3.2 - Howard, Dick - Rediscovering the Left (en)

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Rediscovering the Left

Rediscovering the Left

by Dick Howard

Source:

PRAXIS International (PRAXIS International), issue: 3+4 / 1990, pages: 193-204, on www.ceeol.com.
http://www.ceeol.com/http://www.ceeol.com/


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REDISCOVERING THE LEFTDick Howard

1. Cognitive DissonancesShould the "events" of the past year surprise a serious leftist? I call thesemassive changes '''events, '' in scare-quotes, to play on the way the Frenchavoided coming to grips with their own, apparently inexplicable, experience

in May 1968 when a student protest was transformed into a paralyzinggeneral strike only to be followed by elections that brought a massive victoryto the party of order. Further, using the term "party of order" rather than of"right," or "conservative" - let alone "capitalist" - recalls that in the sameyear of 1968, the ruling Communists brought "order" back to Prague on theheavy treads of Warsaw Pact tanks. The hydra-headed, polymorphousenemy which haunts the nights ofthe party of order is not the left, socialismlet alone "communism" - but democracy. This may appear banal; who, afterall, even came out against democracy? Well, to be honest about it, many of usin the West did - hedging our criticism of course by saying that we opposedonly the "formal" democracy which we denounced as ideological. But thefate of "really existing socialism" forces us to think again. But we do notundertake this rethinking as political virgins. We have a past and live in apresent; we have to proceed from the cognitive dissonances that they induce.I draw from my own past the model of Rosa Luxemburg, which I will use asa guiding thread to understand the place of democratic politics within a leftistmovement. She was the radical critic of the anti-democratic aspects of theBolshevik seizure of power in 1917, as she had been the critic of Lenin'sreshaping of the party nearly 15 years earlier. And her status as a democraticrevolutionary was confirmed in her last article, written from the ruins of theSpartakus uprising in January 1919. Her title, "Order Reigns in Berlin," wasnot merely rhetorical; after this allusion to the proclamation that followedthe defeat of the Polish rising in 1831 , she continued: "And so run the reportsof the guardians of 'order' every half-century ... And the rejoicing 'victors'do not notice that an 'order' which must be periodically maintained by bloodybutchery is steadily approaching its historical destiny, its doom." But RosaLuxemburg expected "the revolution" to carry out history's sentence.Assassinated the next day, she became the first icon for those who refused toidentify Leninism with the Marxian legacy. 1 The relation between her"revolution" and a radical but still democratic politics remained to beexplored by her heirs.Seeking to inherit the Marxian legacy, many Western leftists experiencedcognitive dissonance in their first debates with their socially critical peersPraxis International 10: 3/4 ()ctoher 1990 & January 1991 o260-844R $2.00


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194 Praxis Internationalfrom the East. What we thought was "left" was for them support of theestablished order; what they took as "radical" was for us support of theprinciples of our own order. A classical illustration took place when RudiDutschke led a delegation from the Berlin SDS to meet with student rebels inPrague in early 1968. The Western left was busy discovering Marxism; theCzechs were concerned with such "formal" freedoms as the right todemonstrate publicly or to form associations free from the tutelage of theauthorities. Despite the obvious basis for misunderstanding, dialogue tookplace: enemies of an order which decried them as "anarchists," both sideswere seeking to give new life to democracy. As their situations differed, sotoo did their remedies. That was to be expected: democracy is not a universalform, self-identical and unalloyed. While this shared democratic ethosshowed itself on the streets during that heady year of 1968, it was notformulated theoretically - at least in the West, where the glorious notion of"revolution" overshadowed the democratic demands.Both sides might have turned to Rosa Luxemburg, another so-called"anarchist." She had described "revolution" as "the only form of 'war' ... inwhich the final victory can be prepared only by a series of 'defeats'." Despitethis suggestive image, which points to a normative learning process that isnecessary for politics to be democratic, Luxemburg did not identify"revolution" with the democracy that haunts the party of order. She was aMarxist for whom the "haunting" spector was of course Marx's; his theorywas her revolutionary guarantee. She appeals constantly to text and verse,for example in her critique ofBernstein's revisionism, where she is content tohave shown that "in its essence, in its bases, opportunist pract ice isirreconcilable with Marxism." Similarly, in the depths of a World War, herJunius Pamphlet insisted that "Marxist theory gave to the working class of thewhole world a compass by which to fix its tactics from hour to hour in itsjourney toward the one unchanging goal.,,2 There are of course counterexamples in her theory as in her practice. For now, the point is that onecannot resolve cognitive dissonance by invoking "democracy" as a passepartout that trumps all other positions or a synthesis that magically unitespolitics, society and economy."Democracy" does not eliminate real difference, even among its ownsupporters. Another example of cognitive dissonance, from another part of

