Abstract
The last chapter begins by presenting Lefort’s definition of democracy as a “form of society” rather than a political regime or set of rules. This way of understanding, sha**, and staging the social is reflected first and foremost in the representation of the sphere of power. The chapter then explores the relationship between democracy and modernity, before turning to totalitarianism. Lefort presents the totalitarian form of society as a response to the modern democratic symbolic institution, an attempt to re-establish a foundation for society. The chapter concludes by analyzing Lefort’s position on revolution and highlighting some internal tensions in his idea of democracy.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
About democratic community Lefort writes: “The idea that power belongs to no one is not, therefore, to be confused with the idea that it designates an empty place”. The former idea may be formulated by political actors, but not the latter. The first formulation in fact implies the actors’ self-representation, as they deny one another the right to take power. The old Greek formula to the effect that power is in the middle (and historians tell us that it was elaborated within the framework of an aristocratic society before being bequeathed to democracy) still indicates the presence of a group which has an image of itself, of its space and of its bounds. The reference to an empty place, by contrast, eludes speech insofar as it does not presuppose the existence of a community whose members discover themselves to be subjects by the very fact of their being members. The formula “power belongs to no one” can also be translated into the formula “power belongs to none of us” (and in historical terms, this appears to be the earlier of the two). The reference to an empty place, on the other hand, implies a reference to a society without any positive determination, which cannot be represented by the figure of a community”. (Lefort 1988, pp. 225–226). See also Lefort (2007b, p. 991). From this point of view, this description of democracy can be related to the debate conducted by authors who have attempted to develop theories or descriptions of community that go beyond substantivist semantics, beyond any idea of ownership and essence. See Esposito (2009), Blanchot (2006), Nancy (1991), and Agamben (1993).
- 3.
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- 5.
Lefort (1986, p. 258) writes: “From the moment when the rights of man are posited as the ultimate reference, established right is open to question. It becomes still more so as the collective wills or, one might prefer to say, social agents bearing new demands mobilize a force in opposition to the one that tends to contain the effects of the recognized rights. Now, where right is in question, society—that is, the established order—is in question.” And, he continues a few pages later: “These rights are one of the generative principles of democracy. Such principles do not exist in the same way as positive institutions, whose actual elements can be listed, even though it is certainly true that they animate institutions. Their effectiveness stems from the allegiance that is given them, and this allegiance is bound up with a way of being in society, which cannot be measured by the mere preservation of acquired benefits. In short, rights cannot be dissociated from the awareness of rights: this is my first observation. But it is no less true that this awareness of rights is all the more widespread when they are declared, when power is said to guarantee them, when liberties are made visible by laws. Thus the awareness of right and its institutionalization are ambiguously related” (260).
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- 7.
It is clear that one of the main points of reference in the passage is the reflection of Machiavelli.
- 8.
This intertwining of activity and passivity, the dynamic that eludes and overrides human actions and consciousness, is a specific element of the meaning of the institution, as Merleau-Ponty had already conceived of it. See Merleau-Ponty (1988).
- 9.
See the article “The Permanence of the Theologico-Political?”, originally published in 1981 and now in Lefort (1986, pp. 213–255).
- 10.
- 11.
It is Lefort himself, in a few surprising if not in fact perplexing lines, who defines the democratic symbolic dimension as a necessary dimension unrelated to the economic and technical ones. See Lefort (2007b).
- 12.
For Lefort, all thought is always situated and always political. His own thinking must therefore also be considered a stand against totalitarianism and in favor of democracy.
- 13.
Therefore, the interpretations that I criticized and that see Lefort’s ideas as a continuous attempt to understand and critique Soviet society cannot be considered wrong. See Molina (2005) or Poltier (1997). The philosophical reflection on the concept of totalitarianism is too extensive to be considered in a footnote. For an in-depth and comprehensive overview on the subject see at least Forti (2024). As far as our study is concerned, it is sufficient to note that Lefort’s reflection is part of a broad debate that in France originated as early as the 1930s with the interventions of Raymond Aron, Georges Bataille, and Simone Weil, and which reached its greatest extent in the 1960s and 1970s. These years, in which Lefort produced his best definition of a personal theory of totalitarianism developed as a response to the democratic revolution, are the same in which the question of totalitarianism explodes in the political sphere and in the media. The journals Libre and Textures, of which Lefort was among the liveliest contributors, along with Marcel Gauchet and Miguel Abensour, contributed profoundly to this debate in 1970s France. For a critical examination of this discussion see Christofferson (2004).
- 14.
- 15.
In these years Lefort still distinguishes the bureaucratic Soviet regime from traditional forms of despotism, which include Nazism.
- 16.
His 1956 article “Totalitarianism without Stalin” (Lefort 1986, pp. 52–88) is of decisive importance to this development. As Abensour (1993, pp. 79–136) rightly notes, this essay marks a theoretical turning point, shifting from the critique of bureaucratic society to the conceptualization of the totalitarian form of society.
