What Is To Be Done?: A Dialogue on Communism, Capitalism, and the Future of Democracy

by Alain Badiou, Marcel Gauchet

The fall of the Berlin wall was seen by many as the final triumph of liberal democracy over communism. But now, in the wake of the great financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath, things look a little different. New questions are arising about capitalism and democracy, new social movements are challenging established institutions and new political possibilities are emerging. Is democracy an inevitable hostage of capitalism, or can it reinvent itself to meet the challenge of globalization?

In an exclusive, previously unpublished dialogue, Alain Badiou, a key figure of the radical left and a leading advocate of the communist idea, and Marcel Gauchet, a major exponent of anti-totalitarianism and a champion of liberal democracy, confront one another. Together, they take stock of history, interrogate one another s views and defend their respective projects: on the one side, the revival of the communist hypothesis, and on the other, the radical reform of a contested democratic model.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 26, 2016

About the author

Alain Badiou, Ph.D., born in Rabat, Morocco in 1937, holds the Rene Descartes Chair at the European Graduate School EGS. Alain Badiou was a student at the École Normale Supérieure in the 1950s. He taught at the University of Paris VIII (Vincennes-Saint Denis) from 1969 until 1999, when he returned to ENS as the Chair of the philosophy department. He continues to teach a popular seminar at the Collège International de Philosophie, on topics ranging from the great 'antiphilosophers' (Saint-Paul, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Lacan) to the major conceptual innovations of the twentieth century. Much of Badiou's life has been shaped by his dedication to the consequences of the May 1968 revolt in Paris. Long a leading member of Union des jeunesses communistes de France (marxistes-léninistes), he remains with Sylvain Lazarus and Natacha Michel at the center of L'Organisation Politique, a post-party organization concerned with direct popular intervention in a wide range of issues (including immigration, labor, and housing). He is the author of several successful novels and plays as well as more than a dozen philosophical works.

Trained as a mathematician, Alain Badiou is one of the most original French philosophers today. Influenced by Plato, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Jacques Lacan and Gilles Deleuze, he is an outspoken critic of both the analytic as well as the postmodern schools of thoughts. His philosophy seeks to expose and make sense of the potential of radical innovation (revolution, invention, transfiguration) in every situation.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Badiou's concept of 'Zoning' [Zonage] is explained here and is worthy investigation. Other than that, there's not too much else going on other than two paradigmatic thinkers butting heads over that which cannot be reconciled.

Marcel Gauchet is some neoliberal dipshit who thinks liberal democracy can reign in the horrors of capitalism. The debate gets off to a slow start, but by the time Gauchet lays out his analysis of the current situation, an analysis sans Marxism, Badiou goes all out in his polemics.

Gauchet really offers no basis for any of his claims, while Badiou rightly calls out his misguided optimism. Gauchet blithely dismisses most of what Badiou argues for, offering little by way of convincing argument. Badiou's checkmate is the claim that Capital is, and always will be the big Other of Democracy in the contemporary world.

[Benjamin Britton · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Let me begin by mentioning three components of a generic definition.

First, “communism” is the name of the conviction that it’s possible to extricate the becoming of all humanity from the evil grip of capitalism.The still absolutely critical importance of private property, the uncontrolled interplay of competing interests, the frantic pursuit of profit as the sole law of economic activity, the diktats of economic and financial monopolies: all this has spawned inequalities as undeniable as they are monstrous. We were talking about the pathological nature of “totalitarian” societies, but isn’t the current neoliberal world just as pathological? Today, 10 percent of the world’s population possesses 86 percent of the resources. One percent of the world’s population owns 46 percent of those same resources. Those are the official figures, and they will continue to grow. Is a world like that tolerable? No. Accepting it is out of the question. Freeing the collective space from capital’s pernicious control would be the first level of the definition.

Second, “communism” denotes the hypothesis that the state, a coercive apparatus distinct from society but allowed by it into its existence and reproduction, is not a natural, inevitable form of the structuration of human societies. We can and we must do without it. This is related to the notion of the withering away of the state in the classical Marxist tradition.