the world, testifies to the need to learn democratic politics. A liberal readerof the New York Times might not have been surprised by the followingpassage in a recent article about El Salvador: "We used to march chanting,'Socialism, Socialism' ," said the Rev. Rogelio Ponceele, a Roman Catholicpriest who has lived and worked with the largest guerilla faction for almost adecade, "Now we march chanting, 'Democracy, Democracy!'." But what ifthe reader reads on, to discover that the thrust of the article was that, after adecade of struggle, the guerilla t roups are not ready to follow their newlyconverted leaders? The Times' explanation is that there is a gap between theeducated leaders and the "poorly educated peasants who joined aftersuffering from rightist repression."3 Rosa Luxemburg would suggest adifferent reading. "Democracy" is more than a slogan uniting the excluded

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Praxis International 195against the party of order. In her polemic against the Leninist party, sheinsisted that "the proletarian army is first recruited in the struggle itself," butthat "only in the struggle does it become aware of the objectives of thestruggle." This insistence on democratic learning processes reappeared in herdefense of the program of the Spartakus League in 1919, when she insistedthat "Themasses must learn to use power by using power.,,4 Such sentiments,of course, lead to the accusation of "spontaneism."What must one learn tobe a democrat who is heir to the Marxian legacy?The party of order accused the New Lefts of the 1960s of being "antiintellectual." Seeking to reply to this criticism brought out another case ofcognitive dissonance. As I read Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism inAmerican Life, I was surprised to find myself, again and again, sidingemotionally with the anti-intellectuals' rejection of the desiccated, formal

and increasingly atomized society that relentlessly conquered all aspectsof life. This instinctive response was buttressed by the encounter withE. P. Thompson's The Making o f the English Working Class; and it found amore theoretical justification in Polanyi's The Great Transformation. Theidea of a "moral economy," protected from the invading efficiency of themodernizing state, was appealing because it pointed to the source of a nativeradicalism promoting collective values in the face ofthe egoistic individualismof market society. It seemed to offer support to Rosa Luxemburg's"spontaneist" politics in the Mass Strike pamphlet, whose foundation wasthat "the masses will be the active chorus, and the leaders only the speakingparts, the interpretors of the will of the masses.,,5 But, Luxemburg had alsoinsisted that I read my Marx. I had found, in The Communist Manifesto, ahymn of praise to what Schumpeter was to call the "creative destruction" ofcapitalist modernization and a critique of that "moral economy" denouncednow as "the idiocy of rural life". Marx had no hesitation in praising theachievements of the "revolutionary bourgeoisie;" but he wanted to gobeyond them. He could have recourse to that magical Hegelian notion of an"Aufhebung" - preserving while raising to a higher level - of theseachievements. This was no more convincing than playing the "trump card"democracy! It furthered cognitive dissonance.2. Beyond Democracy: Totalitarianism?At first glance, Rosa Luxemburg can continue to illustrate the cognitivedissonances encountered by post-totalitarian leftist politics. The challenge is

not to formulate a democratic constitution or to articulate social rights whoseunerring enforcement would serve to guarantee a democracy. The countrieswe call democratic have different constitutional frameworks, and theyguarantee more or less consistently the political rights of their citizens. Thispolitical liberalism cannot be identified with democracy. 6 The rights whichtoday appear as essential to liberal societies are often of recent vintage - forexample, the right ofwomen to vote; and the same rights are not present in allthe liberal societies - for example, privacy protection or abortion rights. Therights which we do have in these societies are sometimes violated; the


