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Second, it is only through such a violent [[displacement]] that the "original" theory can be put to [[work]], fulfilling its potential of [[political]] intervention. It is significant that the work in which Lenin's unique [[voice]] was for the first [[time]] clearly heard is What Is To Be Done? - the [[text]] which exhibits Lenin's unconditional will to intervene into the [[situation]], not in the pragmatic [[sense]] of "adjusting the theory to the realistic claims through necessary compromises," but, on the contrary, in the sense of dispelling all opportunistic compromises, of adopting the unequivocal radical position from which it is only possible to intervene in such a way that our intervention changes the coordinates of the situation. The contrast is here clear with regard to today's [[Third]] Way "postpolitics," which emphasizes the [[need]] to leave behind old [[ideological]] divisions and to confront new issues, armed with the necessary expert [[knowledge]] and free deliberation that takes into account [[concrete]] [[people]]'s [[needs]] and [[demands]].
As such, Lenin's politics is the [[true]] counterpoint not only to the [[Third Way]] pragmatic opportunism, but also to the marginalist [[Leftist]] attitude of what Lacan called le [[narcissisme]] de la [[chose]] perdue. What a true Leninist and a political [[conservative]] have in common is the fact that they reject what one could call [[liberal]] Leftist "irresponsibility" (advocating grand projects of [[solidarity]], [[freedom]], etc., yet ducking out when one has to pay the price for it in the guise of concrete and often "cruel" political measures): like an authentic conservative, a true Leninist is now afraid to [[pass]] to [[The Act|the act]], to assume all the consequences, unpleasant as they may be, of realizing his political [[project]]. Rudyard Kipling (whom [[Brecht]] admired) despised British [[liberals]] who advocated freedom and justice, while silently counting on the Conservatives to do the necessary dirty work for [[them]]; the same can be said for the liberal Leftist's (or "democratic Socialist's") [[relationship]] towards Leninist Communists: liberal Leftists reject the [[Social]] Democratic "compromise," they [[want]] a true [[revolution]], yet they shirk the actual price to be paid for it and thus prefer to adopt the attitude of a [[Beautiful Soul]] and to keep their hands clean. In contrast to this [[false]] radical Leftist's position (who want true [[democracy]] for the people, but without the [[secret]] police to fight counterrevolution, without their academic privileges [[being]] threatened), a Leninist, like a Conservative, is authentic in the sense of fully assuming the consequences of his choice, i.e. of being fully aware of what it actually means to take [[power]] and to exert it.
The return to Lenin is the endeavor to retrieve the unique moment when a [[thought]] already transposes itself into a collective organization, but does not yet fix itself into an Institution (the established [[Church]], the IPA, the Stalinist Party-[[State]]). It aims neither at nostalgically reenacting the "[[good]] old revolutionary [[times]]," nor at the opportunistic-pragmatic adjustment of the old program to "new [[conditions]]," but at [[repeating]], in the [[present]] [[world]]-wide conditions, the Leninist gesture of initiating a political project that would undermine the [[totality]] of the [[global]] liberal-[[capitalist]] world [[order]], and, furthermore, a project that would unabashedly assert itself as acting on behalf of truth, as intervening in the present global situation from the standpoint of its [[repressed]] truth. What Christianity did with regard to the Roman [[Empire]], this global "multiculturalist" polity, we should do with regard to today's Empire.1 How, then, do things stand with freedom? In a polemic against the Menshevik's critics of the Bolshevik power in 1920, Lenin answered the [[claim]] of one of the critics - "So, gentlemen Bolsheviks, since, before the Revolution and your seizure of power, you pleaded for democracy and freedom, be so kind as to permit us now to publish a critique of your measures!" - with the acerbic: "Of course, gentlemen, you have all the freedom to publish this critique - but, then, gentlemen, be so kind as to allow us to line you up the wall and shoot you!" This Leninist freedom of choice - not "[[Life]] or [[money]]!" but "Life or critique!" -, combined with Lenin's dismissive attitude towards the "liberal" notion of freedom, accounts for his bad reputation among liberals. Their [[case]] largely rests upon their [[rejection]] of the standard Marxist-Leninist opposition of "[[formal]]" and "actual" freedom: as even Leftist liberals like Claude [[Lefort]] emphasize again and again, freedom is in its very notion "formal," so that "actual freedom" equals the [[lack]] of freedom. 