Third, “communism” means that the division of labor and intellectual labor, (and so on) is in no way an absolute necessity for organizing economic production.

When combined, these three points make up a comprehensive alternative to the development of human history up to the present. Thus, “communism” will denote the possibility and pursuit of the unification, in a real historical process, of these three dimensions: the deprivatization of the production process, the withering away of the state, and the reunification and polymorphism of labor.”


On the question of its organization, I’ll return to Marx again. I believe four teachings that are equivalent to criteria can be deduced from his thinking.

First of all, Marx developed an idea that was very important, indeed fundamental, in my opinion: according to him, communists aren’t “outsiders,” they’re not a distinct or isolated historical and political component. On the contrary, they’re directly involved in a pre-existing general movement that they’ll later be responsible for directing. Communists must assert their difference but without cutting themselves off from the general dynamic that makes their very existence possible. That immediately precludes their grouping together as a separate vanguard, or a party operating in a vacuum. With Mao, that principle became a sort of definition of politics, under the name of “the mass line.” In Mao’s view, the Party was nothing if it was not completely immersed in the popular movement from which it derived its existence as well as its programmatic and tactical ideas. I gradually became opposed to the idea of a “communist party” in the traditional sense, because I think every party points to a core group, a pattern of authority, which leads back to an authoritarian negation and eradication of multiplicity. The transcendence of the One is always re-established in the figure of the Party. The One is my main enemy, however, both metaphysically and politically. But please don’t misunderstand me: I’m not advocating anarchistic disorganization. The point I’m making is that we need to find coherent and effective forms of intervention, which, although connected to society, go beyond the party model.

The basic concept is less that of leadership than of direction.
Indeed, this is the second criterion: the bearers of the communist Idea are characterized by an ability to communicate what the immediate future might look like. It’s not their job to present great rapturous scenes of the coming paradise or to hold forth at every opportunity on the ideal society that may never come to pass . . . Let’s leave that to utopians of all persuasions. No, communists must define what political forms are possible with regard to the current situation. If there’s a failure to present a credible picture of the next step, then every revolutionary movement will lead to a dead end. To give but one example, look at what happened in Egypt recently. The leaders of the admirable uprising of 2011 had no idea where they were headed. People who don’t know what they want invariably demand “democratic” elections. These elections, as usual, bring to power people whom the revolutionaries of the first hour don’t like, in this case the Muslim Brotherhood. So the revolutionaries took to the streets again against the Brotherhood. And, using this divided uprising as a pretext, the military, the longstanding enemy of the Brotherhood, launched a coup d’état and took back power – the military power against which the young revolutionaries had risen up to the cries of “Mubarak, get out!” It was
coming, to refrain from simple negative impulses, and that’s a basic responsibility of communist politics.

The third criterion of communist organization is that it must follow an internationalist logic. Marx stressed this point heavily, and that’s why he created the First International. But once again, internationalism must not harden into a separate entity. Communists are internationalists, but they must be so right within the local processes of emancipation. They must not think in terms of contingent or limited (national, regional, etc.) interests but understand the universal contribution of their action: what happens here concerns the whole world.

And finally, the fourth and last criterion, communists must defend a global strategic vision, subsumed by the Idea as I have presented it, and whose matrix is anti-capitalism.

There, now combine the generic definition (in three points) and the “organizational” definition (in four points) and you’ll get what I mean by “communism.” A real political program in seven points!”


“Totalitarian” is a convenient label for immediately ruling out emancipatory politics that don’t fit the model of parliamentary democracy alone.”

