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Frank Ruda

Organization and its Discontents

In Lenin’s “Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder”, a pamphlet released in 1920, one

finds a wonderfully clear definition of how revolutionary politics must be related to

organization. Lenin therein states the following: “It is common knowledge that the masses are

divided into classes, that the masses can be contrasted with classes only by contrasting the

vast majority in general… classes are led by political parties; that political parties, as a

general rule, are run by more or less stable groups composed of the most authoritative,

influential and experienced member, who are elected to the most responsible positions, and

are called leaders. All this is elementary. All this is simple and clear.” In short: masses are

divided into classes, classes are led by parties and parties are led by leaders. And all this

defines the organizational framework of any politics, emancipatory or else. Emancipatory

politics is then further qualified by Lenin as that mode in which the avant-garde of the party,

that is to say, the professional revolutionary leader has to express the contradiction immanent

to the masses, immanent precisely due to their organization into classes. Politics is the

concentration of contradictions that are always already latent in the very social organization

of masses and is made explicit or actual by the intervention of parties under the aegis of

leaders.

This model of political organization seems to have suffered on all fronts today and with it the

very idea of political emancipation itself. Take the idea of the political party within it: it

solved some problems, namely those that occurred within the organizational failure of the

1871 Paris Commune. The Paris Commune somehow materially realized the fact that

egalitarianism cannot only be thought but even be practically realized. Yet, it came with very

fundamental problems, the problem of durability and geographical expansion. Lenin’s model

of organization, namely of the political party was supposed to solve these problems. Yet, as

successful as it may have been in the first place, in expanding and preserving emancipatory

politics (after it took power), it led to radically problematic consequences of its own and after

the collapse of the Soviet Union and the complete withering away of any apparent alternative

to the capitalist mode of organization, nowadays it seems to be completely saturated, at least

in the Leninist form and at least as promising organizational model of political emancipation.

Additionally what happened to the party is what in a Boltanski and Chiapello, or if you wish,

Foucault like manner could be depicted as follows: contemporary representative democratic

obviously thrive on the concept of political parties and assimilate, swallow and digest all their

previous emancipatory potential. They adapted its potential and made it even work for the

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reproduction of given frameworks, which is why one may from time to time be led to even

conflate the idea of reformism and real political emancipation. In such historical context is

becomes quite hard, maybe even impossible to imagine that founding a new political party

would or even could lead to radical political innovation. With the assimilation of the party

model the idea of emancipatory politics itself became problematic and due to the dissociation

of emancipatory politics and the party (as mode of its organization, technically put: of its

appearance and practice) that resulted inter alia from the assimilation of the party into the

present way things are run, there seems to be a paralysis of the collective and social imaginary

with regard to two things: 1. Concerning new ways of conceiving of emancipatory politics

and necessarily depending on that 2. How these new ways necessarily have to be linked to

rethinking the question of organization. Founding a new party may lead to nothing but

parliamentary opposition, think of the German “Linke”. There is worse, of course, but the

simple fact that there is worse should never let oneself be tempted to be satisfied with what is.

And if it is not the “Linke”, one may imagine even flirting again into a one-party-state-model,

maybe as nowadays existing in China (formally not-one-party but ultimately-one-party state).

Both options (parliamentary integration or overtaking of the parliament in one way or the

other), and maybe there are more (winning elections, etc. etc.), seem to be no serious

solutions to the problem that occurs when the link between emancipatory politics and

organization is weakened. Nothing in the party-form “as such” seems today to stand for

emancipation (and maybe the form as such never was emancipatory, considered without its

link to the politics it embodied). In some sense, the paralysis of the collective imaginary

seems to be linked to the fact that there (conceptually) can be no politics without organization

and this very link has to be historically specified: as much as politics can only exists in an

organized form (and this is a transhistorical thesis) as much does the form of emancipation

thus depend on the historical specificity of the forms of organization employed. But if, so to

speak, faced with the choice of either “Die Linke” or China” one immediately is led to say:

no, thanks, both are worse, how not to throw out the concept of organization with the present

historical weakness of the party-form? How to thus not dissolve the link between politics of

emancipation and organization?

If one returns for a moment to Lenin’s at least a certain period quite successful scheme, the

party did formally and crucially one thing: it mediated between leaders and the masses. In

short it provided a framework in which one was able to combine what one may call a

universal appeal and a singular claim, in which it one was able to universalize a singularized

stance. This was doable by making the masses realize that they are not only masses but also