2 That is to say, with regard to freedom, Lenin is best remembered for his famous retort "Freedom - yes, but for WHOM? To do WHAT?" - for him, in the above-quoted case of the Mensheviks, their "freedom" to criticize the Bolshevik [[government]] effectively amounted to "freedom" to undermine the [[workers]]' and peasants' government on behalf of the counterrevolution... Is today, after the terrifying [[experience]] of the Really Existing [[Socialism]], not more than obvious in what the fault of this reasoning resides? First, it reduces a historical constellation to a closed, fully contextualized, situation in which the "[[objective]]" consequences of one's [[acts]] are fully determined ("independently of your intentions, what you are doing now objectively serves..."); secondly, the position of [[enunciation]] of such statements usurp the [[right]] to decide what yours acts "objectively mean," so that their [[apparent]] "objectivism" (the focus on "objective [[meaning]]") is the form of [[appearance]] of its opposite, the thorough subjectivism: I decide what your acts objectively mean, since I define the context of a situation (say, if I conceive of my power as the immediate equivalent/expression of the power of the [[working]] [[class]], than everyone who opposes me is "objectively" an [[enemy]] of the [[working class]]). Against this [[full]] contextualization, one should emphasize that freedom is "actual" precisely and only as the capacity to "transcend" the coordinates of a given situation, to "posit the presuppositions" of one's [[activity]] (as [[Hegel]] would have put it), i.e. to redefine the very situation within which one is [[active]]. Furthermore, as many a critic pointed out, the very term "Really Existing Socialism," although it was coined in order to assert Socialism's success, is in itself a proof of Socialism's utter failure, i.e. of the failure of the attempt to legitimize Socialist regimes - the term "Really Existing Socialism" popped up at the historical moment when the only legitimizing [[reason]] for Socialism was a mere fact that it [[exists]]...
Is this, however, the [[whole]] story? How does freedom effectively function in liberal democracies themselves? Although [[Clinton]]'s presidency epitomizes the Third Way of the today's (ex-)[[Left]] succumbing to the Rightist ideological [[blackmail]], his healthcare reform program would nonetheless amount to a kind of act, at least in today's conditions, since it would have been based on the rejection of the hegemonic notions of the need to curtail Big State expenditure and administration - in a way, it would "do the [[impossible]]." No wonder, than, that it failed: its failure - perhaps the only significant, although [[negative]], [[event]] of Clinton's presidency - bears [[witness]] to the [[material]] force of the ideological notion of "free choice." That is to say, although the large majority of the so-called "ordinary people" were not properly acquainted with the reform program, the medical lobby (twice as strong as the infamous [[defense]] lobby!) succeeded in imposing on the [[public]] the fundamental [[idea]] that, with the [[universal]] healthcare, the free choice (in matters concerning [[medicine]]) will be somehow threatened - against this purely fictional reference to "free choice", all enumeration of "hard facts" (in Canada, healthcare is less expensive and more effective, with no less free choice, etc.) proved ineffective.
We are here at the very nerve center of the liberal [[ideology]]: the freedom of choice, grounded in the notion of the "[[psychological]]" [[subject]] endowed which propensities s/he strives to realize. And this especially holds today, in the era of what sociologists like Ulrich Beck call "risk [[society]]," 3 when the ruling ideology endeavors to sell us the very insecurity caused by the [[dismantling]] of the [[Welfare]] State as the opportunity for new freedoms: you have to [[change]] job every year, relying on short-term contracts instead of a long-term [[stable]] appointment? Why not see it as the liberation from the constraints of a fixed job, as the [[chance]] to reinvent yourself again and again, to become aware of and realize hidden potentials of your [[personality]]? You can no longer rely on the standard health insurance and retirement plan, so that you have to opt for additional coverage for which you have to pay? Why not perceive it as an additional opportunity to choose: either better life now or long-term security? And if this predicament causes you [[anxiety]], the postmodern or "second [[modernity]]" ideologist will immediately accuse you of being unable to assume full freedom, of the "escape from freedom," of the immature sticking to old stable forms... Even better, when this is inscribed into the ideology of [[The Subject|the subject ]] as the psychological [[individual]] pregnant with [[natural]] abilities and tendencies, then I as if were automatically [[interpret]] all these changes as the results of my personality, not as the result of me being thrown around by the [[market]] forces.