“In reality, what did Lenin do? Anything but create a unified society! He continued to maintain, and even increased, certain divisions and factors of inequality. For example, on the question of the organization of work, he studied Taylorism closely and in fact reinforced discipline and hierarchical divisions. He constantly emphasized the power and competence of experts, the distinguished masters of the science of history. Naturally, he declared that the country had to move boldly forward to mechanize the countryside; at no time, however, was there an intrinsic process of reduction or elimination of the differences between the cities and the rural areas. As for the state apparatus, it was neither weakened nor done away with but on the contrary made stronger. After Lenin, Stalin himself never portrayed Soviet society as a unified totality. Quite the contrary! He said that, under socialism, class struggle had not only continued to exist but had actually grown more intense. In short, the basic scenario in the USSR was not at all totalizing or unified. The real decisions that were made were not in line with what you’ve described.
In China too, profound obstacles and distinctions remained or were created. Before the Cultural Revolution, the very strict distinction between engineers and workers in the factories was reaffirmed on the basis of the Soviet model. Liu Shaoqi, the president of the People’s Republic of China from 1959 to 1968, stressed the importance of both the individual bonus system and the retention of the possibility of laying off workers in the interest of complying with the requirements of production imperatives. The countryside was left behind, after the big landlords were eliminated. On all these issues, at least until the early 1960s, the Chinese Communist Party followed the Stalinist line. It was precisely against these bureaucratized inequalities that Mao tried to lead an uprising, but, far from restoring a “totality,” it created deep divisions in the society. This was because the philosophy of communism is dialectical through and through; it is based on the movement of contradictions.”

“When it comes to my fidelity to Maoism, you really have to understand what you’re talking about. It’s so easy to caricature it . . . I haven’t retained everything from Mao. In some respects there was an indisputable continuity between the Chinese and Stalinist regimes. I’m thinking in particular of the inordinate power acquired by the bureaucratic class. But that’s a lineage I dismiss out of hand. What I’m mainly concerned with is the Cultural Revolution. This very poorly understood revolutionary episode went through several very different stages. I only focus on its beginning sequence, the initial phase that began in 1966, reached its high point in 1967, and can be considered as being over by fall 1968 at the latest. This first sequence represented an enterprise with a unique political content: what we witnessed was the first authentically communist mass movement. Mao launched an unprecedented appeal, which undermined Stalinism from within. He sparked an enormous mobilization, first of students, then of workers. The source of change was no longer the state or the Party; rather, it was drawn from social forces that, although unorganized at first, were considered as the only true actors of historical and political creation. This marked the only attempt in the history of communism to challenge the tragic outcome of the experience of Soviet socialism,
namely, the capture of politics by the state. When the state, via the Party, gains a monopoly on political action it leads in actual fact to a total depoliticization of society. Totalitarianism is sometimes defined as a regime in which everything becomes political. I, for one, think it should be defined instead as an eradication of politics. That’s what Mao wanted to break with. When, before an audience of Red Guards, who were enthralled by the figure of the political leader, Mao said: “Get involved in the affairs of the state,” it was a gesture absolutely contrary to the entire Stalinist heritage.
Of course, the mobilization failed, owing to its internal breakdown, its lack of discipline and organization, the factional struggles it caused, and the fierce resistance of the mid-level cadres of the Party apparatus. It’s not a question of fetishizing the GPCR (the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” as it was called back then). In terms of the experiment it represented, however, the promise of the Maoist revolution was huge, and its legacy decisive.”

“Mao was in charge of a complex, multifaceted venture, which, although locally violent, was much less so than the commonly used statistics suggest. For example, we now know that one of the decisive episodes of the first sequence, “the Wuhan episode,” in July 1967, caused the death of a little fewer than a thousand people. That’s a lot, but it’s not on the scale of the maximal figures circulating in public opinion.”

“My intention was certainly not to minimize losses like those! You just have to be wary of the assessments put forward by adversaries. Where did most of the violence that occurred during the Cultural Revolution actually come from? From the clashes between factions and from their anarchistic actions, as is seen in all revolutions. We should note in this respect that the most fanatic people were the rightwing Red Guard groups who supported the regime and were composed largely of children of cadres, whose objective was to”
defend their privileges. That said, most of the violence, particularly from the 1970s on, came from the explicitly anti-Maoist action of the army and the state apparatus, which gave the orders to fire on the revolutionaries everywhere, especially in the provinces, in order to regain control. Where the Maoist left was strong, as in Shanghai, organizing workers and students in a new, flexible framework, under the direction of experienced, inventive political leaders, there were very few deaths. Conversely, where the bureaucratic and military right was very powerful, as in Canton, the violence was extreme. This reminds me of the fact that the heaviest loaded cart bound for the guillotine in 1794 was not of Robespierre’s doing but of the counter-revolutionary Thermidoreans’, who were beginning a long period of White Terror by executing all the leaders of the great Committee of Public Safety.”

