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The Possibilities and Limits of Democracy in Late Modernity

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The Possibilities and Limits of Democracy in Late Modernity ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: BECAUSE WE WILL IT: THE POSSIBILITIES AND LIMITS OF DEMOCRACY IN LATE MODERNITY Lawrence James Olson, Doctor of Philosophy, 2006 Dissertation directed by: Professor Vladimir Tismaneanu Department of Government and Politics Cornelius Castoriadis’ life can be characterized as one of engaged dissent. As a founding member of the Socialisme ou Barbarie group in France, Castoriadis maintained a consistent position as an opponent of both Western capitalism and Soviet totalitarianism during the Cold War. This position also placed Castoriadis in opposition to the mainstream French left, particularly Jean-Paul Sartre, who supported the French Communist Party and defended the Soviet Union. After the dissolution of the group, Castoriadis continued to assert the possibility of constructing participatory democratic institutions in opposition to the existing bureaucratic capitalist institutional structure in the Western world. The bureaucratic-capitalist institutional apparatus of the late modern era perpetuates a system where the individual is increasingly excluded from the democratic political process and isolated within the private sphere. However, the private sphere is not a refuge from the intrusion of the bureaucratic-capitalist imaginary, which consistently seeks to subject the whole of society to rational planning. Each individual is shaped by his relationship to the bureaucracy; on the one hand, his relationships with other become subjected to an instrumental calculus, while at the same time, the individual seeks to find some meaning for the world around him by turning to the private sphere. Furthermore, a crisis of meaning pervades late modern societies, where institutions are incapable of providing answers to the questions posed to them by individuals living in these societies. As a result, when individuals are able to participate in the democratic process, they tend to carry political ideas constructed in the private world into the public sphere, often to the detriment of the democratic process itself. Castoriadis seeks to reconcile liberty and broad public participation through the inclusion of the imaginary in democratic theory. He contends that it is possible to construct an autonomous society that emphasizes the creativity of the individual and the collective in the construction of the institutions that govern it. However, democratic theory conceived in this fashion must construct limits to political participation in order to insure that the democratic process itself is not destroyed by the emergence of political ideas antithetical to democracy. BECAUSE WE WILL IT: THE POSSIBILITIES AND LIMITS OF DEMOCRACY IN LATE MODERNITY By Lawrence James Olson Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2006 Advisory Committee: Professor Vladimir Tismaneanu, chair Professor C. Fred Alford Professor James Glass Professor Jeffrey Herf Professor Ronald Terchek Table of Contents Introduction: Why Castoriadis........................................................................................ 1 Cornelius Castoriadis: Against the Current................................................................... 3 Democracy and Late Modernity: Problems and Possibilities ........................................ 9 Literature Review.......................................................................................................... 19 Outline of the Text......................................................................................................... 28 The Imaginary and Political Action .............................................................................. 36 The French Communist Party....................................................................................... 37 Jean-Paul Sartre and the French Left .......................................................................... 46 Aron, Camus, and Castoriadis versus Jean-Paul Sartre .............................................. 63 The Decline of Socialisme ou Barbarie ........................................................................ 74 Post-1968 France.......................................................................................................... 82 The Imaginary and the Western Political Tradition: Constructing a Framework for a Philosophy of the Political........................................................................................... 97 The Construction of Meaning from the Meaningless.................................................... 98 The Individual and Subjectivity .................................................................................. 120 Institutions................................................................................................................... 137 The Modern and Instituted-Modern Imaginaries ..................................................... 153 From the Modern to the Instituted-Modern................................................................ 160 The Kantian Alternative.............................................................................................. 182 Capitalism, Bureaucracy, and Bureaucratic Capitalism .......................................... 190 Modern Institutions: Capitalism and Bureaucracy .................................................... 193 Bureaucratic Capitalism and the Decline of the Public Sphere................................. 205 The Crisis of Meaning in Advanced Modern Societies............................................... 218 Bureaucracy and Totalitarianism............................................................................... 227 Democracy on the Edge of the Abyss .......................................................................... 240 Liberalism: The Defense of Individual Rights ............................................................ 247 Constructing Limits through Discourse...................................................................... 262 The Project of Autonomy: Reconciling Democracy and the Radical Imaginary........ 277 Bibliography .................................................................................................................. 298 Introduction: Why Castoriadis When communism began its final collapse with the revolutions of 1989, many in the West proclaimed that socialism, as a political and economic theory was dead. Marx’s predictions that the capitalist system would inevitably lead to economic crisis and self- destruction were apparently refuted. Theorists such as Francis Fukuyama argued that liberal democracy and free market capitalism represented the highest point of human social development and it was only a matter of time before the rest of the world would adopt Western political and economic systems. However, instead of a general acceptance of liberal democracy, the recent history of the post-Cold War era illustrates that new challenges have emerged that reject the liberal democratic tradition. The resurgence of ethnonationalism, the rise of radical Islamic fundamentalism, and the serious problems with instituting a democratic government in Iraq apparently refute the triumphal rhetoric of post-Cold War liberals. Experiments in building democracies in non-democratic states have been problematic at best and failures at worst, demonstrating the fact that liberal democracy has not been embraced as readily as those who support it had predicted. Furthermore, the spread of free-market capitalism has not “lifted all boats” as liberal economists and proponents of capitalist globalization predicted. In fact, relative poverty has increased throughout the world and the gap between the rich and the poor has widened tremendously, even in the industrialized West. Instead of reaching the end of history, the world has become a more unstable and uncertain place. Existing democratic institutions in the West face a political and philosophical crisis. Politically, the most serious development in the post-Cold War world is the challenge to democratic institutions represented by the rise of anti- 1 democratic, radical Islamic fundamentalism in the form of al-Qaeda. Even as Western democracies confront this external threat, the political crisis of democracy cannot be reduced to this conflict. The political crisis of democracy also emerges within democratic countries in the form of chauvinistic nationalism, the encroachment on democratic liberties by states in the name of security, and a general apathy towards politics through much of the industrialized world, especially in the United States. This internal political crisis is linked to a broader philosophical crisis that pervades modern societies. Liberal capitalist democracy is unable to generate an adequate of democratic institutions in the face of both external and internal challenges. At their worst, liberals rely on an ideological justification, relying on the simple argument that there is no better system than democracy and capitalism. The “there is no alternative” argument is a weak defense of democracy, and ultimately unable to address the problems facing these societies in the twenty-first century. At its best, liberalism sacrifices the possibility of broad political participation in order to guarantee individuals’ protection from the state and from other individuals. While the protection of individual rights is a crucial element of democracy, liberalism does not account for non-political forms
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