"Truths-- but of what? Truths of what is actually the collective presentation of humanity as such... Or: the truth of the fact that, over and above their vital [animal] interests, human animals are capable of bringing into being justice, equality and universality (the practical presence of what the Idea can do)...
A daydream, you will say. But it could be that it is right there, in front of our eyes. And in any event this is what we must dream, because this dream makes it possible, without reneging on everything we have stood for or sinking into the 'no future' of nihilism..."
- Alain Badiou, The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings
Introduction
Given the current events (particularly the rise of marches and protests in the wake of Donald Trump's inauguration and executive actions), I thought that this would be a good time to present Badiou's theory of riots and mass movement politics, as most clearly described in his The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings (2012). Unfortunately, in terms of the chronology of this blog, we have not yet covered Badiou's central concepts of the Event, Truth, and the Subject; neither ontologically via set theory nor phenomenologically via category theory. While The Rebirth of History makes reference to these theories (and while, as always, these theories are enriched and grounded by an understanding of the foundational mathematics that Badiou employs to deploy them), it will suffice to summarize his major observational points and to return to this text in more detail when we have the appropriate mathematical constructs under our belts.
We will also make allusions to Badiou's Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil (1993), which we shall also cover in detail at a later date. For now, it will suffice to understand that riots and revolutions cannot properly be judged as "right or wrong" using the language of their situation, as these terms of evaluation are prescribed directly by the State and only function in the direction of profit, propaganda, or exploitation. Riots and revolution can only be "ethically" judged by their spontaneity (they cannot be forced, and must be open to failure and rebirth), their diversity of actor/actress (they must be made of a representative subset of the population, and not a purely homogeneous one) and they must have a disinterested-interest in their goals and aims (they must be for the benefit of All people, and not just for a self-interested few). In general, there must be a universal address that resonates across all class, cultural, and racial barriers. Again, there will be more of this in detail down the line.
All said, this will be a long post. I apologize in advance, however I do think that it is important to examine what Badiou has to offer towards conceptualizing our present conjuncture and towards contributing to this modern discussion of "What Is To Be Done?". I hope that those who make the journey to read ahead will be rewarded accordingly.
Badiou and Politics
For Badiou, himself an old grizzled revolutionary, Politics is what people do, and not what occurs at the level of the State. Historically speaking, Politics has always been performed by the masses and communities towards collective aims, while politics represents the routine machinations and mechanics of the State in the service of its own endurance and persistence. So when Badiou speaks of Politics, he is not speaking of the corrupt electoral and pseudo-representative systems inevitably infected by financial substructures and desires. Politics, and particularly revolutionary Politics, always lies with the People and does so regardless of race, gender, or nationality. It is a global yearning for emancipation, and thus properly a "politics of emancipation".
Types of Riot
While marches may have their place in raising awareness of certain issues or anxieties among the public, they are ultimately impotent in their capacity for actual change. Badiou proposes the model of the riot as the only one capable of achieving the goals of a dejected and ignored populace. He delineates riots into 3 types:
1) Immediate Riots
Immediate riots are the starting place of all riots, and the overwhelming majority are doomed to failure. They coalesce from unrest among a specific cross-section of the population, usually in the wake of state coercion or at a specific temporal stress point (e.g. an unjustified murder sanctioned by the State, the barring of resources to certain groups, etc.). The hard core of these riots tend to be the youth, given their predilection for invention and assembly, and their natural stamina.
The immediate riot is initially localized. However, it is its potential spread from this point that will determine its longevity. If the riot stays local it will destroy and devour itself (a "weak localization"). If it spreads solely by imitation to similar sites (a "limited extension"), it may continue to survive for a short time but will also burn out.