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196 Praxis Internationalpolitical system does not always function as the constitution promises. RosaLuxemburg knew this; when she presented the programme of the SpartakusLeague, she insisted that "Farmore important, however, than what is writtenin a program is the way in which it is interpreted in action.,,7 This does notmean that rights and their guarantee are "formal" or that they can be writtenoff as "bourgeois." The variety that characterizes the liberal rights suggeststhat while these rights of course have a material foundation, their guaranteelies in the openness of these societies to an historical struggle whose centralvariable is rights. I t is this openness that justifies calling these societiesdemocratic. Democracies are inherently historical societies whose futureremains open, founded, as Luxemburg said, only on how rights are"interpreted in action."The fact that formal liberal rights are insufficient on their own seems toimply the need to insure their material foundation. But this separation of a

material foundation from the rights it is assumed to guarantee often has hadunfortunate political consequences. I t seems to imply that rights can be"temporarily" suspended in order to build the foundation which will make itpossible for all citizens to enjoy them. Two alternatives seem possible:"democratic socialism," the famous Third Way so long sought by so many; orthe attempt to return to the pre-totalitarian autochthonous developmentalprocess which builds from the peculiar history of each nation. These optionsboth assume that totalitarianism was imposed on society from without, bypolitical fiat. In the first case, this political imposition is said to have beenmade necessary by the inability of the indigenous bourgeoisie to assume itshistorical role; in the second case, totalitarian politics appears to have brokeninto a (relatively) harmonious endogenous development. Both positionswould do well to recall Rosa Luxemburg's warning to the Spartakus Leaguenot to imitate "the bourgeois revolutions in which it sufficed to overthrowthat official power at the center and to replace a dozen or so persons inauthority."8 The quest for a Third Way assumes that politics can doeverything; the return to historical continuity treats politics as epiphenomenal. A new politics has to unite the two levels, but not by simpleaddition. This is where we must leave Rosa Luxemburg.I have of course over-schematized the positions of those seeking a ThirdWay; and my characterization of the attempt to erase the totalitarian"interlude" from national history neglects the very different political optionsthat have emerged in Eastern European contexts. My excuse is my"Luxemburgism." Rosa Luxemburg pointed repeatedly to the need tonavigate between "two reefs:" ' ~ a b a n d o n m e n t of the mass character orabandonment of the final goal; the fall back into sectarianism or the fall intobourgeois reformism; anarchism or opportunism."9 But she thought shecould synthesize them in the "mass strike" where "the economic struggle isthat which leads the political struggle from one nodal point to another; the

political struggle is that which periodically fertilizes the soil for the economicstruggle. Cause and effect here constantly change places."lO But thisappealing synthesis is still produced by addition. Its political result appears inLuxemburg's alternative to Lenin. She insists that her party "gradually


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Praxis International 197becomes the haven of the different dissatisfied elements of society, becominga party of the people opposed to a tiny minority of capitalist rulers. ,,11 This isnot a new politics. The politics that I called "Luxemburgism" is based on theexistence of a democratic society; but here, she is appealing to the motor of anautonomous capitalist economy.The challenge is to conceptualize the politics of a democratic society. Marxis more helpful than his political heirs. Hegel had taught him that the birth ofa civil society, which is neither reducible to the private sphere nor capable ofbeing absorbed by the political state, is the mark of modernity. AlthoughMarx's later work reduced its "anatomy" to mere economic relations, heoften showed an awareness of its complexity. The two tendencies can be seenin The Communist Manifesto. Marx's description of what he calls the"revolutionary" achievement of the bourgeoisie can be reduced neither toeconomic relations nor to political imperatives. "All fixed, fast-frozenrelations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions,are swept away," writes Marx, "all new-formed ones become antiquatedbefore they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy isprofaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his realconditions of life, and his relations with his kind." New needs can now arise;new forms of communication produce a new civilization; cities "rescue" thepeasantry from "the idiocy of rural life. " Aside from the familiar rhetoric,this analysis could well have been written by Tocqueville. 12 But Marx thenexplains away this social revolution as the result of the contradiction betweenfeudal property relations and productive forces that must "burst themasunder." He rapidly generalizes that economistic model to portray thecoming of the proletarian revolution, along the lines suggested byLuxemburg's "party of the people." This permits him apparently to achievetwo goals, which remain to haunt us: it provides a material foundation for thefreedoms Marx wants to see realized; and its basis in a philosophy of historybased on class struggle and its ultimate reconciliation avoids the threat thathistorical change could threaten those freedoms. The former founds anadditive politics, while the latter closes off that open future necessary for thepolitics of democratic rights.

