Democracy's barque

To: Retort
From: RP

[Raj Patel responds to the observation that "Zizek in a new essay calls democracy "the political complement of global capitalism". It's this logic that tempts some of us - enemies of capital - to use "democracy" only as a term of abuse, to give up on any normative sense. Chomsky, as this passage reveals, refuses to abandon it to liberals and other rightists. What's our position?". Raj deploys Badiou to navigate between Zizek's Scylla and Chomsky's Charybdis. IB]

Zizek’s ideas on democracy were first voiced by Alain Badiou in the 1990s. It’s worth going back to the source because Zizek only partly follows through on Badiou’s analysis about democracy's problems. That’s a shame, because Badiou offers a way to wend a course between Chomsky’s celebration and Zizek’s condemnation of democracy.

First, it’s clear that Badiou doesn’t like democracy as we now know it. In the preface to the Italian edition of Metapolitica, he observes:

“[T]he enemy today is not called Empire or Capital. It is called Democracy. With this term we mean not only the empty form of the ‘representative system’, but even more the modern figure of equality, reduced to equality before the offer of the market, rendering every individual equal to any other on the sole basis of virtually being, like anyone else, a consumer.”

For Badiou, democracy is nothing but a fig-leaf for authoritarianism, and it is made so because what passes for politics in our national democracies is invariably the shifting around of various kinds of opinion. Democracy as an echo-chamber for conservative ideas is, in this sense, anathema to politics. (The Onion provides a healthy gloss on this: http://www.theonion.com/content/news/americans_announce_theyre_dropping).

Which begs the question: what is politics? Badiou spends much time in his Being and Event laying the foundation for this, but it’s a decade later, in Metapolitics, that he articulates it best. The problem with democracy is that it bastardizes equality; by contrast, Politics are the instantiation of specific ways of thinking that have, as one of their foundations, the axiom of equality. Politics are, in other words, the practical consequences of fidelity to  the idea of equality.

And practical consequences there are. His closing thoughts in Metapolitics (pp151-152) are worth reading carefully- Badiou suggests where democracy, as opposed to democratic authoritarianism, might flourish:

“And since the term ‘democracy’ is today decisive, let me conclude by providing my own definition of it, one in which its identity with politics will be rendered legible.

“Democracy consists in the always singular adjustment of freedom and equality. But what is the moment of freedom in politics? It is the one wherein the State is put at a distance, and hence the one wherein the political function p operates as the assignation of a measure to the errant superpower of the state of the situation. And what is equality, if not the operation whereby, in the distance thus created, the political function π is applied once again, this time so as to produce the 1?Thus,for a determinate political procedure, the political adjustment of freedom and equality is nothing but the adjustment of the last two terms of its numericality.

“It is written:[ π (ε)― π (π (ε)) → 1].

“It should go without saying that what we have here is the notation of democracy. Our two examples show that this notation has had singular names: ‘Soviets’ during the Bolshevik revolution, ‘liberated zones’ during the Maoist process. But democracy has had many other names in the past. It has some in the present (for example: ‘gathering of the Organisation Politique and of the collective of illegal immigrant workers from the hostels’); and it will have others in the future.

“Despite its rarity, politics ? and hence democracy ? has existed, exists and will exist. And alongside it, under its demanding condition, metapolitics ? which is what a philosophy declares, with its own effects in mind, to be worthy of the name ‘politics’.”

Yes, Badiou might be exaggerating the importance of his own Organisation Politique as locus of real democracy today, but he is, I think, on to something when he argues that:

“A genuinely political organisation, or a collective system of conditions for bringing politics into being, is the least bound place of all. Everyone on the ground is essentially alone in the immediate solution of problems, and their meetings, or proceedings, have as their natural content protocols of delegation and inquest whose discussion is no more convivial or superegotistical than that of two scientists involved in debating a very complex question.”

If democracy is understood as the state’s armour against accusations of barbarism, then, yes, democracy is rubbish. But if it’s term we would use, only after the fact, to describe a way of thinking and acting politically consonant with equality, then there do seem to be reasons to keep hopes for democracy alive.

Onward,
Raj



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To: Retort
From: IB

UC Berkeley, the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and their partners have announced that the signing of the ten year contract with BP to develop GM agrofuels and more efficient oil extraction has already happened. [See below.] That this half billion dollar deal had to be signed in secret is comfortless tribute to the campaign of resistance, with inspired work during this phase of the struggle by Lee, Ali, Kamal, Ignacio, Jennifer, Miguel, Tad and many others. Our thanks to all. 

Secrecy has of course always been the default modus operandi of the UC administration, the Lawrence Berkeley Lab weapons scientists, and BP executives. Thus the BPerkeley deal should be understood in the light of this remark of Chomsky's:

"Personally I'm in favor of democracy, which means that the central institutions in the society have to be under popular control. Now, under capitalism we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control. Thus, a corporation or an industry is, if we were to think of it in political terms, fascist; that is, it has tight control at the top and strict obedience has to be established at every level -- there's a little bargaining, a little give and take, but the line of authority is perfectly straightforward. Just as I'm opposed to political fascism, I'm opposed to economic fascism. I think that until major institutions of society are under the popular control of participants and communities, it's pointless to talk about democracy."

Zizek in a new essay calls democracy "the political complement of global capitalism". It's this logic that tempts some of us - enemies of capital - to use "democracy" only as a term of abuse, to give up on any normative sense. Chomsky, as this passage reveals, refuses to abandon it to liberals and other rightists. What's our position?