“We haven’t gotten to the crux of the argument yet, I can tell, but I would nevertheless like to comment on this first part of it. I’ve never been, either now or in the past, a blind disciple of Marx, or even a “Marxist.” Just as with Mao, my appreciation of Marx is selective, linked to the political circumstances and my intellectual interests.”

“If we’re talking about the modern form of democracy, namely, parliamentary democracy, I’m afraid this wonderful project cannot be achieved. By wanting to preserve the form, Marcel Gauchet, you underestimate a crucial point that dooms your proposition to failure: representative democracy is constitutively controlled by capital.”

“we are supposedly witnessing the final victory of the parliamentary democracies, all without exception situated in the globalized capitalist context, which are the embodiment of the modern project itself. Democracy as the regime of finally pure immanence, democracy as the model that, through the mechanisms of political representation, only follows the logic of autonomy. We’ve supposedly finished with transcendence, with the big Other. But, for me, that’s the problem, because you have to wonder whether there’s not also a big Other – different from the divine big Other – lurking within representative democracy. I maintain that this big Other is capital. Capital is the big Other of democracy, which is subjected to its domination and perpetuates it. It is therefore impossible to extract democratic society as we know it from the capitalist matrix once and for all. But let me immediately add that this holds true for all time and in all places. Democracy is always linked and in thrall to capital; that’s a point Marx himself had already correctly noted.”

“My current idea about this issue is that we need to create conditions such that it would be up to the enemies to decide on their position. If the enemies think they can participate in politics, if they agree to join in the common agora, then that opportunity should be open to them. There’s no question of excluding them out of hand. But if they refuse to join, there’s a great risk that they may want to go on the offensive, that they may opt for aggression. If that’s the case, we’ll have to defend ourselves. Let’s not be naïve: when someone attacks you on the street the question of your immediate reaction is unavoidable. The imperative that I deduce from this is as follows: assuming that recourse to violence against enemies is necessary, it should be exclusively defensive.”

“Liberalism – the doctrine that there are only individuals – has from the start been nothing less than the very theoretical basis of the thinkers of capitalism. Capitalism inherently needs an anthropological conception of that sort. Nothing is more important to it than this vision of sovereign individuals living together harmoniously thanks to the miraculous intervention of the invisible hand . . . It is capitalism itself that leads us into the era of individuals, and that’s not a recent phenomenon. The current system isn’t in crisis; on the contrary, it’s in perfect health! The way you see it, democracy is succumbing to the liberal virus. The way I see it, the link between parliamentary democracy and liberalism is anything but a historical contingency. Is democracy today corrupted by the effects of interindividual free competition? No, that’s its very essence. You know, when you believe that the only acceptable political decision is one made in an isolated voting booth [isoloir] – the word is particularly apt and revealing – you can’t then complain about the fact that people reason from a strictly personal point of view.”

“As regards the private property/collective ownership opposition, the first thing to note is that this tension runs through the whole history of the modes of production, to use Marx’s term. Well before the development of the communist idea as such, the formation of groups of wealthy owners, their control over political power, and the problematic nature of such domination were always issues. There were slave owners, landlords, and, with the coming of capitalism, business owners. Revolts against the order thus established always occurred, and alternative approaches were always developed. The intention was to put an end to an economic and social organization, private property, the protest against which wasn’t exclusively the preserve of the communist idea. Second, you refer to the historical experience of the socialist states. The lesson I’ve learned from that experience when it comes to this issue is not that collective ownership is essentially doomed to failure and inefficiency. What I note above all is that, in the USSR and elsewhere, the collective appropriation of the means of production was systematically interpreted as the establishment of state ownership. Collective and state ownership were merged and conflated. This resulted in a greatly over-extended and dogmatic program of nationalizations.”

