Further Debate on Claude Lefort

What could be said in Lefort’s defense? Is his theory really that much of an abstraction? Does the recognition of the forces hold no place in changing reality? Are institutionalized democracies truly similar to totalitarian grasps of power—that they leave no “empty place of power” after all?

Perhaps we can refer to the previous blog “Where is the Truth” for a defense of Lefort: his preference for institutionalized democracy is not really abstract at all, as the interactions of the forces of society shape subjective perception, constituting a similar effect as with grand narratives. It rewrites reality. This is perhaps recognized by Lefort himself, albeit in a less abstract way. In The Political Forms of Modern Democracy, Lefort writes: “[...] although it is true that the action of the proletariat is profoundly determined by the conditions of exploitation […], this action also depends on its assessment of the social forces against which it has to fight, its assessment of the historical opportunities that are offered to it.” The proletariat’s knowledge of the “social forces against which it has to fight” is a determiner of action: here, Lefort recognizes the power of narratives (the determination of knowledge) in “generating” realities—the proletariat, after recognizing a force, let’s say the bureaucracy, as their enemy, will make the bureaucracy into their enemy.

It is a similar situation with the recognition of the forces; the recognition of the Real of society will integrate itself within the ego—society—and shape reality. In another way, the recognition of the forces of democracy could be a “symbolization” of the Real, where the Real causes a change, a symbolization of the forces it creates, resulting in a factual effect from this recognition of the forces (it is worth noting that the forces of the Real are not the Real itself; the Real will always resist symbolization, but its effects can be symbolized. The Real is an agency—it is both changing and permanent in the mind. An effect of the Real might manifest as an impulsive, formless desire, which is then symbolized into a fetish or something else). This way, democracy is a constant process of recognition and integration of the forces within society, which will eventually open up to a solution of the problem.

Yet, to say this is an effective defense of Lefort is to misrecognize where Lefort is abstract. Lefort’s misrecognition of reality lies not within his system’s ineffectiveness, but in the nature of democracy. There exists, within Lefort’s system, an ignorance of a structural torsion, as Zizek would put it. Democracy will eventually face its structural degeneration. For example, as enumerated by Agamben, democracy casts its own shadow of totalitarianism—the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay serve as testament to this shadow. In the eyes of post-Marxists like Zizek, democracy creates a structure, a negligence of the people: it gets sublated (not in the Hegelian sense) into the broader entity—power, be it bureaucratic or capital. This sublation creates the obverse of Lefort’s formation of democracy: an abstract freedom, the blockage of the recognition of the Real, and a totalitarian narrative. Is there no better testament to this than the degeneration of the democratic states of Western Europe into fascism and the current ideological bullshittery going on in the US right now?

The degeneration, the obverse, exists within democracy’s essence or structure, not from external forces.