@e_flux wrote:
The Verso blog has a translation of a wide-ranging interview with Alain Badiou in which he discusses his most recent philosophical book, Emmanuel Macron, and the uses and abuses of the term “populism.” In the excerpt below, he explains why radical social change cannot happen through elections.
Alain Badiou: I do not understand how people continue to think that elections are a free space in which the fundamental direction of a country can be determined. As former information minister Alain Peyrefitte rightly said when Mitterrand was elected: ‘Elections are about changing governments, not society.’ He told the truth, because this is a rule that everyone seems to have agreed. It means that the rulers of our society, who everyone knows are a small core of big capitalists, would not accept elections that do them harm. When things get a little too hot, when the risk is too great, they rally to the far right as their last line of defence. It is not extraordinary to say that elections are a consensual system in which the imperialist bourgeoisies thrive. I don’t think they’ve ever been used for anything else. In the United States, Donald Trump can be elected but never a communist. That is true everywhere. The parliamentary electoral system was invented by English imperialism and criticized by Rousseau in the eighteenth century. He explained very well why elections are not democracy. The great capitalist and imperialist powers built their fortunes on this. The sign that a power has reached a considerable degree of development and influence is marked by the fact that it adopts this system. I think the Chinese will say that an electoral system is better than the centralized system they have now. It enables them to accumulate capital very quickly. But sooner or later, the Chinese petty bourgeoisie will demand some satisfactions and freedoms. They will adopt elections because they have created ‘high-level capitalism’. So-called ‘revolutionary’ policy has nothing to do with elections. In certain circumstances, it may be interesting to stand in such competitions. But it is an obvious aberration to believe that this can lead to a ‘revolutionary’ policy.
Image of Alain Badiou via European Graduate School.
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