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always already structured into classes. So, if the party as model has become historically as

well as conceptually problematic, may one not raise the question if one of the other two

concepts at stake here, the masses and the leader, may provide a solution to this problem? I

here just want to address the second of these terms, namely the leader (we can get to the other

in the discussion). The idea of political leadership today cannot but trigger associations of

authoritarianism and it seems to embody one of the main reasons why Lenin’s model did not

work out. If one hears political leadership, one does maybe not draw one’s gun but one thinks

of Stalin or worse, if there is. Leadership smells of political and social verticalism, in short: of

hierarchy and thus embodies the very opposite of a politics that aims at establishing an

egalitarian framework. Leadership is contradictory, because it singles out one guy (mostly

historically it was a guy) and makes him into the condition of possibility of egalitarian,

emancipatory politics. Therefore any politics of emancipation that relies on leadership seems

to be doomed from its very beginning, singling out one guy such that everyone can be equal,

with the exception of this very guy. From such an understanding, I think, also the seemingly

unquestionable critique of the personality cult unfolds its evidence. If the masses adore one

person and orient themselves mostly or solely by his words or sayings (think of Mao’s little

red book), the very foundation of an egalitarian emancipatory political organization seems to

be in contradiction with what it declares to be. This is why the personality cult is the easiest

piece of attack for anyone that is against the experiments of emancipatory politics thus far

experienced.

Evidences frame the imaginary (they are, in a more technical language, the phantasms, the

windows through which one views the world) and the collective and social paralysis of it, that

I referred to before, therefore does also seem to be linked to the absolute evidence that

emancipation might be nice, but one is not really ready to swallow the not only ugly looking

but also bad tasting pill of political leadership anymore – therefore: representative

democracies are the less bad options; they did assimilate the idea of political heads and chefs,

but completely dissociated of the imaginary surplus they previously transported (no one, or

say: very few people will nowadays try to live their whole live according to the little dark

diary of Angela Merkel or David Cameron, if there were such a thing). Political leadership is

unimaginable and this became manifest in all recent attempts of political action, that made

the, at least, western news (Occupy, etc.) They all completely embraced organizational

horizontalism. And does it not somehow feel right? But if it feels right, it does not have to be

right (in philosophy Plato or Hegel were for this very reason quite suspicious of anything that

occurs as a true feeling, as evidence of something that cannot be doubted). So, maybe, I am

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without any nostalgia to the Leninist model, one way of re-articulating the link between

emancipatory politics and the organizational question is to question the very evidence that

political leadership is untenable. Maybe thereby one could even return to the idea of the party

that seems to be so problematic today as organizational model. I today simply want to start to

tackle the concept of political leadership. And as devastating as the argument against the

personality cult may be, can one not witness a horiziontalized and highly particularized form

of personality cults everywhere from attachments to Brad Pitt, Beyoncé, etc., yet in one way

or the other they do not come with any form of motivational energy concerning political

actions. One effect of the, and I owe this insight to a conversation with Peter Hallward,

personality cult of say Mao actually did generate immense motivational power, even that

much that it brought people who were actually illiterate into participating in the political

movement. The personality cult was therefore even necessary to reach the rural population

which otherwise would have never been motivated to become a part of political collective

action. But certainly, one cannot simply return to Mao.

I think that here it may be instructive to return to a concept of political leadership that was

articulated before Lenin, and this may be, because I think in difficult situations returning to

Hegel is always quite instructive. Hegel developed the idea of leadership within his notion of

the monarch – at first sight here it seems to get even worse. Hegel’s conception of the

monarch never has generated high esteem, to the contrary. But before one dismissed this

concept too swiftly, let’s take a closer look. The monarch generates for Hegel precisely that

position in which the political organization as a whole (the state in his terms) reaches

actuality, Wirklichkeit. The leader is thus what symbolizes the very idea of organization. For

Hegel, monarchical power unites in itself universality (addressing everyone), the relation

between universality and particularity (addressing how to address) and particularity as such

(singular person embodying the idea of singularity). For Hegel not the party, but precisely the

leader operates as the mediating instance of any political organization. The monarch makes

the unity of the political organization and as there is no organization without unity (this was

always the problem with left-wing fractionalism), and (s)he is the “absolutely decisive

momentum of the whole”.

Without this point, Hegel believes, the people are nothing but a “shapeless mass”. In the

monarch’s position the collective will is “condensed.” Jean-Luc Nancy rightly stated that “the

oneness and uniqueness of the monarch – the concept of which is above all determined by the

monos – makes the truth of the union, the ein of the Vereinigung.” Yet, this does not mean a

defense of arbitrariness. Although the monarch is the embodiment of “groundless decision”

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(s)he depends on the constitution of the whole of the political organization. Nancy has argued

that therefore the monarch does not have a symbolic function within the political whole;

rather he characterizes what functions as a process of symbolization (of the unity of the

multiple). This is because one cannot justify the monarch through instrumental reasoning,

“there would always appear disadvantages”, that is to say if one simply would consider

his/her usefulness one necessarily ends up not taking the whole political organization into

account, but rather only a particular positions. At the same time the legitimacy of the monarch

cannot refer back to objective attributes that would make him into a super-subject of the state.

For then he would be the smartest, strongest etc., yet such properties are always simply

particularizing (because strength is not what we all have in common) and thus he could not

symbolize whomever in the state. Žižek once stated with regard to Hegel’s monarch: “If the

master is unavoidable in politics, one should not follow the reflections of common sense that

claims: he should be the most capable… one should rather keep the gap that separates

symbolic legitimacy and actual capacities as big as possible and locate the function of the

master in a separate point of the whole where it does not matter if he is stupid.”