It is important to note that while wanton violence and crime is regrettable, it is almost inevitable with an immediate riot as the people seek to shatter the idols of capital and the state that holds them down. What is missing are those elements that will make the riot truly historical: at this point it is impossible to distinguish universal intention from pure rage and destruction. Immediate riots are always more often than not impure, nihilistic, amorphous, and ultimately a waste of time. However, there are a minority of these riots that will spark minds and catch fire beyond their borders; despite the State turning its propaganda machine against its outraged citizens in an attempt to defend its riches: "To believe that the intolerable crime is to burn a few cars and rob some shops, whereas to kill a young man is trivial, is in keeping with the principle alienation of capitalism: the primacy of things and objects over existence, of commodities over life, and machines over workers".
2) Latent Riots
These are essentially strikes and formal protests. While they have their place, we shall pass over them for now. (And because Badiou dedicates precious little time to them...)
3) Historical Riots
Historical riots represent the transformation of an immediate riot into the pre-political phase of a mass movement. The key here is that emancipatory events can be rooted in historical riots, and they indicate the possibility of a new situation in the history of politics. It is precisely when the "immediate riot extends to sectors of the population which, by virtue of their status, social composition, sex or age, are remote from its constitutive core that a genuine historical dimension is on the agenda". Most significantly, "the entry onto the stage of ordinary women is invariably the first sign of such a generalized extension". As it builds these allies, the initial minority composition of the riot thus ceases to be uniform, and instead becomes a unified mosaic representing all people: negative rebellion gives way to shared demands, and ferocious internal struggle gives way to an alternative to the dominant world.
Three requirements must thus be met to achieve a historical riot:
- the transition from limited localization (assemblies, mindless destruction) to the construction of an enduring central site (peaceful installments) with demands for satisfaction.
- the transition from extension by mere imitation to a qualitative extension: people become progressively unified at the site regardless of label (youth, workers, intellectuals, police, etc.): "... a multiplicity of voices, absent or virtually absent from the clamor of the immediate riot, asserts itself; placards describe and demand; banners incite the crowd". This transition is what most visibly crosses the threshold of an historical riot, via established localization, possible duration, an intensity of presence, and a multifaceted crowd counting as the whole people.
- the transition from nihilistic rioting to the invention of unifying slogans. Slogans are the form through which collective action unifies the people. There is a disengagement from the prefigured symbols of the state towards spontaneous creation ex nihilo. Negative slogans give rise to affirmative statements. The riot transforms to a "mass movement".
Mass Movement and Mass Democracy
From the mass movement comes mass democracy, as "Egalitarian assemblies are held; everyone has the right to speak; social, religious, racial, national, sexual and intellectual differences are no longer of any significance. Decisions are always collective". However, there is naturally a gulf between the mass democracy of the movement and the "routine, repressive, blind system of state decisions". As we mentioned earlier, true Politics is always done at a distance from the State, and the democracy of the mass movement stands in direct contrast to the sham "democracy" of the State. It is here that Badiou exposes the central failure of historical Marxism-- that while the realization of mass democracy on the state level supposedly required the classic "withering away of the state", historically (e.g. in Lenin's Russia, Mao's China) these People's movements were co-opted into cruel dictatorships as they approached the level of the State.
The State only has a passion for profit, concentration of property, inequality, and an oligarchy free from taxation. This allows for Badiou's maxim: "You decide what the state must do and find the means of forcing it to, while keeping your distance from the state and without ever submitting your convictions to its authority, or responding to its summonses, especially electoral ones".
As such, the Mass's egalitarian and direct "movement democracy" proposes an alternative to Capital's inegalitarian and representative "executive democracy". The result of this democratic movement is an Idea. An Idea that acts as an historical projection of what the new politics "is going to be" in the future anterior: it consists of the collective's hypotheses, inventions, proclamations, and eventual actions towards justice and equality. Essentially, it is a set of unifying statements and principles previously "unthinkable" under the present State. Practically, what the movement seeks includes "... an end to corruption and the monstrous inequality between a handful of corrupt elements and the mass of ordinary workers; the desire to build a welfare state that will put an end to the terrible poverty of millions of people. All this can much more readily be integrated into a major new political Idea, in accordance with what I call 'movement communism', which is specific to all movements of this kind, [rather] than into electoral artifices-- a trap set by the old historical oppressor".