“If you think that the world can and must change absolutely; that there is neither a nature of things to be respected nor pre-formed subjects to be maintained, you thereby admit that the individual may be sacrificable.”

“But the truth is, I’m a thoughtful, peace-loving man. I’m not saying that enemies, even if there are always some, should be physically exterminated or that supporters should be thrown to the wolves, even if every real commitment potentially involves risking one’s very life. What I’m saying is that in politics it’s very often a matter of sacrificing the individual in oneself, the strictly individual figure of one’s self, in order to become a subject. In politics you might come to believe that the strong convictions you are defending are ultimately more important than your own little life. That’s what accounts for its – sometimes tragic – grandeur. But it’s always a matter of a fundamental selflessness in political subjectivation. The subject is someone who breaks free from self-centered demands and obeys transindividual imperatives. This can take the form of a desire for equality, an emancipatory aspiration that mobilizes a “we.” So let’s not leave the subject to the economists, who encapsulate it in the figure of the individual, his/her personal appetites, and his/her petty freedoms.”



Alain Badiou

[Rhys · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two thinkers having a critical conversation about the communist hypothesis and the democratic hypothesis - what is great about this dialogue is that they are actually listening to each other.

The result is meaningful.

[Gin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the dialogue between the two supposedly opposing sides to be insightful and highly accessible. Badiou in particular towards the end explained the Subject finally in a manner that I could grasp, which would be useful when I read his work and those that uses it in a similar manner (like Zizek). Gaudet too had a really interesting take on the subject, which I felt was quite similar to Badiou’s (these are covered in Chapter 8).

Primarily the dialogue is between reformism (represented by Gauchnet) and the communist hypothesis (represented by Badiou). They started out on opposing sides but at the end, it felt like they were able to agree on what is needed to deal with neoliberal globalisation. Certainly they were not antagonistic to each other, though it should be stated that they weren’t at all so even in the beginning. I would say that they want the same goal, but just have different ways of getting to it.

One of the most interesting aspect for me was when Badiou was sketching out the structure of the contemporary world (found in the appendix, but which he explains in the chapter Deconstruction of Capitalism. He also was at his most explicit in the rejection of the experience of the actually existing socialist states here, though there were shades of this throughout the book. The idea that those historical socialist states essentially rejected modernity, much like their counterparts on the fascist right did, was for me quite a novel revelation.

Overall, I thought that this was a really good dialogue between these two philosophers, and a piece of text which will continue to be relevant so long as we live under capitalism, and all that it entails in the social, economic and political sphere. Reform or revolution, it essentially comes down to that, but it doesn’t mean that proponents of either cannot work with each other to achieve that goal of overturning capitalism and resolving its discontents.

[Aidana Amanzholova · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two prominent French philosophers debate the future of capitalism and democracy, offering their own perspectives on how change must be implemented. What is to be done? Reform or revolution? These are the questions a far-left thinker Alain Badiou and a democratic reformist Marcel Gauchet try to answer throughout the debate. In the end, they agree they are fighting the same enemy: capitalist exploitation, thus, they express the need to join forces despite their polar differences.

This work is a peek into the minds of modern communists and reformists. In the end, it seems, none of them offers a pragmatic solution to the problem: reformism is a "hopeless quick fix", and communist hypothesis is still a utopia. In spite of that, this debate is a necessary contribution to the ongoing political discourse.

[Ian Carrillo · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most refreshing political debate I've ever come across. Badiou offers worthy and thoughtful responses to Gauchet's reformism while both parties maintain a high standard of reasoned argument. A masterpiece of dialectic political philosophy.

[Jake · Rating 3 out of 5]

French philosophers arguing communism vs. liberal democracy from a point of view both far from any acceptable American ideology.

[Justin Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

A decent amount of talking past each other, as you'd expect given two people using terms that don't really mean what they want them to mean, but a fun read (for those so inclined).

[Roger Green · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good conversation between two thinkers that I admire. It is helpful in pushing through many of the thoughts that those of is who feel contender into supporting liberalism must face, especially if we hope for alternatives both past and present.