- 17.
Miguel Abensour argues that Lefort’s work puts forward two different theorizations of totalitarianism. The first, still essentially Marxist, is contained in a series of texts from the late 1940s and early 1960s that present a minimal definition of the form. In the 1970s, however, Lefort arrived at a maximal definition rooted in the context of democratic revolution and beyond the scope of Marxism.
- 18.
Lefort derives the term “Egocrat” from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s famous The Gulag Archipelago, the publication of which contributed profoundly to the debate on Soviet totalitarianism in early 1970s France. Lefort discusses this essay in depth in his Un homme en trop (Lefort 1976). See Solzhenitsyn (1974). The egocrat describes, for Lefort, the unprecedented form of totalitarian power. He is not simply a despot who rules above the laws but his function is to embody the entire social body. He is the image of power, and his body represents the entire extent of society.
- 19.
For Lefort, the idea of a united and homogeneous people is a fundamental aspect of totalitarianism. The philosopher argues that this is not a contradictory relationship but rather one of mutual consensus between the party, the ruling class, and the egocrat. See Lefort (1986, pp. 298–299), where Lefort states: “It should also be observed that in totalitarian ideology, the representation of the People-as-One is in no way contradictory with that of the party. The party does not appear as distinct from the people or from the proletariat, which is the quintessence of it. It does not have a specific reality within society. The party is the proletariat in the sense that it is identical with it. At the same time, it is the guide or, as Lenin put it, the consciousness of the proletariat; or, as I would say, using an old political metaphor, to which I shall come back, it is its head. And, similarly, the representation of the People-as-One is not in contradiction with that of an omnipotent, omniscient power, with, in the last analysis, that of the Egocrat (to use Solzhenitsyn’s term), the ultimate figure of that power. Such a power, detached from the social whole, towering over everything, merges with the party, with the people, with the proletariat. It merges with the body as a whole, while at the same time it is its head. A whole sequence of representations is to be found here, the logic of which should not escape us. Identification of the people with the proletariat, of the proletariat with the party, of the party with the leadership, of the leadership with the Egocrat. On each occasion, an organ is both the whole and the detached part that makes the whole, that institutes it”.
- 20.
On this point, little debated by critics, see Lefort (2007b, pp. 631–655). This essay is a transcript of a speech delivered by the philosopher during the Rencontres internationales de Genève held in the Swiss city between October 5 and 6, 1989, and of the debate that followed.
- 21.
- 22.
On the relationship between democracy and ideology, see Olivier Mongin’s (2019) lucid analysis. Issue 451 of the journal Esprit, in which Mongin’s text is published, contains a section devoted to Lefort named “L’inquiétude démocratique. Claude Lefort au present”.
- 23.
- 24.
See Lefort (1988, pp. 115–134). In these pages Lefort analyzes the theory of Edgar Quinet, for whom terror is a response to the void left by religion. In 2000, pp. 159–171, he argues that both Michelet and Quinet grasp the very essence of revolution in religion. It is precisely this belief that differentiates them from Tocqueville.
- 25.
- 26.
Lefort (1988, p. 107) affirms: “Revolutionary ideology is constituted by the insane assertion of the unity, or indeed the identity, of the people. The legitimacy, the truth and the creativity of history are assumed to come together in the people. Now this primordial image contains a contradiction, for the people appear to conform to their essence only if they are distinguished from the empirical popular masses, only if they institute themselves as – and display themselves as being – legislators, as actors conscious of their ends”.
- 27.
The article I refer to here (Lefort 2007b, pp. 267–273) originally appeared in issue no. 9 of the journal Esprit in 1976. In this issue, entitled “Révolution et totalitarisme”, a number of authors, including Lefort, Furet, Richir, and Paul Thibaud (1976), discuss the question of revolution. This is why Lefort directly criticizes the positions of Furet and Richir.
- 28.
- 29.
Arato (2012) reads Lefort as the philosopher of the post-revolutionary paradigm of democratic transformation.
- 30.
The expression is used by Merleau-Ponty, who states that “every institution is a symbolic system that the subject incorporates as a functional style, as a global configuration, without needing to conceive it expressly” (Merleau-Ponty 1988, p. 59).
- 31.
This interpretation of democracy brings Lefort closer to radical democracy theorists like Laclau and Mouffe (Laclau 2005) or McCormick (2011) without eliminating the radical differences between them. On radical democracy see Deleixhe (2019), Breckman (2013), and Tønder and Thomassen (2005). J.D. Ingram (2006) grasps the tension between liberalism and radical democracy in Lefort’s thought.
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Di Pierro, M. (2023). Democracy. In: Claude Lefort's Political Philosophy. Political Philosophy and Public Purpose. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36378-8_8
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