Only if he could also be an idiot he is able to relate to whomever, even to the idiots. It is

important that “anyone could do the job” – the job of the political leader. Only in this sense

one can relate within the same function the universality of its address and the absolute

uniqueness of his position. “Anyone thinks”, as Hegel states “he could also be king... It is thus

nothing special to be king, but it is important if all are able to do it that only one does it. This

is why he is determined by nature.” The last point is not easy to get. Hegel emphasizes with

this the unfoundedness of any true political organization. This is, because, as Dieter Henrich

has shown, “nature” is just another name for contingency in Hegel; why there are say 68 and

not 74 sorts of turtles is entirely contingent and not conceptually inferable. Chance is thus

necessary at the ground of political organization. This is why “the concept of the monarch is

therefore of all concepts the hardest for ratiocination, i.e. for the method of reflection

employed by the understanding. This method refuses to move beyond isolated determinations

and hence here again knows only reasons (Gründe), finite points of view, and derivation from

such reasons.” If one starts from good reasons and points of view then one will never

comprehend the “purely self-originating” momentum constitutive for political organization.

This obviously also disables representative frameworks, since in any representative elections

the whole swarm of arbitrariness appears and if one of the competing interests wins this

would lead to a privatization of a the political organization.

He thinks that representative democracy immanently flips over into an economy of interest

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(and ultimately into despotism). Yet, again, if neither objective properties nor official election

can justify the monarch and the monarch may nonetheless provide an interesting approach to

the question of how to deal with political organization today: how does Hegel justify the

contingent implementation of the monarch, of a political leader? How – and this is like him

raising the question of the personality cult in his own terms – can we understand that

“millions of people let themselves be governed although they are not stupid?” His answer

seems brutal: namely it is their “desire, which forces them against their seemingly conscious

reflection into this relation.” Yet the desire Hegel speaks about is a desire of anyone and

exceeds objectifiability, it is not a natural need. This desire is the very desire to realize one’s

freedom as part of a collective organization of equally free agents. But therefore the

substance, namely this very desire of each and everyone, needs to be externalized, i.e. firstly

facing seemingly accidently and specific contexts but only thereby can ultimately become

subject. The desire to be free becomes subject through and by the symbolizing function of the

monarch. In other terms: the desire to realize one’s freedom is realized because there is

someone, namely the monarch who “cuts short the weighing of pros and cons between which

particularity oscillates perpetually”. One may here be reminded of what Lenin stated in his

1917 “The task of the proletariat in our revolution”, namely “he who wants to helps those

vacillating, must begin to stop vacillating himself.” The monarch in Hegel operates as

symbolizing process for the whole because he does not only appear where he appears for

contingent reasons, but he also functions as expansion of this contingency through contingent

decisions that manifest and realize the collective desire to be free. This decision therewith

stands under two conditions, firstly under the condition of the desire, but secondly also under

the condition of the concrete things there are “pros and cons” for they emerge within and out

of the practice of the political organization. The leader only decided what is brought to him

and thus always already treated by skilled and qualified vanguards of the organization.

He thereby stands in a transcending position that is supposed to enable a self-transcending

practice of the political organization itself such that it does not fall into bad repetition,

stagnation or mere positivity. This is why the leader in Hegel embodies not only the necessity

of chance and contingency, also he embodies the necessity to repeat and re-inscribe this

contingency perpetually to keep the organization alive. His function therein is to ensure the

unity, against the fractionalism and particular hesitation, because anyone can identify with the

leader, since anyone could do his job. He is thereby for Hegel able to treat the multiplicities of

ideas, interests, and visions by mediating them with the unity of the whole organization that

he instigates. He thus becomes something like what Fredric Jameson recently called “a

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collective fetish that is needed for social and political cohesion.” It enables that individual

projections and fantasies about how to realize one’s freedom onto something purely

contingent become focused, unified and collectivized and thereby a collective desire to desire

collectively emerges.

This is why his name is for Hegel of great importance: it is precisely through his purely

contingent and thus “empty name without content”(Hegel) that he is able to ensure the unity

and singularity of the organization and to subjectivize it: subjectivized it is because in him the

substance (will and desire) becomes subject and because by being the empty screen (name)

onto which all individual desires are projected (as anyone can identify with him) these desires

are collectivized and hence the whole political organization is subjectivized.

I am not trying to advocating a return to monarchy (although people still have a thing for the

royals, weirdly) or to the old Leninist model. But maybe with its collapse, one has to swiftly

given up and handed over certain concepts, like the idea of political leadership to the wrong

side or just directly threw them in the dustbin of history. I think one should against the current

unimaginability of any alternative form of how to organize political emancipation, not shy

aways from some of these concepts. Or maybe, to vary Mao famous word about war (We do

not love the war, but we are not afraid of it), one should at least start strategically start from

the following: we may not want a leader, but we are not afraid of her.