In Place of a Manifesto, a Hypothesis
In Place of a Manifesto, a Hypothesis
Tim Barker: In Place of a Manifesto, a Hypothesis
The Communist Hypothesis is a little red book that patches together a number of earlier essays and talks by its author, Alain Badiou. If you’re generous enough to forgo the conclusion that the reappearance of old material in such evocative packaging is solely the result of Verso’s marketing calculations, then it would stand to reason that Badiou thinks of this new synthesis as an important statement of his beliefs.
First, a few remarks on the value of reading Badiou at all. The French philosopher, along with his sometime-comrade Slavoj Zizek, has been the target of much attention in the center-left press (this magazine included), in arguments that borrow the rhetoric and moral urgency of Cold War anti-Stalinism. The fact that these self-proclaimed Leninists easily fill lecture halls and sell books at college bookstores is understandably alarming to those on the democratic Left. Alan Johnson accuses them of believing that “the Party can use Terror in pursuit of Truth and Good.” Leon Wieseltier describes Badiou’s philosophy as “slavish devotion to historical cataclysm…guiltless affiliation of progressivism with barbarism.” Much of this is the predictable result of grating provocations on the part of the philosophers, who have appropriated names like Lenin and Mao mainly for their ability to shock. But I think that the automatic dismissal of Badiou a “heartless bastard” (as Wieseltier put it) is analytically unsatisfying. The radical Left, to be sure, has historically been responsible for disasters and worse. But the seriousness and energy which manifests in those drawn to the extremes has often been productive, as we may see in the continued interest in confirmed Stalinists like Sartre or Lukács. And in fact it should be even more interesting to take today’s radicals seriously, since we no longer face the threat of Stalinist parties with mass membership and wide intellectual followings.
Furthermore, premature dismissal does not provide necessary historical perspective. What is it about this moment which has made communism (or at least these communists) so popular? In the case Badiou, it is something less than sinister. It is the frustration and confusion that Richard Wolin has described on this website: “[The] traditional left-wing solutions were noble yet flawed; and we remain uncertain in what ways or directions they need to be supplemented.” Most Dissent readers will have, as I do, strong disagreements with the diagnosis and prescriptions provided by the thinkers in question. But it is important to note that their appeal speaks directly to a crisis of the Left which calls for more than the simple repetition of social democratic slogans.
What is it that Badiou wants? The skeptical reader of The Communist Hypothesis will be relieved to find that Badiou is not an orthodox Maoist (further attested to by this anti-Badiou polemic from the sectarian Revolutionary Communist Party), or even much of a Marxist. His dismissal of party politics extends beyond a critique of parliamentary democracy to a rejection of the Leninist party model. He repudiates the idea that any one group has a revolutionary destiny, and sneers at the pretensions of “scientific socialism.” He acknowledges the “crimes” (his word) of the Red Guards, the Khmer Rouge, and the Shining Path. His belief that communism is an eternal idea which has been valid across history would shock Marx, as would his undialectical portrayal of capitalism as “nothing but banditry.” For Badiou, keeping the communist idea alive just means a refusal to abandon the tradition of emancipatory critical thought and confrontational action which has, since the French Revolution, challenged actually existing capitalism with the hypothesis of a perfectly equal society.
Convinced of the unregenerate barbarism of global capitalism and the total impotence of social democracy (I think he errs here), Badiou is agnostic about long-term effects or sustainable ways to improve human lives. After all, in the anti-humanist calculus he has inherited, the subject called “man” is an arbitrary construct, often enough put to sinister uses. He feels similarly about “history.” So he questions valuing success over failure. The lost causes he espouses have succeeded in sustaining such an exciting tradition for hundreds of years, at times conjuring movements of hundreds of thousands. This, to him, is not any more of a failure than the compromised and halting quarter revolutions which have been effected by social democratic governments in the last hundred years.
But with all these revisions, why Mao? Why the red book embossed with a shining star? Badiou values revolutions for their vitality, and the Cultural Revolution was not only the most recent world-historical event to make the cut, but was the passion of his youth (evidenced here by the inclusion of a barely readable essay from 1969 about “revisionist clowns”). More compelling than any economic or political argument he makes is his aesthetic exclamation, apropos of May 1968: “Now that is a great image! You have to have seen what this country looked like with all the factories flying red flags. No one who saw it will ever forget it.”
His practical politics, so far as I can tell, amount to actionist anarchism, though he still willing to defend the despotic outcomes of revolutions past. Badiou is not a Stalinist, but he thinks that Stalinism is no reason for disowning the innovations of the possible that occurred between 1917 and 1924. (This may seem a distinction without a difference but it does prove he is more than a latter-day William Z. Foster). His praise also extends generously to Poland’s Solidarity movement, and wherever people have experienced the pleasures and stresses of militant political activity and fought to rebuild society. Today he praises an anonymous “handful of activists, intellectuals, and workers” for their work “inventing the future,” but it is unclear who he means or what they are doing. It is too much to ask a philosopher to write specific policy papers, but neither should we forget how valuable were the specific demands which Marx and Engels included in their little book about communism of 1848. These demands, which they saw as transitional, did not usher in a new mode of production but they did anticipate major progressive achievements, including the then-unthinkable progressive income tax.
Badiou’s point that the field must be kept open for radical thinking is well-taken, and I can almost justify his Maoist gestures as a crude way to flout thought taboos. But eventually it is time to actually do the radical thinking, rather than insist that it must be done. Otherwise, the promise of revealing radical thought “in all its new clarity” is a hollow boast. If Badiou does not feel like authoring a positive program, he could content himself with better explaining the reasons for capitalism’s longevity. He treats the exploitative and disastrous nature of the system as a matter beyond question, and for leftists of his generation and persuasion they may be. But if his brand of communism is going to gather many followers, he could use a more careful analysis than the suggestion that all non-communists support a system “relying on the greed of a few crooks and unbridled private property.” Otherwise his system remains an oddly conservative one, supported mainly by the force of sixties nostalgia and arguments from authority.
It seems to me that Badiou’s little red book is the proverbial return-as-farce of its Maoist ancestor. Where the original was tragic both in human cost and in disillusion, the post-millenial variant seems unlikely to inspire either revolutionary hopes or reeducation camps. However, The Communist Hypothesis is still an interesting example of the attempt to think radically at the alleged end of history. Badiou’s failure to describe the shape of a Left for today which would meet his high historical standards is not just a sinister attempt at regression towards barbarism, but a very symptomatic attempt to break out of the current impasse. If even the “Maoist” fringe has difficulties thinking in the radical tradition, this is a telling sign.