Phenomena like these make it all the more necessary today to REASSERT the opposition of "formal" and "actual" freedom in a new, more precise, sense. What we need today, in the era of the liberal [[hegemony]], is a "Leninist" traite de la servitude liberale, a new version of la Boetie's Traite de la servitude volontaire that would fully justify the apparent oxymoron "liberal [[totalitarianism]]." In experimental [[psychology]], Jean-Leon Beauvois did the first step in this direction, with his precise exploration of the paradoxes of conferring on the subject the freedom to choose. 4 Repeated experiments established the following [[paradox]]: if, AFTER getting from two groups of volunteers the agreement to participate in an experiment, one informs them that the experiment will involve something unpleasant, against their ethics even, and if, at this point, one reminds the first group that they have the free choice to say no, and one says to the other group [[nothing]], in BOTH groups, the SAME (very high) percentage will agree to continue their [[participation]] in the experiment. What this means is that conferring the formal freedom of choice does not make any [[difference]]: those given the freedom will do the same [[thing]] as those (implicitly) denied it. This, however, does not mean that the reminder/bestowal of the freedom of choice does not make any difference: those given the freedom to choice will not only tend to choose the same as those denied it; on the top of it, they will tend to "rationalize" their "free" decision to continue to participate in the experiment - unable to endure the so-called cognitive dissonance (their [[awareness]] that they FREELY acted against their interests, propensities, tastes or norms), they will tend to change their opinion [[about]] the act they were asked to accomplish. Let us say that an individual is first asked to participate in an experiment that concerns changing the eating habits in order to fight against famine; then, after agreeing to do it, at the first [[encounter]] in the laboratory, he will be asked to swallow a [[living]] worm, with the [[explicit]] reminder that, if he finds this act repulsive, he can, of course, say no, since he has the full freedom to choose. In most cases, he will do it, and then rationalize it by way of saying to himself something like: "What I am asked to do IS disgusting, but I am not a coward, I should display some courage and self-[[control]], otherwise scientists will perceive me as a weak person who pulls out at the first minor obstacle! Furthermore, a worm does have a lot of proteins and it could effectively be used to feed the poor - who am I to hinder such an important experiment because of my petty sensitivity? And, finally, maybe my disgust of worms is just a prejudice, maybe a worm is not so bad - and would tasting it not be a new and daring experience? What if it will enable me to discover an unexpected, slightly [[perverse]], [[dimension]] of myself that I was hitherto unaware of?"
Beauvois enumerates [[three]] modes of what brings people to accomplish such an act which runs against their perceived propensities and/or interests: authoritarian (the pure command "You should do it because I say so, without questioning it!", sustained by the reward if the subject does it and the [[punishment]] if he does not do it), totalitarian (the reference to some higher [[Cause]] or common Good which is larger than the subject's perceived interest: "You should do it because, even if it is unpleasant, it serves our [[Nation]], Party, Humanity!"), and liberal (the reference to the subject's inner [[nature]] itself: "What is asked of [[You May|you may ]] appear repulsive, but look deep into yourself and you will discover that it's in your true nature to do it, you will find it attractive, you will become aware of new, unexpected, dimensions of your personality!"). At this point, Beauvois should be corrected: a direct [[authoritarianism]] is practically inexistent - even the most oppressive [[regime]] publicly legitimizes its reign with the reference to some Higher Good, and the fact that, ultimately, "you have to obey because I say so" reverberates only as its [[obscene]] [[supplement]] discernible between the lines. It is rather the specificity of the standard authoritarianism to refer to some higher Good ("whatever your inclinations are, you have to follow my order for the sake of the higher Good!"), while totalitarianism, like [[liberalism]], interpellates the subject on behalf of HIS OWN good ("what may appear to you as an external pressure, is really the expression of your objective interests, of what you REALLY WANT without being aware of it!"). The difference between the two resides elsewhere: "totalitarianism" imposes on the subject his/her own good, even if it is against his/her will - [[recall]] King Charles' (in)famous [[statement]]: "If any shall be so foolishly unnatural as to oppose their king, their country and their own good, we will make them happy, by God's blessing - even against their wills."(Charles I to the Earl of Essex, 6 August 1644) Here we already encounter have the later Jacobin theme of [[happiness]] as a political factor, as well as the Saint-Justian idea of forcing people to be happy... Liberalism tries to avoid (or, rather, cover up) this paradox by way of clinging to the end to the [[fiction]] of the subject's immediate free self-[[perception]] ("I don't claim to [[know]] better than you what you want - just look deep into yourself and decide freely what you want!").
