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Vladimir Ilyich [[Lenin ]] died on January 21 1924, 80 years ago—does the embarrassed [[silence ]] over his [[name ]] mean that he died twice, that his legacy is also [[dead]]? His insensitivity toward personal freedoms is effectively foreign to our [[liberal]]-tolerant sensibility – who, today, would not [[experience ]] a shudder apropos his dismissive remarks against the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionaries’ critique of the Bolshevik [[power ]] in 1922?

“Indeed, the sermons which…the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries preach express their [[true ]] [[nature]]: ‘The [[revolution ]] has gone too far. What you are saying now we have been saying all the [[time]], permit us to say it again.’ But we say in reply: ‘Permit us to put you before a firing squad for saying that. Either you refrain from expressing your views, or, if you insist on expressing your [[political ]] views publicly in the [[present ]] circumstances, when our [[position ]] is far more difficult than it was when the white guards were directly attacking us, then you will have only yourselves to blame if we treat you as the worst and most pernicious white guard elements.’”

This dismissive attitude towards the “liberal” [[notion ]] of [[freedom ]] accounts for Lenin’s bad reputation among [[liberals]]. Their [[case ]] largely rests upon their [[rejection ]] of the standard [[Marxist]]-Leninist opposition of “formal” and “actual” freedom, but as even ;eftist liberals like Claude [[Lefort ]] emphasize again and again, freedom is in its very notion “formal“[[formal]],” so that “actual freedom” equals the [[lack ]] of freedom. Lenin is best remembered for his famous retort “Freedom - yes, but for <em>whom</em>? To do <em>what</em>?” For him, in the above-quoted case of the Mensheviks, their “freedom” to criticize the Bolshevik [[government ]] effectively amounted to the “freedom” to undermine the workers’ and peasants’ government on behalf of the counterrevolution.<br><br>

But today, after the terrifying experience of the Really Existing [[Socialism]], is it not more than obvious where 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 (“independent of your intentions, what you are doing now objectively serves…”). Second, the position of [[enunciation ]] of such statements usurps the [[right ]] to decide what your acts “objectively mean,” so that their [[apparent ]] “objectivism” is the [[form ]] of its opposite, a thorough <i>subjectivism</i>: 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]], then everyone who opposes me is “objectively” an [[enemy ]] of the [[working class]]).<br><br>

Is this, however, the [[whole ]] story? How does freedom effectively function in liberal democracies? Although Clinton’s presidency epitomized the [[Third ]] Way of today’s (ex-) [[Left ]] succumbing to the Rightist [[ideological ]] [[blackmail]], his healthcare reform program would nonetheless have amounted to a kind of <i>act</i>, 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 aimed to “do the [[impossible]].” No wonder then that it failed. Its failure—perhaps the only significant, although [[negative]], [[event ]] of Clinton’s presidency—bore [[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 [[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.<br><br>

We are here at the very nerve center of the liberal [[ideology]]: the [[insistence ]] on freedom of choice—so urgent today in the era of what sociologists like Ulrich Beck call “risk society”—even as the ruling ideology endeavors to sell us the very insecurity caused by the [[dismantling ]] of the [[Welfare ]] State as the opportunity for new freedoms. Do you have to [[change ]] jobs 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]]? Can you 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 indulging in the “escape from freedom,” of the immature sticking to old stable forms. Even better, when this situation is inscribed into the ideology of the [[subject ]] as the [[psychological ]] [[individual ]] pregnant with [[natural ]] abilities and tendencies, one automatically interprets all these changes as the results of their personality, not as the result of being thrown around by [[market ]] forces.<br><br>

Phenomena like these make it all the more necessary today to <i>reassert</i> the opposition of “formal” and “actual” freedom in a new, more precise, [[sense]]. 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 “freedom of political choice”—however, were they <i>really</i> at any point asked the fundamental question of what kind of new [[order ]] they actually wanted? People 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. And here one should risk to reintroduce the Leninist opposition of “formal” and “actual” freedom: the [[moment ]] of [[truth ]] in Lenin’s acerbic retort to his Menshevik critics is that 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 <i>ad quem</i> 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).<br><br>

