(11:56 AM) | Adam Kotsko:

The Virtue of Selfishness

At long last, lacan dot com has substantially updated, with a new issue of lacanian ink. Here is the excerpt they provide of Alain Badiou's article entitled "Obscure Disaster", under the heading "The 'Triumph of Democracy'?":

Democracy triumphs on the ruins of communism, say our prose writers. Or it is going to triumph. The greatest triumphalists evoke the triumph of a "model of civilization." Ours. Nothing less. Those who say "civilization," especially in the form of a triumph, also proclaim the right of the civilized to their gunboats -- for those who might not have understood in time on what side the trumpets of triumph sound. The rights of man are no longer a tired intellectual demand. It is the time for rights with muscle, for the right of intervention. Triumphal movements of democratic troops. The need for war, that obligatory correlate of triumphant civilizations. Iraqi deaths, accommodated in silence by millions, even exclusive of any count (and we know to what extent the civilization of which we speak is a counting one...), are only the anonymous remainder of triumphal operations. Shifty Muslims, after all, non-civilized recalcitrants. Because, take note, there is religion, and there is religion. The Christian and his Pope are part of civilization, rabbis are a considerable part, but Mullahs and Ayatollahs would do well to convert.

[...]

We are, and this is important, in a moment of confession. That the substantial content of every "democracy" is the existence of gigantic and suspect fortunes, that the maxim "get rich!" is the alpha and omega of the epoch, that the brutal materialism of profits is the absolute condition of every respectable member of society -- in brief, that ownership is the essence of "civilization" — this is the consensus, after having been, during almost two centuries, the adventurous and slandered theory of the revolutionaries who wanted to end a rather pitiable "civilization." A "Marxism" without proletariat or politics, an economism that puts private wealth at the center of social determination, the rediscovered good conscience of the corrupt, the speculators, the financiers, the governments exclusively preoccupied with supporting the enriching of the rich: there's the vision of the world presented to us under the triumphal banner of civilization.

Here Badiou seems to be a kind of Lewis Lapham beyond Lewis Lapham. The style is similar to Lapham's Harper's columns, but whereas Lapham is the pro-American anti-capitalist (i.e., believes that democracy once really and truly happened in America and our best chance is to return to those roots by getting rid of capitalist accretions), Badiou thinks that even that qualified cynicism is naive.

An interesting topic to discuss is whether it's possible to have a "subversive," naively American vision. That is, can we "go back to" the Founders, to the Bill of Rights, to the Declaration of Independence, in a way that does not serve to reinforce the existing order? (The same could be asked of Christianity, I think.)

One tentative suggestion I would make is that any subversive Americanism should not appeal to betrayed ideals. Through my reading of Bonhoeffer, I am coming to believe that ideals are not what we need, ever, if we want to effect change -- ideals are by definition unattained and unattainable, inspiring not so much action as humble reverence. A subversive Americanism would have to say that we already have a government for, by, and of the people and that we need to make it work. At that point, I think it might become clear that the unrestrained rule of capital is exactly what keeps obscuring the principle of the sovereignty of the people. I don't know how well this would work, though, since there seems to be such an emphasis on private property in the founding documents -- although, thankfully, we got "the pursuit of happiness" instead of "the pursuit of property."

Since this post is already so long, I think I'll throw in a nice long quote from Laclau and Mouffe's Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, when they are discussing why they chose the particular path they did (Marxism read through deconstruction) to get to their political conclusions:

Political conclusions similar to those set forth in this book could have been approximated from very different discursive formations -- for example, from certain forms of Christianity, or from libertarian discourses alien to the socialist tradition -- none of which could aspire to be the truth of society.... For this very reason, however, Marxism is one of the traditions through which it becomes possible to formulate this new conception of politics. For us, the validity of this point of departure is simply based on the fact that it constitutes our own past.

In other, less academic words: we wanted to come up with a new way to talk about and do politics, and Marxism is just where we were. I wonder: Is there any reason to believe that a particular discourse is simply incompatible with this kind of thing? I'm sure a lot of my readers are deeply suspicious of "Americanism," but couldn't our own native political tradition provide some avenues for change?

Of course, "where I am" is not so much the American political tradition as Christianity, and so I cleverly avoid directly asking the question about that -- because Laclau and Mouffe are not necessarily right in thinking that "certain forms of Christianity" could help to bring about a more democratic and just order.

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