PE Do you think that the realization of a communist society presupposes the creation of a global identity, a communist or universal identity, that encompasses all people and excludes no one?
AB Yes, I think that communist politics has to define itself as a politics of the whole of humanity. Absolutely! This idea comes from Marx, incidentally; he spoke of man as a ‘species-being’. By that he quite simply means humanity as a whole, and Marx always saw communist politics as one in which humanity as a whole would realize itself, as a politics that was really capable of presenting itself as a politics of the common good,1 as a politics of the whole of humanity. And humanity here doesn’t just mean ‘I am French’ or ‘I am Chinese’, ‘I am poor’ or ‘I am rich’.
In that sense, the communist struggle against fascism always has to be waged in the name of humanity as a whole, not just in the name of the values of individual countries, as in a statement like ‘The Western states will defend themselves against fascism’ and such things.
Fascism can never be universal, because it always splits the world into two halves: the good and the bad, the Aryans and the Semites, and so forth. And that’s why it’s extremely weak when Hollande responds to the murders in Paris by waving the Tricolour and calls upon everyone to battle terrorism in the name of French values. Because then he’s playing off one identity against another, when that’s not the problem at all. The problem is to oppose identity with universality! So one has to consider what a politics of the common good, a politics for the good of humanity as a whole can look like.
PE How could such a politics be implemented? Wouldn’t this require global solidarity between the different groups?
AB I can’t present you with a complete plan. It’ll have to be approached step by step with some experimentation, but the general idea is already visible in its abstract form. All questions concerning the good of humanity as a whole demand an administration at the global level, in keeping with the principle of the common good. That’s exactly what communism means: the common good. Nothing more! This means that politics, in so far as it exists, is in the service of the common good.
Today we know very well that capitalism – in its globalized form – causes problems that have consequences worldwide. In a sense, that’s actually its achievement, because that laid the foundation for internationalism in the first place. Before that, there was nothing global! Now the problem is to overcome the world market in order to arrive at a global administration of common goods. An administration, that’s not the same thing as the economy! That’s something else! This isn’t just the end of capitalism, it’s the end of the economy as such! The economy is a rule of production, but the rule that organizes production as we envisage it would determine how we produce and distribute all the things that are common goods. That’s exactly what communism is, and strictly speaking one can’t call it an economy, because what ultimately counts in an economy is always who owns this or that, who the producer is. There would still have to be producers and so forth, but everything would be subject to the law of the common good.
PE The law of the common good?
AB Yes, the law of the common good. Let’s take a random example: how do we ensure that everyone has enough to eat? How do we ensure that everyone receives the necessary training? How do we ensure that the sick all receive medication? How do we ensure that everyone can travel unhindered from one place to another? All these things are viewed not as instruments of profit whereby small groups can enrich themselves, but as necessary requirements of life for everyone that they determine themselves, furthermore.
I’d like to remind you that the subtitle of Marx’s Capital is A Critique of Political Economy. So it’s not A New Political Economy, but A Critique of Political Economy! I think that now that the global market has reached this point, we have to make it clear that it’s necessary to move beyond the economy and to reorganize production, circulation, distribution and so on – no longer dictated by the economy as we’ve understood it since antiquity, but according to a norm of the common good.
That’s also philosophically interesting, because until now the predominant belief has, in a sense, been that political truth only has a relative meaning. That applies to a politics that proves superior to an existing one – the politics of the French Revolution, for example. That was a politics that claimed a republican government was superior to the despotic monarchist regime in a universal fashion, but the choice between the republic and the monarchy is still located within a certain historical period. It’s a particular question. The universality of communism is different. It’s not simply a particular universality, like the opposition between the monarchy and the republic; communism is the universalization of universality. It’s not an opposition in the sense of a politics that’s simply a little more caring. It’s the idea of something that liberates the collective organization from the internal laws of the economy. That’s how one should interpret the subtitle A Critique of Political Economy. Marx uses a formulation that seems a little strange when he says that production in communism will no longer be defined by the social relationship between owners, workers, serfs and so on, but that it will be an administration of things, not according to an economic norm, but according to what one calls ‘common goods’.2 If production is a production of common goods, then history is the history of the administration of things and no longer the history of social conditions. That’s why it’s necessary to have polymorphous workers who aren’t defined by their specialization within the regime.