The reason for this fault in Beauvois's line of argumentation is that he fails to recognize how the abyssal tautological [[authority]] ("It is so because I say so!" of the [[Master]]) does not work only because of the sanctions (punishment/reward) it implicitly or explicitly evokes. That is to say, what, effectively, makes a subject freely choose what is imposed on him against his interests and/or propensities? Here, the empirical inquiry into "pathological" (in the Kantian sense of the term) motivations is not sufficient: the enunciation of an [[injunction]] that imposes on its addressee a [[symbolic]] engagement/commitment evinces an inherent force of its own, so that what seduces us into obeying it is the very feature that may appear to be an obstacle - the [[absence]] of a "why." Here, Lacan can be of some [[help]]: the [[Lacanian]] "Master-[[Signifier]]" designates precisely this hypnotic force of [[the symbolic]] injunction which relies only on its own act of enunciation - it is here that we encounter "symbolic efficiency" at its purest. The three ways of legitimizing the exercise of authority ("authoritarian," "totalitarian," "liberal") are nothing but the three ways to cover up, to blind us for the [[seductive]] power of, the abyss of this empty call. In a way, liberalism is here even the worst of the three, since it NATURALIZES the reasons for obedience into the subject's [[internal]] psychological [[structure]]. So the paradox is that "liberal" [[subjects]] are in a way those least free: they change the very opinion/perception of themselves, accepting what was IMPOSED on them as originating in their "nature" - they are even no longer AWARE of their subordination.
Let us take the situation in the Eastern European countries around 1990, when the Really Existing Socialism was falling apart: all of a sudden, people were thrown into a situation of the "freedom of political choice" - however, were they REALLY at any point asked the fundamental question of what kind of knew order they actually wanted? Is it not that they found themselves in the exact situation of the subject-[[victim]] of a Beauvois experiment? They were first told that they are entering the promised land of political freedom; then, soon afterwards, they were informed that this freedom involves wild privatization, the dismantling of the [[social security]], etc.etc. - they still have the freedom to choose, so if they want, they can step out; but, no, our heroic Eastern Europeans didn't want to disappoint their Western tutors, they stoically persisted in the choice they never made, convincing themselves that they should behave as mature subjects who are aware that freedom has its price... This is why the notion of the psychological subject endowed with natural propensities, who has to realize its true Self and its potentials, and who is, consequently, ultimately [[responsible]] for his failure or success, is the key ingredient of the liberal freedom. And here one should risk to reintroduce the Leninist opposition of "formal" and "actual" freedom: in an act of actual freedom, one dares precisely to BREAK this seductive power of [[The Symbolic|the symbolic ]] efficiency. Therein resides the moment of truth of Lenin's acerbic retort to his Menshevik critics: the truly free choice is a choice in which I do not merely choose between two or more options WITHIN a pre-given set of coordinates, but I choose to change this set of coordinates itself. The catch of the "transition" from the Really Existing Socialism to [[capitalism]] was that people never had the chance to choose the ad quem of this transition - all of a sudden, they were (almost literally) "thrown" into a new situation in which they were presented with a new set of given choices (pure liberalism, nationalist conservatism...). What this means is that the "actual freedom" as the act of consciously changing this set occurs only when, in the situation of a [[forced]] choice, one ACTS AS IF THE CHOICE IS NOT FORCED and "chooses the impossible."