If Marx is read through the eyes of Tocqueville, the action of the"revolutionary" bourgeoisie can be seen as producing a democratic society.The elimination of "solid" certainties and the profanation of the "holy"mark the end of a society in which each knows his place and calling; themodern individual is born, and must face, with "sober senses," the problemof who he is, and with whom he will relate. Marx does not talk about rightshere; his earlier work had taught him that they were only formal. But his owncontrast of bourgeois and feudal society could have led to a differentconclusion. Feudal "rights" were ascriptive; they were imposed, by God andby the "solid" nature of things. The modern individual confronts a worldwithout foundation; if that individual has rights, their foundation can only bepolitical; they are won through struggle. This suggests that capitalism'sconstant revolutionizing of social relations poses a challenge, constantlyrenewed, to newly won rights of the individual. Capitalism is not simply a


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198 Praxis Internationalmode of production; the history of class struggle must be reinterpreted as ahistory of the politics of rights; and, unlike the economistic history, thishistory can never end in a grand unification. In a democratic society whosefoundation is the modern individual who can appeal to no fixed material ortranscendent final ground of rights, history remains open and politicsremains necessary. Democracy is not formal but the lived experience of astruggle for right which can never end.This reading suggests a new framework for understanding the emergenceof totalitarianism. The social democracy whose foundation is the radicallyfree individual is uncomfortable; men and women are free atoms, alonetogether in that infinite space so feared by Pascal. They know that the rightsthey may have, like the place they may occupy, may be "swept away" or"become antiquated before they can ossify." It is this lived experience whichmakes rights appear to be merely formal, and democracy a luxury. Thedemand for "real" democracy and/or for true community arises; division isintolerable, a threat to one's very being. This picture can be overgeneralized;its details need to be analyzed for each concrete situation. The quest forroots, something "solid" and even "holy," arises; a movement emerges, be itfascist or communist. 13 But this does not imply a leap to a qualitatively newmoment in history. Totalitarianism is not beyond democracy; it is immanentwithin democracy - as was the "mass strike" which sails magically betweenRosa Luxemburg's "two reefs." Both democracy and totalitarianism arefounded on the experience of social division in a society of individuals;democracy seeks to preserve that division, while totalitarianism wants toovercome it in a new unity. Totalitarianism appears to be the logical solutionto the tensions of democratic society. In this sense, totalitarianism is an antipolitics.The claim that totalitarianism is immanent to democracy is not simply theinversion of the common thesis, spoken today with triumphalist accents,which sees the two as polar opposites. Democracy is not a state of affairs; it isnot the liberal ideal of the constitutional protection of basic rights. Thepicture painted by Marx, seen through Tocquevillean eyes, is not that of astable society. It would be better to describe a dynamic of democratization,

referring to a process whose origins lie in the modernization which does awaywith the certitudes of the old order. 14 Totalitarianism is not the kind of "antipolitics" that East European oppositionists such as G. Konrad sought totheorize as a new political stance within and against totalitarianism. Thatanti-politics is an instance of what I refer to here as a democratic politics ofrights. Totalitarianism only pretends to achieve the unity of society; its"politics" imposes unity vertically with the result that it atomizes constantlyany attempts by groups within civil society to constitute themselveshorizontally. This explains the demand by the Czech radicals in theirencounter with the German SDS in 1968 for the right to free assembly. Theapparently paradoxical insistence on the immanence of totalitarianism todemocracy forces us to make clear not only the distinction of liberalism anddemocracy; its implications make clear also the error of what I called an"additive" politics which separates political form from social content.


