DOI: 10.1515/tfd-2017-0018 THE FEDERALIST DEBATE Year XXX, N° 2, July 2017 Comments Zygmunt Bauman’s Moral and Political Commitment Marita Rampazi With the death of Zygmunt Bauman (1925- and where he remained as a lecturer until 2017), contemporary culture loses a critical 1968. With his return to Poland, his criticism voice, which has been able to combine the of the official Marxism-Leninism matures; he analysis of the main dramas of our time with breaks away from it, and approaches, in the a constant civil and political tension towards a late 1950s, the anti-Stalinist and anti-dogmatic project of human emancipation. component of the Polish“ humanist Bauman is an exemplary committed-intellectual Marxism”. His relationship with Marxism figure, convinced that the role of social evolves further, thanks to his encounter with sciences is to provide human beings with Gramsci’s thought. As noted by Bauman the knowledge necessary to understand the himself, in an interview with Madeleine situation in which they live in and be thus in Bunting on the Guardian (April 5, 2003), “I the position to expand their freedom of action. discovered Gramsci and he gave me the The historical task of intellectual elites is to take opportunity of an honorable discharge from sides, denouncing the often imperceptible ways Marxism. It was a way out of orthodox in which domination mechanisms, generators Marxism, but I never became anti-Marxist as of exclusion, inequalities, “wasted most did. I learned a lot from Karl Marx and lives”(2004), operate. Consistently with this I’m grateful”. conviction, he has always tried to give voice In 1968, a new wave of anti-Semitism in Poland to the victims, demonstrating that there is an led him to emigrate with his family to Israel. alternative to the evils of the present and that He teaches at the University of Tel Aviv until this alternative can only be built in the public 1971, when he accepts a chair at the University sphere, with political action. of Leeds, where he settles permanently and There is no doubt that Bauman was strongly where his post-Marxist evolution of the 1980s influenced by having experienced himself takes shape. It is no coincidence that the totalitarianism in its most brutal forms – writings of that period are focused on the end Nazism and Stalinism –, the mechanisms of of class society and the failure of real socialism exclusion brought by anti-Semitism, and the in the realization of the project of human horrors of war. emancipation. Bauman begins to consider the Born in Poznan, he left Poland with his family evils of his time, not so much as the result of in 1939 to escape the anti-Semitic Pogroms, the capitalist system, but as a by-product of the seeking shelter in Russia. At the age of 18, he search for order, certainty, predictability, that joined the Communist Party and joined the modern rationality induces men to pursue, Polish Volunteers Brigade of the Red Army, transforming the state into a powerful tool of taking part in the battles of Kolobrzeg and social engineering. The establishment of the Berlin. After the war, he returned to Warsaw, nation-state coincides with the “solid” phase where he started university studies of sociology of modernity, that assures citizens rights and protection, but at the same time allows the 26 germs of exclusion and injustice to develop opportunities. Reflecting on this phase, Bauman in the society. In the name of efficiency, of the cones the expression“liquid modernity”(2000), need to compute, of controlling things, the to the extraordinary success of which he owes sense of collective acting is likely to be flattened the notoriety enjoyed in the last period of his on technical responsibility only, shadowing the life. Around this concept, the author develops moral dimension. an articulate reflection that, for some critics, is For Bauman, that dimension must be excessively eclectic, and non-systematic. It is understood as the responsibility that each not possible to summarize it in a few words. person must take towards other human beings We can, however, highlight a nodal point – the as such, not as beings similar to oneself. On separation between power and politics – on this definition of responsibility he constructs which Bauman’s denunciation work has been his criticism of the nation-state. In his view, focused over the last few years and makes him this form of State not only introduces a stark appear very close to the federalist thought separation between the inner community tradition. of We and the group of the Others who are In the globalized world, power – meant as the outside, but also tends to marginalize what “ability to have things done”(Social Europe, 25- in its interior space does not fall into the 5-2012) – moves from the territorial level of the prevailing pattern of harmony and order, up states to the de-territorialized one of the global to legitimizing the extermination of those for flows, of which