centuryhan to the last century. In the dialectical division of history we have, sometimes, to movet

ahead of time.

Just like maybe after 1840, we are now confronted with absolutely cynical capitalism, more

and more inspired by the ideas that only work backwards: poor are justly poor, theAfricans are underdeveloped, and that the future with no discernable limit belongs to the

civilized bourgeoisie of the Western world. All kinds of phenomena from the 19th century

reappear, extraordinarily extended forms of misery within these countries themselves.

Forever growing in inequality, the radical cut between the people of the working classes, ofthe uninformed, and the middle class, the complete dissolution of political power in the

service of property and capitalist profits. Several years of ratiocination, disorganization ofrevolutionaries, and the nihilist despair of large portions of the youth, the servility of the

large majority of them, and the experience of the base obsequiousness of formal groups in

he quest of the contemporary means to establish, reestablish, find new definitions for thet

Communist hypothesis.

All these characteristics are very close to the political situation which was dominant in

Europe in the middle of the 19th century. Which is why the apparent victory of capitalism,occasion to the second sequence of the Communist hypothesis, had been, in fact, a very

strong reaction, a very strong return to something very old. The politicization ofcontemporary capitalism is as you see the return to the cynical capitalism of the 19th

century. And it is probably why after the 19th century the question is not for us the victory

of the Communist hypothesis, but the conditions of its identity. Our problems are much

ore the problems of Marx than the problems of Lenin, and that was the great question ofhe revolutionaries of the 19th century.

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First, did the historical existence of the hypothesis produce the conditions in a large nation

of people and that we are not made prisoners by the very definition of the word uttered by

our enemies? Even historical resistance to the hypothesis, where there is a lot of power, isthat, sort of identified here, that is oppressing us. It is complex, but at the moment exciting

too. By combining conflicts of thought because at the beginning we are dealing with a new

form of an instance or idea, there is a weight to the constructions of thought, like theconstruction of a new form of dialectic by Marx. These constructions of thought are always

normal and universal. But we are also with new political experimentations, which are local

and singular, and the mixture of the two may constitute a thought at the universal level,ith political experimentation at the local or singular level, which finally can produce thew

new form: the Communist hypothesis.

This existence must be, throughout history, in consciousness, by new forms of theseorganizations of what is the political event, and on the level by the result and by learning of

ocal experimentation. So we can open the third sequence of this great time, we can. And ifust.

lwe can, we m

Thank you.

alain badiou - is the word communism forever doomed?

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