DEMOCRACY IS A RELATION
 The plutocrat Bush and the bureaucrat Gorbachov, the terrorists Shamir and Peres, the murderer Chadli and his buddy Arafat, Isabelle Adjani and Jean-Paul II, Harlem Desir and Margaret Thatcher, Krasucki and the spokesmen of co-ordination, everyone is an authority on it, the stars and the democrats. The extension of the discourse of human rights over the whole planet, and particularly its introduction into the phraseology of the leaders of the East, marks its high point but also, perhaps, the beginning of its decline. When all Heads of State, all representative thinkers speak the same language, the moment has come when revolt will seek another way, stammer a language which is neither that of the politician, nor that of the lawyer. The hour approaches when one will speak of real democracy in the way that today one speaks of real socialism. A question of words Democratism is the illusion according to which democracy -- the set of procedures of representation and of the production of rights -- can and must regulate the whole of social life. However it is a fact in the history of societies ( at least of modern societies ), as in that of individuals ( at least of the individuals of recent centuries ), that those moments of deliberation in which norms are fixed, always alternate with others, where the relations of force underlying the ordinary course of things abruptly explode, and where physical and symbolic violence are exerted. Set beside the Lilliputian thinkers of the French consensus, even an ex-guerillarist and feebly repentant sycophant like Regis Debray takes on the stature of a giant of thought, as in his latest 'work' he recalls that Right and parliamentary representation were founded in blood, and he denounces the enterprise of revision, the « freeze-drying » of the history of revolution. According to democratists we have finished with moments of breakdown, from now on society will be the scene of an uninterrupted deliberation, which will perpetually regulate social relations and delegitimise violence. Finally we have found the form of the eternal society -- a phantasm which François Furet has summarised for the delighted media : « Revolution is finished. » Finished ? Not for us, and not for those who will derive some benefit from reading Le Brise-Glace. As we see that the discourse of human rights and democracy has become the discourse of nearly all the worlds leaders ( the others, sooner or later, will be required to fall into line ), we must conclude that today all revolutionary effort proceeds from the critique of this discourse and, especially, of the practises which it conceals. But you remain within democratic discourse if you try to show that those who use it are not truly democrats, or that the reality which they defend ( a trade union, a party, a State ) is not democratic, or that they, or it, are not democratic enough. You are then confined in a system of action and thought which can criticise Ceaucescu for the dictatorial destruction of the Rumanian countryside, but is impotent in front of the same process if it is achieved through the play of economic phenomena which respect democratic rituals; just as this discourse is impotent in front of the exactions of the International Monetary Fund, the representative of the great democratic nations, which causes famines similar to those started by the Ubu of Bucharest, and does so for the same reasons : the repayment of debt, submission to the Laws of the Economy. Because he respects the law, the democrat will only accept the expulsion of illegal immigrants in accordance with a law voted for by parliament and approved by the majority of his fellow citizens, even while he insists that he himself wants it. And if, by chance, he is not opposed in the abstract to the expulsion « of immigrants », but is opposed to the expulsion of concrete individuals, he ceases acting as a democrat. Here, as everywhere else in this world, where words are in the hands of the enemy, questions of vocabulary are posed from the start. « You are against democracy ? So therefore you are for dictatorship, for totalitarianism ? » demands the voice of common sense. One can always agree on vague enough concepts to satisfy everybody. If by democracy, one understands the greatest possible control of their history by individuals and social groups, then yes, we are democrats. But in reality, the whole quarrel between the democrats and us rests on the definition of what is possible. Only schizophrenic sectarians would mix together in the same insult the democratic Head of State, who acting through the GIGN [anti-terrorist police], is prepared to flame-throw the democratic settlement of the kanak question, with the sincere democrat who wants a vote for fear of a neo-colonial massacre. And yet, without the latter, the former could not have committed his exactions. We will not insult the revolutionist obsessed with the principle of direct democracy by confusing him with a partisan of electoral stupidity. Unlike our direct enemies, we know that we have with all those of which we speak -- the nice leftist as much as the ardent self-managementist -- a point in common ( but it is often the only one ) : unlike the reactionary who wants to subject individuals to the determinations of a pre-established Order, we are all and sundry in favour of the greatest possible self-determination of individuals and human groups. |