Badiou and Milner, both former Maoists in the 1960s have grown far apart politically in the ensuing decades. Of the varied problems they explore, four stand out: 1) the meaning of “politics” and its foundational values; 2) the failure of the twentieth century left and the future of the communist project, 3) the status of universal Ideas and truths, and 4) the state of contemporary political debate in France. I will treat each topic in turn. For Jean-Claude Milner, politics is essentially concerned with “bodies and their survival.” (12) The main political lesson of the twentieth century is that a way must be found to transform violent conflict—which has only resulted in massacres but no real solutions to the underlying structural causes of oppression and exploitation—into political argument. Politics for Milner is a procedure in which the attempt to convince through argument replaces the attempt to destroy the opponent through violence. Badiou, while agreeing that “it is better not to kill, if possible,” (104) maintains forcefully that to simply condemn massacres is abstract moralism that ensures only that the killing will continue: “I would say,” he argues, “that … the massacres, are only intelligible … —and that we can therefore only work to prevent them—if we understand the politics that mad them possible.”(25) The difference here speaks not only to a difference of interpretation of causes (moral blindness to suffering bodies in Milner’s case, incompatible political projects in Badiou’s) but also a fundamental difference over the meaning of politics. For Milner politics is essentially conservative: it should do no harm. For Badiou, politics is activist: trying to do no harm lets existing harms continue unchallenged. The twenty first century needs a new politics in which the goal is not survival but a new articulation of the Ideas of freedom and equality. Survival is the goal of the “the human animal;” (95) truth the aim of the human being. While Badiou’s critique of Milner is sound in so far as it is the case that life-preservation demands understanding of the causes of life-destruction, there seems room for a synthesis that neither pursues. One can agree with Badiou that politics concerns struggles for truth that go beyond the established universe of discourse and the protection of the abstract animality of humanity, but also argue that the human animal must be alive if it is to become anything higher. Especially in light of globally life-threatening environmental collapse (a problem neither addresses) it becomes apparent that the affirmation of life and the protection of life’s conditions must be the foundation (if not the ultimate goal) of transformative politics today. marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviewofbooks/reviews/2015/1485
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 12:28:17 +0000
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