Autonomy, Oligarchy, Statesman: Weber, Castoriadis and the Fragility of Politics
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chapter 12 Autonomy, Oligarchy, Statesman: Weber, Castoriadis and the Fragility of Politics John Rundell Introduction The works of Max Weber and Cornelius Castoriadis offer an analysis of political modernity which highlights conflicting models of power and the political, and, more importantly, the fragility of democratic forms of politics. Weber’s The City and Castoriadis’s study On Plato’s Statesman both elucidate a continual con- frontation and conflict between at least three different models of power that have been bequeathed to modernity—the royal or stately-sovereign, the oligar- chic and the democratic. By way of an examination of Weber’s study on medieval city states and the model of Athenian democracy drawn on by Castoriadis, this essay will discuss these issues from the vantage point of [modern] constitutional republics in order to draw out the interrelation between the circulation of power and the contingency of democratic political forms. In Castoriadis’s terms, the first two models of the royal-sovereign and the oligarchic are closed and heteronomous, whilst the democratic is more or less synonymous with, what he terms, second-order autonomy.1 In contrast, Weber equates the royal-sovereign form with patrimonialism, but it could also be seen as encompassing the modern bureaucratic state because the principle of ruler- ship over subjects occurs in formal-legally rational terms and is also equivalent to legitimate domination. The oligarchic and the democratic, for Weber, are forms of non-legitimate domination when they are found outside the realm of the state, that is, for example, in the polois of Greek Antiquity and the Renaissance cities. This paper will concentrate on Weber’s and Castoriadis’s respective versions, interpretations and critiques of these models, especially if cities rather than states are taken as paradigm cases for not only an analysis of the past but also the present.2 Moreover, these two studies indicate that autonomy and democracy are 1 Although, as will be indicated below, it has quite a specific meaning for Castoriadis. 2 By making the past speak, by asking questions self-consciously raised by the present, the past is turned into an interlocutor rather than either an object that can be dissected or re-assembled in the manner of a forensic anthropologist qua scientist, or a corpse that can © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi ��.��63/9789004�78585_��4 236 rundell fragile ‘regimes’, that is, their creation, success and longevity are indeterminate and contingent and there is no guarantee of their perpetuation. In order to draw out these themes, then, this essay proceeds in three parts: firstly, the central themes underlying the studies by Weber and Castoriadis will be discussed in terms of the central notions of explicit power, the political and politics. Secondly, Weber’s analysis of medieval city-states will be investigated in terms of competing models of democratic breakthroughs, corporatism, the cir- culation of power and the closure of politics; and finally, Castoriadis’s study of Plato’s Statesman will draw out the creation of autonomy, heteronomy and the perpetual conflict between open and closed social and political imaginaries, and the consequences for democratic formations. Explicit Power, the Political, Politics In the context of these opening remarks it is helpful to introduce a distinction that Castoriadis puts forward between explicit power, the political and politics. In Castoriadis’s view, explicit power is a functional necessity that legislates, exe- cutes decisions, settles points of litigation and governs, and it occurs in both state and non-state societies.3 In other words, it functions as a quasi ‘anthro- pological universal’ in that explicit power is exercised in all societies. Although the relationality of power is under-theorised in Castoriadis’s work there is an assumption that he makes that power is a social relation or intersubjective be picked over by crows. The reading from the present is also addressed with particular reference to the Greeks by Ruprecht, Louis A. ‘Why the Greeks?’ in Agon, Logos, Polis, and Heller, Agnes. Rundell, J. (Ed.). (2011). ‘The Gods of Greece’ in Aesthetics and Modernity Essays by Agnes Heller. Lanham: Lexington. On the issue of hermeneutics, creativity and the relation between the present and its pasts see also Rundell, J. (1998) ‘The Hermeneutic Imagination and Imaginary Activity: Ourselves, Others, Autonomy’. Divinatio, Vol. 8, pp. 87–110. 3 See Castoriadis, (1991). ‘Power, Politics, Autonomy’. In Curtis, Davis, A. (Trans and Ed.). Philosophy, Politics, Autonomy Essays on Political Philosophy. pp. 143–174. Oxford: Oxford University Pres; ‘Democracy as Procedure and Democracy as Regime, Constellations, (1997) Vol. 4, Issue 1, pp. 1–18; David Ames Curtis (Ed.). (1997). The Castoriadis Reader. ‘Done and to be Done’. pp. 361–417. Oxford: Blackwell; Claude Lefort’s work on the political is beyond the scope of this paper. See, for example, his (1986). Thompson, J.B. (Ed. and Intro). The Political Forms of Modern Society. Oxford. Blackwell (2007); Complications Communism and the Dilemmas of Democracy. Bourg, J. (Trans). Howard, D. (Foreword). Columbia: Columbia University Press. See also Hendly, S. (1998) ‘Reconsidering the Limits of Democracy with Lefort and Castoriadis’. In Langsdorf, L. Stephen, H. Watson, K. Smith, A. (Eds.). Reinterpreting the Political, Albany: State University of New York Press. .