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Praxis International 199The implication of this argument is that totalitarianism can never be fullyrealized, even though it remains a constant temptation because of theinherent instability of democratic society. Its own logic turns against it. If itwere indeed achieved, its very foundation - the society of individuals who

seek constantly their own roots and their own rights - would be obliterated.The project is self-contradictory. It would result in just the kind of sullenwithdrawal- or oppositional "anti-politics" - that has been seen in EasternEurope. James Madison confronted a similar problem in his famous TenthFederalist Paper. To cure the ill of "faction," he wrote, one could destroy"the liberty which is essential to its existence," or one could give "to everycitizen the same opinions, the same passions and the same interests." Thefirst would be "worse than the disease," the second is not only"impracticable"but a denial of the "first object of Government. ,,15 Madison's solution was tomultiply the number of factions, so that each checks the threat from theother, preserving a democratic society within the framework of arepresentative republic. Once again, we have to pay attention to the words.Madison's democracy was not based on popular sovereignty; his insight wasthat a representative republican state is necessary in order to preserve ademocratic society. The radical and rapid collapse of the totalitarian stateswould certainly not have surprised Madison.3. The Modern(izing) State

Madison's rejection of democratic sovereignty has a further implication. Ifthe new democratic society was the result ofthe action of the "revolutionary"bourgeoisie, Marxist economism makes sense. But the same emergingdemocratic society was also analyzed by Tocqueville as the product of themodernizing state seeking to assert its absolute sovereignty. Claude Lefortargues that the distinction between the two approaches explains why Marxdid not take seriously the autonomy of democratic society. 16 The theory ofhistory sketched in The Communist Manifesto passes from feudalism tocapitalism without stopping to consider as a distinct moment the absolutiststate, whose notion of sovereignty remains our own. 17 As a result, whenMarx analyzes the French Revolution, and the Declaration of the Rights ofMan, he cannot take seriously the conquest of these rights, which appear tohim to be only formal. The freedom to do whatever does not harm others,appears to him only to protect the egoisticmonad, rather than to liberate theindividual from hierarchical society and to open up the possibility of formingnew social bonds. The same holds for the distinction between the public andprivate spheres, which is not the formality mocked by Marx, but rather theguarantee of a right that makes the individual free. Freedom of opinion andof its communication are again not simply formal; they imply that knowledgewill not remain the monopoly of those in power. The right to security is notonly Marx's protection of capitalist property; it is a right which protects thecitizen from arbitrary action and thereby affirms the autonomy of theindividual. Marx's one-sidedness even leads him to ignore the historicalimplication of the presumption of innocence, which for Lefort is "an


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200 Praxis Internationalirreversible acquisition of political thought. ,,18 One did not need to stress theimport of these rights to the Czech radicals of 1968, or to their heirs. Howeverone analyzes the relation of the absolutist state and the "revolutionary"bourgeoisie in the various national histories, one point remains common toall. Centralization and the new concept of sovereignty destroyed thehierarchical and ordered cosmos inherited from traditional society. A newmatrix emerged; the individual and a politics of rights became possible. Theemerging individualist society may ally with the monarch against thearistocracy; or it may join the aristocracy in attacking the monarchy. Moreimportant than the economic forces here is the new configuration whichopposes the society to the state. But this polarity should not be identified witha Marxist history of class struggle whose goal is to achieve an eventualsynthesis, let alone the elimination of one of the poles to the benefit of theother. The figure is more complicated because the society itself is ademocratic diversity of individuals whose unity and division are structured bythe system of rights guaranteed by the state. Because these rights serve topreserve diversity as well as unity, they are the object of a struggle which cannever end. The sovereignty of the state is affirmed in the protection of theserights and the guarantee of a space in which society can seek to affirm newrights. This was Madison's definition of "the first object of Government;" butit has a European ancestry in the absolute state, whose first great theorist,Jean Bodin, titled his treatise The Six Books o f the Republic!This framework permits a reinterpretation of the history that has producedboth capitalism and totalitarianism. The modernizing state - no t Marx's"revolutionary" bourgeoisie - applying its new conception of sovereignty,creates the conditions for social democratization. It produces a societymarked by individualism, difference, division; it is, too, a society in quest ofcommunity, identity, unity. The nation-state can only apparently, andbriefly, provide that link; its position as guarantor of rights demands that itstand outside of society; if it claims to be identical with society, it inevitablyappears, sooner or later, to have taken sides in the struggle inherent withindemocratic society and must pay the price in the coin of lost legitimacy. It canavoid that accusation only if it claims to incarnate some necessity or valueimmanent to society. With this step, it is on the road to totalitarianism; itsclaim to identity with society is not based on democratic diversity but ratherappeals to a putative unity, furnished by a mystical Yolk or by a logic ofhistory's necessary path. But totalitarianism is not the only way in whichdemocratic society can seek unity. Capitalism makes the same claim to socialimmanence. The neutral market replaces the neutral state; economicinterests are substituted for political rights. Like totalitarianism, capitalism isan anti-politics; it denies its own nature as political. The enemy of capitalismis not the proletariat but that democracy whose politics is founded on theRights of Man. Capitalism, like totalitarianism, seeks the elimination ofsocial division; it can only control the effects of its constant revolutionizing ofsocial relations by reducing them all, ultimately, to identical quantitativeform.The struggles that Marxists call "anti-capitalist" can be reinterpreted