Manuel Castells talks. On the whom the prevailing orderly scheme does not other hand, politics, i.e. the “ability to decide contemplate a place (2000). This is, among which things need/ought to be done” (ibid.), other things, the central thesis of Modernity remains confined within the states and ends up and the Holocaust (1989), a very innovative dealing with limited local issues, renouncing work, for at least two reasons. First of all, its peculiar role to guarantee the security and because it overrides the prevailing idea that well-being of citizens, in a prospect of progress. the Holocaust is an anomaly of modernity. By The divorce between power and politics adopting an approach that calls to mind Hanna creates a deep crisis of confidence: in parties, in Arendt’s “Banality of Evil” (1963), Bauman institutions, in the possibilities of democratic shows that the Holocaust germs are inherent participation. Grows thus the solitude of the in the socio-political order inspired by modern global citizen (1999), prisoner of a paradoxical rationality; in particular, such germs feed on situation. To build an alternative, people have the we/others dualism taken as the foundation to act politically in the public space, but that stone of the principle of national citizenship. space has crumbled and nobody knows how Secondly, the book is innovative for the to reconstruct it. The outcome is a new form evolution of Bauman’s thinking, as it lays the of alienation: dominated by anonymous, extra- foundations for a re-focusing of his scientific political (global markets and finance) power interests towards the peculiar features of late- centers, humanity is confined to a condition or post-modernity. Not surprisingly, the year of of “privatized individuality... [which] means publication of this book – 1989 – is a timing essentially unfreedom”(1999: 63) and becomes symbol of the changes associated with the easy prey to fear (2006). A strong responsibility globalization process, which puts into question lies with the political class and the intellectual the modern geo-political order, beginning elites, unable to produce a creative vision with the exclusive sovereignty of the nation- aimed to bring politics back to the same states. A new phase of history opens up, which level where power is. “We are still deprived presents unprecedented risks along with new of a global equivalent/homologue of the 27 Comments institutions invented, designed and put into the fascination of “strong men”, promising operation by our grandfathers and great-grand – irresponsibly, deceitfully and shamelessly – fathers at the level of the territorial nation- to find those measures, to resolve complexity, state, in order to secure the marriage of power asking in return unconditional obedience. and politics: institutions to serve, or at least It is, however, undeniable that “promises of meant and pressed to serve, the coalescence demagogues are catching, but fortunately and coordination of diffuse interests and short-lived. Once new walls have been built, opinions, and their proper representation and more armed guards deployed on airports and reflection in the practice of executive organs in public places, more refused asylums and and in universally binding codes of law, as well more migrants deported, their irrelevance to as juridical procedures” (Social Europe, 2012). the genuine roots of our uncertainty and the For Bauman, therefore, the reunion between fears and anxieties they generate will become, power and politics presupposes the creation fortunately, transparent. Deregulated market of world institutions, free from any anchorage forces will go on playing havoc with all and to the sovereignty of the by now evaporated any of our existential certainties. Demons that nation-states. And it is precisely the persistence haunt us (fear of losing our place in society, of such anchorage in the EU structure which, suspected fragility of our life-achievements, in his view, explains the current impotence of the menace of social degradation and Europe, its inability to propose itself as a stage exclusion) will not evaporate and disappear. – a “half-way-inn on the road” (Social Europe, We may come back to our senses and acquire 2013) – towards the creation of the institutions immunity to the siren songs of the haranguers and the new public space that are needed. and rabble-rousers striving to build political Bauman’s denunciation is clear and pounding. capital on leading us astray. The big question, It is also reiterated in one of his recent however, is how many people will need to interviews. Commenting on Trump’s success, fall victim and find their lives wasted before it he notes that the complexity of the challenges happens”(Social Europe, 2016). we face looks unbearable. Thus, the desire An obstacle that federalists are well aware of increases to reduce this complexity with and are committed to overcome with their simple, instantaneous measures.