This is what Lenin’s obsessive tirades against “formal” freedom are [[about]], and therein resides their “rational “[[rational]] kernel” worth saving today: when he underlines that there is no “pure” [[democracy]], that we should always ask whom does a freedom under consideration serve and where is its [[role ]] in the class [[struggle]], his point is precisely to maintain the possibility of the <i>true</i> radical choice. This is what the [[distinction ]] between “formal” and “actual” freedom ultimately amounts to: “formal” freedom is the freedom of choice within the coordinates of the existing power relations, while “actual” freedom designates the site of an [[intervention ]] which undermines these very coordinates. In short, Lenin’s point is not to [[limit ]] freedom of choice, but to maintain the fundamental Choice—when Lenin asks about the role of a freedom within the [[class struggle]], what he is asking is precisely: “Does this freedom contribute to or constrain the fundamental revolutionary Choice?”<br><br>

The most popular TV show of [[recent ]] years in [[France]], with a viewer rating two [[times ]] higher than that of the [[notorious ]] “Big Brother” [[reality ]] soaps, was “C’est mon choix” (“It is my choice”), a talk-show whose guest is each time an ordinary (or, exceptionally, well-known) person who made a peculiar choice which determined his or her entire life-style: one of [[them ]] decided never to wear underwear, [[another ]] tries all the time to find a more appropriate [[sexual ]] partner for his [[father ]] and [[mother]]. Extravagance is allowed, solicited even, but <i>with the [[explicit ]] [[exclusion ]] of the choices which may disturb the public</i> (say, a person whose choice is to be and act as a racist, is a <i>priori</i> excluded). Can one imagine a better predicament of what the “freedom of choice” effectively amounts to in our liberal societies? We can go on making our small choices, “reinventing ourselves” thoroughly, on the condition that these choices do not seriously disturb the social and ideological [[balance]]. With [[regard ]] to the “C’est mon [[choix]],” the truly radical [[thing ]] would have been to focus precisely on the “disturbing” choices: to invite as guests people like dedicated racists, i.e. people whose choice (whose [[difference]]) <i>does</i> make a difference. This, also, is the [[reason ]] why, today, “democracy” is more and more a [[false ]] issue, a notion so discredited by its predominant use that, perhaps, one should take the risk of abandoning it to the enemy. Where, how, by whom are the key decisions concerning [[global ]] social issues made? Are they made in the public [[space]], through the engaged [[participation ]] of the majority? If the answer is yes, it is of secondary importance if the state has a one-party [[system]]. If the answer is no, it is of secondary importance if we have parliamentary democracy and freedom of individual choices.<br><br>

Apropos of the disintegration of State Socialism two decades ago, one should not forget that, at approximately the same time, the Western Social Democratic welfare state ideology was also dealt a crucial blow, that it also ceased to function as the [[imaginary ]] [[goal ]] able to arouse a collective passionate following. The notion that “the time of the welfare state has past” is today a piece of commonly accepted wisdom. What these two defeated [[ideologies ]] shared is the notion that humanity as a collective subject has the capacity to somehow limit impersonal and anonymous socio-historic [[development]], to steer it in a desired direction. Today, such a notion is quickly dismissed as “ideological” and/or “totalitarian”: the social [[process ]] is again perceived as dominated by an anonymous Fate beyond social [[control]]. The rise of global capitalism is presented to us as such a Fate, against which one cannot fight—one either adapts oneself to it or one falls out of step with [[history ]] and is crushed. The only thing one can do is to make global capitalism as [[human ]] as possible, to fight for “global capitalism with a human face” (this is what, ultimately, the [[Third Way ]] is—or, rather, <i>was</i>—about).<br><br>

Our basic political choice in the United States—Democrat or Republican—cannot but remind us of our predicament when we want artificial sweetener in an American cafeteria: the all-present alternative of Equal and Sweet&amp;Lo, of blue and red small bags, where almost each person has his/her preferences (avoid the red ones, they contain cancerous substances, or vice-versa), and this ridiculous sticking to one’s choice merely accentuates the utter meaninglessness of the alternative. And does the same not go for the soda drinks: Coke or Pepsi? It is a well-known fact that the “Close the door” button in most elevators is a totally disfunctional placebo, placed there just to give the individuals the impression that they are somehow participating, contributing to the speed of the elevator journey - when we push this button, the door closes in exactly the same time as when we just pressed the floor button without “speeding up” the process by pressing also the “Close the door” button. This extreme case of fake participation is an appropriate [[metaphor ]] of the participation of individuals in our “postmodern” political process.<br><br>

This is why we tend to avoid Lenin today: not because he was an “enemy of freedom,” but because he reminds us of the fatal limitation of our freedoms; not because he offers us no choice, but because he reminds us that our “society “[[society]] of choices” precludes any true choice.

* [[What Is To Be Done (With Lenin)?]] ''[[In These Times]]''. January 21, 2004. <http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/135/>