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Praxis International 201within the framework of democracy. Of course, these contests concerninterests; Madison's analysis of factions recognized that "From theprotection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, thepossession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results,"and that "the most common and durable source of factions has been thevarious and unequal distribution of property." Indeed, the development ofinterests seemed to him the mark of "civilized nations. ,,19 But interest andeven unequal possession of property are not identical to capitalism. Rather,the challenge posed by popular struggles is "anti-capitalist" in the specificsense suggested here: they put into question the claim that the capitalisteconomy provides that immanent unity which the birth of modern,individualist and democratic society had destroyed. These movements areaffirming the historically open and democratic character of a society in whichpolitical struggle is legitimate. They are affirmations of rights or , as LefortandHannah Arendt put it, of the right to have rights. It does not follow that allpopular movements should be supported; that decision is the object ofdemocratic politics. It does follow, however, that any such movement whichrefuses to take part in that democratic process on the grounds that its valuesor goals represent the immanent truth or unity of society are to be rejected. 204. The Party of Disorder

This discussion took its starting point from the conflict between the "partyof order" and those New Leftists whom I called democrats. I used RosaLuxemburg, that most rigorous - and therefore most contradictory - ofMarxists as a backdrop for an attempt to provide a wider framework in whichthe Marxian legacy - and the problem of post-totalitarian societies - could beinterpreted. The hypothesis suggested by Claude Lefort, that both capitalismand totalitarianism are attempts to provide an immanent closure orlegitimation for a divided society which cannot appeal to transcendentnorms, permits a reinterpretation of the history of popular struggles over thepast two centuries. It suggests, on the one hand, that these movements canbut need not - move in a direction that lends support to the totalitariansolution. That would explain why so many - including the peasantSalvadorians to whom I alluded, along with the sophisticated German leftvisiting Prague - can find themselves allied with political choices whoseultimate results they would come to deplore. The history of fellow-travelling,which Lefort describes as the party of the bien-pensants, can be understoodfrom this perspective.21 There remains that "anti-intellectual" temptation ofa "moral economy," whose persistent appeal points to a final cognitivedissonance to which I did not allude at the outset: the East Germanexperience.Why were those oppositional groups whose courageous stance showed thenakedness of the totalitarian claims unable to play a political role once theregime collapsed? It appears that, given the totalitarian claim, only a moralstance could challenge its legitimacy, just as it took a moral certitude tosupport the individual refusal to accept the total regime. To be more than an


