Badiou: Is the word communism forever doomed?

Excerpt from Badiou (Lacan.com)

The word Communism is today a completely forgotten word, only practically identified with 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 word Communism, 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 more we 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, 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 sequence and its fateful failure, we must return to the conditions of existence of the Communist 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 dialectic situation between the state and the mass movement, with the preparation of the insurrection, with the construction of the power pool and dialectic organization, with the concept 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 respect to 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 century than to the last century. In the dialectical division of history we have, sometimes, to move 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, the Africans 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, of the uninformed, and the middle class, the complete dissolution of political power in the service of property and capitalist profits. Several years of ratiocination, disorganization of revolutionaries, 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 the quest of the contemporary means to establish, re-establish, find new definitions for the 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 of contemporary 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 more the problems of Marx than the problems of Lenin, and that was the great question of the revolutionaries of the 19th century.

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, is that, 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 the construction 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, with political experimentation at the local or singular level, which finally can produce the new form: the Communist hypothesis.

This existence must be, throughout history, in consciousness, by new forms of these organizations of what is the political event, and on the level by the result and by learning of local experimentation. So we can open the third sequence of this great time, we can. And if we can, we must.

via www.lacan.com

Comments

[Kvond]

I don't know, is the phrase "Nazism" ruined? When you want to invoke a word and rescue it from its historical stain, trying to burn off the dross of "mistakes" this is perhaps a venture that deserves crticism.

How about we come up with a different word, and perhaps a different Master.

[aidan]

You make no distinction between 'Nazism' and 'communism' in this respect Kvond?

[Kvond]

Hmmm. I posted a response some days ago, but it did not seem to take....

No, in the respect of what it means to take up a word, a specific word, from history, and purge from it all of its historical stain, I can see no striking difference.

Why try to save a word from history? Why exercise yourself so nostalgically? Let us find ANOTHER word.

I do not care to indulge in Badiou's driftings back to the summer of 68, just so I can forget the Khmer Rouge.