Did something homologous to the invention of the liberal psychological individual not take [[place]] in the [[Soviet Union]] in the late 20s and early 30s? The Russian avant-garde art of the early 20s (futurism, constructivism) not only zealously endorsed industrialization, it even endeavored to reinvent a new industrial man - no longer the old man of sentimental passions and roots in traditions, but the new man who gladly accepts his [[role]] as a bolt or screw in the gigantic coordinated industrial [[Machine]]. As such, it was subversive in its very "ultra-orthodoxy," i.e. in its over-[[identification]] with the core of the [[official]] ideology: the [[image]] of man that we get in Eisenstein, Meyerhold, constructivist paintings, etc., emphasizes the beauty of his/her mechanical movements, his/her thorough depsychologization. What was perceived in the West as the ultimate [[nightmare]] of liberal individualism, as the ideological counterpoint to the "Taylorization," to the Fordist ribbon-work, was in [[Russia]] hailed as the [[utopian]] prospect of liberation: recall how Meyerhold violently asserted the "behaviorist" approach to acting - no longer emphatic familiarization with the person the actor is playing, but the ruthless [[bodily]] [[training]] aimed at the cold bodily [[discipline]], at the ability of the actor to perform the series of mechanized movements... 5 THIS is what was unbearable to AND IN the official Stalinist ideology, so that the Stalinist "socialist realism" effectively WAS an attempt to reassert a "Socialism with a [[human]] face," i.e. to reinscribe the [[process]] of industrialization into the constraints of the traditional psychological individual: in the Socialist Realist [[texts]], paintings and [[films]], individuals are no longer rendered as parts of the global Machine, but as warm passionate persons.
The obvious reproach that imposes itself here is, of course: is the basic characteristic of today's "postmodern" subject not the exact opposite of the free subject who experienced himself as ultimately responsible for his fate, namely the subject who grounds the authority of his [[speech]] on his status of a victim of circumstances beyond his control. Every contact with another human being is experienced as a potential [[threat]] - if the other smokes, if he casts a covetous glance at me, he already hurts me); this [[logic]] of [[victimization]] is today universalized, reaching well beyond the standard cases of [[sexual]] or racist harassment - recall the growing financial industry of paying damage claims, from the tobacco industry deal in the USA and the financial claims of the [[holocaust]] victims and forced laborers in the [[Nazi]] [[Germany]], up to the idea that the USA should pay the African-Americans hundreds of billions of dollars for all they were deprived of due to their [[past]] slavery... This notion of the subject as an irresponsible victim involves the extreme [[Narcissistic]] perspective from which every encounter with the Other appears as a potential threat to the subject's precarious [[imaginary]] [[balance]]; as such, it is not the opposite, but, rather, the inherent supplement of the liberal free subject: in today's predominant form of individuality, the self-centered assertion of the psychological subject paradoxically overlaps with the perception of oneself as a victim of circumstances.
The case of Muslims as an ethnic, not merely [[religious]], group in Bosnia is exemplary here: during the entire [[history]] of [[Yugoslavia]], Bosnia was the place of potential tension and dispute, the locale in which the [[struggle]] between Serbs and Croats for the dominant role was fought. The problem was that the largest group in Bosnia were neither the Orthodox Serbs nor the [[Catholic]] Croats, but Muslims whose ethnic origins were always disputed - are they Serbs or Croats. (This role of Bosnia even left a trace in idiom: in all ex-Yugoslav nations, the expression "So Bosnia is quiet!" was used in order to [[signal]] that any threat of a [[conflict]] was successfully defused.) In order to forestall this focus of potential (and actual) conflicts, the ruling [[Communist]] imposed in the 60s a miraculously simple invention: they proclaimed Muslims an autochthonous ETHNIC community, not just a religious group, so that Muslims were able to avoid the pressure to [[identify]] themselves either as Serbs or as Croats. What was so in the beginning a pragmatic political artifice, gradually caught on, Muslims effectively started to perceive themselves as a nation, systematically manufacturing their tradition, etc. However, even today, there remains an element of a reflected choice in their [[identity]]: during the post-Yugoslav war in Bosnia, one was ultimately forced to CHOOSE his/her [[ethnic identity]] - when a militia stopped a person, asking him/her threateningly "Are you a Serb or a Muslim?", the question did not refer to the inherited ethnic belonging, i.e. there was always in it an echo of "Which side did you choose?" (say, the movie director Emir Kusturica, coming from an ethnically mixed Muslim-Serb [[family]], has chosen the Serb identity). Perhaps, the properly [[Frustrating|FRUSTRATING ]] dimension of this choice is best rendered by the situation of having to choose a product in on-line shopping, where one has to make the almost endless series of choices: if you want it with X, press A, if not, press B... The paradox is that what is thoroughly excluded in these post-traditional "reflexive societies," in which we are all the time bombarded with the urge to choose, in which even such "natural" features as sexual orientation and ethnic identification are experienced as a matter of choice, is the basic, authentic, choice itself.
1. See [[Michael Hardt]] and [[Antonio Negri]], Empire, Cambridge: Harvard [[University]] Press 2000.