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202 Praxis Internationalindividual refusal, the opposition had to assume that it spoke for a collectivitywhich had been suppressed and would emerge once the oppression waslifted. 22 But this opposed one absolute to another, onetotality to another.When the regime fell, and society found itself on its own, the oppositioncould not accept the legitimacy of a politics whose foundation is the pluralityof factional interest. The greatest strength of the opposition now became thesource of its weakness. It could not understand the materialism that wasunleashed in the wake of the Fall; and it could not accept the calculatingpolitics of the Western Social Democrats whose wager that the economiccosts of reunification would drive the voters to its side. But on what basiscould the opposition criticize such self-interested behavior?Did it not have toappeal, implicitly or explicitly, to a concept of unity, the idea of a societywhich would be at last, by means of the proper knowledge and behavior,reconciled with itself beyond its divisions? Did it become, in spite of itself, apart of the party or order?Although the opposition in the East was called democratic, its basictendency was moral. In its experience, politics and parties were simply thefirst step on the path to corruption. The democratic label could be affixed to itinsofar as the form of its challenge - in thewake ofthe Helsinki Accords - wasthe demand for rights. The Western signatories at Helsinki conceived theserights within the frame of liberalism. The identification of liberalism withdemocratic society has led to much confusion. Rights must be won, and bedefended, politically. What is the source of such a politics? Reread throughtheeyesofTocqueville, Marxprovidespartofthe answer. His "revolutionary"bourgeoisie was acting from the clearest of material interests; and yet itsaction opened the space in which the modern individual could come to existwithin a democratic society. Of course, that society was not as democratic asone would like - although it was too democratic for many of its unwillingcreators, such as those denounced by Marx in The Eighteenth Brumaire! Butit was a society that could becomemore democratic, despite the best efforts ofthe party of order. But there is no "revolutionary" bourgeoisie in EasternEurope. Can one assert that the transformation of absolute sovereignty intopopular sovereignty which inaugurated what Robert R. Palmer called "theAge of the Democratic Revolution" is being repeated in post-totalitariansocieties? If so, what form will its new politics assume?The renewed dialogue between East and West permits both sides torediscover what it is that made their politics "left."As in 1968, the radicals ofEast and West can find common ground only around the challenge to realizedemocracy. As in 1968, they are the "party of disorders." But now theEastern critique of totalitarianism and theWestern critique of capitalism canwork in tandem: the West can learn from the East that its democracy is notsimply the formal system of liberal rights, while the East can learn from theWest that capitalism is simply another way of dissolving the qualitativedifferences which must emerge in democratic societies into the quantitativeneutrality of the market. 23 Both systems are the enemy of democracy. Anddemocracy, in turn, has now an historical and theoretical foundation thatavoids the reproach of formalism and abstractness that made for the appeal


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Praxis International 203ofMarxism. But the moralist temptation must be seen to be only anotherwayto take the side of the party of order. Now that history no longer provides uswith a vector of truth, and now that rights are constantly up for challenge,there is no "politically correct position;" there is only politics. Paradoxically,in the West, this has led to a hardening of positions; ideology seems to countfor more than criticism; one needs to assert one's identity, and to validate itby being "on the right side." But politics are only defensible by argument,program, practice. The party of disorder of course has its programs; it takesto the streets, the platform, the public space because it has concrete goals,and arguments to defend them. It knows that society must be governed,decisions made, resources allocated; but it knows too that these are politicalchoices, not answers toMarx's "riddle of history."The party of disorder doesnot reject but thrives on cognitive dissonances. Perhaps that is why, in theend, it remains, critically, within the Marxian legacy.

NOTES1. Luxemburg's article is translated in Selected Political Writings o f Rosa Luxemburg,edited by Dick Howard (New York, 1971). My understanding of the notion of a "Marxianlegacy," which I prefer to the concept ofWestern Marxism, is sketched in my own book ofthattitle, whose first chapter presents the contradictory character of that legacy by re-examiningLuxemburg's life and thought more critically than I did in the Introduction of her Writings.C.f., The Marxian Legacy (2nd edition, Minneapolis and London, 1988). I will useLuxemburg as a kind of pole for reflection in the first parts of this essay because - as opposed toMarx, for whom an autonomous political theory is impossible in capitalism, and not necessary

in socialism- she stands for that aspect ofthe Marxian tradition which at least sensed the needfor a properly political theory.2. Citations from op. cit., pp. 130 and 325.3. Lindsey Gruson, "Among Salvadoran Rebels, A Split Over Rights Accord," The New

York Times, 11 August 1990, p. 2.4. The first citation is from "Mass Strike, Party, and Trade Unions," in ibid., p. 270; thesecond citation is from "Our Program and the Political Situation," in ibid., p. 406. Thecitations could be multiplied, and counter-examples given, as I do in The Marxian Legacy.5. "Mass Strike, Party, and Trade Unions," in op. cit. , p. 270.6. This distinction is stressed in Jean Cohen's "Discourse Ethics and Civil Society,"Philosophy and Social Criticism, Vol. 14, No. 3-4, 1988, pp. 315-337.7. "Our Program and the Political Situation," in ibid., p. 380.8. Ibid.9. "Militia and Militarism," in ibid., p. 142; and again in "Organizational Questions ofRussian Social Democracy," in ibid., p. 304.10. "Mass Strike, Party, and Trade Unions," in ibid., p. 241.11. "Organizational Questions of Russian Social Democracy," in ibid., p. 303.12. Tocqueville's analysis of democracy as a social structure, and his attempt to formulate apolitical theory that could permit its fruitful unfolding while avoiding its negative potentialsbears re-reading today - as French thinkers such as Claude Lefort, Fran