A "popular dictatorship" forms that asserts and affirms itself-- and from which political truths may emerge-- in opposition to the "despotic dictatorship" of the State that is enforced by propaganda, police, and elections. Rather than programs and elections, action and rational testing of hypotheses bear out this movement; allowing it to bear a mathematico-scientific element: "'Mass democracy' imposes on everything outside it the dictatorship of its decisions as if they were those of a general will", and wields an authority of truth and reason as its body rationally tests the new hypotheses it has created, point-by-point, using the appropriate logics. It is this tireless work, performed by subjects to this political truth, which allows real change to occur in the political world.
Truth and Justice
It is here that we will have to be brief and a bit more abstract, as we have yet to explore the grounding roles and structures of Events and Truths when it comes to Badiou's theory of revolution. However, what we can do is to outline the lineaments of these concepts and give a broad idea of what a political "truth" may be.
Let us review, utilizing some of Badiou's technical terms:
The immediate riot forms because of an "inexistent" of the political situation: "In a world structured by exploitation and oppression, masses of people have, strictly speaking, no existence. They count for nothing... the majority of people, the mass of ordinary workers, basically decide absolutely nothing, have only a fictional voice in the matter of the decisions that decide their fate". The only unified parameter is their use for profit, off of which the reigning oligarchy lives.
The historical riot, in its spreading and bringing together of various allies, assures that those who previously had no voice (the "inexistent") are now given voice. The mass organization acts as the guardian of the inexistent, as the latter seeks to exist maximally. The militant dimension of the mass organization has three components to ensure its sustenance:
1) Contraction - the creation of an empowered and diverse minority that represents the masses at large
2) Intensification - militant activism (the drive to "keep going" in the face of inevitable opposition)
3) Localization - holding of local grounds (physical endurance)
In opposition to the organization, the ideological machinery of the state will steel itself and oppose true action by using overly-nationalistic terms to delineate imaginary identities, composed of inconsistent predicates (eg. true red-blooded Americans vs. those Other savages/immigrants/illegals/urban youth/poor/mentally ill). It will pit identitarian groups against each other while simultaneously masking its complicity in what caused the initial outrage.
What the mass organization is summoned by, and pledges fidelity to, is a political truth-process rooted in the Idea: "A political truth is the organized product of an event-- an historical riot-- which preserves intensification, contraction and localization to the extent that it can replace an identitarian object and separating names with a real presentation of generic power such as its significance has been disclosed to us by the event". Political truths restrict the otherwise inescapable separating functions of the State as the organization acts in the direction of egalitarian "Justice", where Justice is found in the eradication of these separating terms, smashing these fictive identities, and creating a generic "us". As such, "We must affirm the generic, universal and never identitarian character of any political truth". Truth is conceptualized here as an infinite process capable of achieving equality, justice, and universality through the work of the mass organization/movement. After all, a truth for one must be true for All.
As Badiou notes, and in connecting this political truth-process to similar ones he finds in science, the arts, and in love: "... the fact that there is absolute justice in the historical riot is what no one is entitled publicly to ignore. And it is precisely this dictatorial element that enthuses everyone, just like the finally discovered proof of a theorem, a dazzling work of art or a finally declared amorous passion-- all of them things whose absolute law cannot be defeated by any opinion".
Truth-processes are ultimately a labor of rationality, and truly a labor of love: "The process of a political truth is rational... It applies itself to unfolding in reality the particular consequences of principles, which are themselves affirmed, or reaffirmed, in historical riots". They are always a tireless production of a representative collective.
This, my comrades, is all I can muster at the moment. We shall eventually return from where we left off (Infinity?), and return back here another time.
But for now always remember: this is just a finite moment in an infinite process.
- Dr. G