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204 Praxis International20th century nationalisms that emerge to face the erosion wreaked by the economic processesof capitalism. The reemergence of nationalism in post-totalitarian societies would represent athird variant within this framework.

14. To avoid any historical misunderstanding, I should emphasize that totalitarianism tendsto present itself as a possibility in situations where the democratic process is beginning to takehold. One would cite examples like Russia, Weimar Germany, Republican Spain, perhapseven Sun Yat Sen's China. On the other hand, even within societies where democracy hasbecome a learned mode of political behavior, radical movements calling themselves "left"have constantly to face the fact that they find themselves denouncing "formal" freedoms,ideological manipulations, and the quotidien of electoral politics' quest for a mythical"center." Established democracies, like France and Italy, or even the United States during theDepression, can give birth to movements whose tendency is totalitarian. One will try todistinguish, for example, between "social rights" and "social citizenship," and suggest that thelatter is not enough. The slope is slippery because democratic society is not a state ofaffairs buta constantly repeated challenge which can never be put to rest by the discovery or productionof the ultimate foundation. God is, indeed, dead.

15. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, The Federalist, Jacob E. Cooke,ed., (Middletown, Connecticut, 1961), p. 61. On the uniqueness of the American experience,and its relevance to today's debates, cf. Dick Howard, The Birth o f American PoliticalThought, David Curtis, trans., (London: Macmillan and Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 1990).16. My debt to Lefort for the previous sketch of the relation of democratic society andtotalitarianism should also be acknowledged. For details and references, c.f. The MarxianLegacy, op. cit. Chapter 7, and the Afterword to the second edition.17. Micheletwas the first of a long line of 19th century historians, which included the radicalrepublican Quinet and the socialist Jaures, to recognize that the notion of popular sovereigntywhich found the French Revolution was rooted in the logic of the Ancien Regime. Absolutesovereignty, one and indivisible, is claimed also by revolutionary democracy.18. Claude Lefort, L'invention democratique. Les Limites de la domination to ta litaire ,(Paris, 1981), p. 61.19. Hamilton, Madison and Jay, op. cit., pp. 58,59.20. This is why The Federalist insists on the republican form and argues constantly againstthe excesses of democracy. When he analyzed the danger of "faction," Madison defined it as

"a majority or a minority," and it is clear that he worried more about the former than thelatter. For a further argument, c.f., my essay, "The Political Origins of Democracy," whosefirst section is titled "Politics after 'the' Revolution," and whose concern is to articulate a"post-revolutionary politics" by developing the relation between republican politics anddemocratic society. The essay is found in Defining the Political (London and Minneapolis,1989), Chapter 15.21. Lefort takes the term from Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, where it is applied to thestill-orthodox denizens of the camps, and extends it also to those Western intellectuals whosemania for order ly systems to avoid grey zones fits well with a moral desire to think well ofthemselves. Cf. Un homme en trop (Paris, 1976), and for the context, The Marxian Legacy.22. This assertion, based on the East German experience, cannot be generalized to all EastEuropean oppositionists. Konrad's "anti-politics" thought of itself as a morality ofparticipation; the very name of the Polish opposit ion, "Solidari ty", points in the samedirection. The goal in both cases was the creation of an autonomous civil society. Thedifficulty, however, is that both strategies were conceived within the framework of the(weakened or "Helsinki-ized") totalitarian state. It is not clear how they can develop in thenew, post-totalitarian context.23. This is of course an idealization, as if my attempt to present a normative frameworkwere also an empirical description. Nonetheless, even the radical free-marketeers in the Eastremain part of the "party of disorder," as do those in theWest who are not ready to join in thequest for a mediocre "republique de centre."

3.2 - Howard, Dick - Rediscovering the Left (en)

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