PE I find it hard to imagine an equal distribution of communal goods among all people in concrete terms.
AB But why? There’s already a global distribution. And why should that be any less possible than the completely absurd fact that a capitalist oligarchy of a few hundred people controls everything?
PE You’re right, being controlled by a few hundred people doesn’t sound sensible either.
AB Clear that was possible, and yet it’s completely absurd!
PE Yes, but one accepts it because it’s the reality. I’m also thinking of the socialist countries, of their attempts to organize a fair distribution of goods, which ended up with the people in the party thinking only of defending their own petty interests.
AB But that was still part of the economy! Also, the socialist economy was very far from being communist. Even Mao said that the socialist economy hadn’t brought about any major changes yet.
PE But the aim was to overcome the economy.
AB Yes, but it wasn’t overcome. That’s a fact. And that was precisely the bone of contention that led to big internal political battles in the socialist states.
PE How is one supposed to overcome the economy?
AB First of all, one has to want to overcome it! It’s like with a mathematician who has a problem to solve. They can’t just ask someone else for the solution! Because if there’s someone else who knows the solution, then the problem has already been solved! That’s why, in a sense, everyone is responsible for solving their own problem.
First one needs a clear idea of where exactly the problem lies. One has to point to the possible solutions for the world that constitutes the problem, for its singular modalities, and to find them, one must examine the nature of the problem effectively. That’s why it’s important to start with a conviction. The mathematician who works on a problem at least needs the firm conviction that the problem can be solved, even if it’s not at all clear yet how. They labour away at a solution. Conviction is the highest virtue of politics. But there’s another, and that’s confidence: confidence that the problem can be solved. I don’t understand why people don’t take artists or scientists as an example. When an artist begins a picture, they bear responsibility for it, and must be confident that they’re capable of painting that picture. They won’t simply ask someone else, ‘Do you know if I’m capable of finishing my picture?’ It’s very similar at the collective political level. There too, one needs the confidence that one is capable of solving a problem, even if one isn’t yet sure how to do so. And for the mathematician it’s exactly the same! They’re convinced that it’s possible to solve the problem. There are mathematical problems that have to wait three centuries for their solution! All the mathematicians who tackled the problem were convinced they would solve it. And in the end it was indeed solved by someone.
PE So, within all the fields you have just mentioned, one finds the same structures based on conviction and confidence?
AB It’s the same programme! One has a particular stage of development in mathematics or in painting, one wants to do something new, that is, to solve a problem that hasn’t been solved or perhaps even formulated yet. To do that, one needs to be confident that it’s possible. So, in a certain sense, it’s right that in politics one has to start from the conviction that it’s absolutely necessary to solve a given problem.
PE Yesterday we spoke about the different agents of change, about the new forces, the nomadic proletariat, the middle class, the youth and the intellectuals. I’m still sceptical about the possibility of global solidarity. It seems to me that it’s not possible to have solidarity on a global scale nowadays. So I’m still looking for strategic perspectives.
AB In a sense, what you’re demanding relates to the question of a possible unity in the nomadic proletariat. But I think that question is still completely open. It already arises in the fact that the nomadic proletariat is gradually taking on a genuinely international form.
Let me return to a very basic example: I was at a conference in Athens, and the core statements of the participants – Afghans, Syrians, Kurds, Pakistanis and Greeks – showed that they didn’t have the feeling of being in fundamentally different situations at all. Firstly, because almost all of them were refugees, and secondly, because they all had a similar interpretation of the causes that had led them here, and which they now had a chance to discuss together, even though they actually related to completely different situations. The Afghan context is completely different from the Syrian one, that’s a very different story, and obviously that’s even more the case for me or for the young Greeks who were there.
We were able to witness the creation of a new possibility there: the possibility of reaching an agreement at a certain point, and everyone understood very well that this was connected to the story of each individual person – to the stories the Afghans, the Syrians and the others had told us in the open discussion – but could nonetheless not be reduced to this individual aspect. That is, the problem extended far beyond this situation! The problems that need to be solved encompass all these completely different situations, but also call for suggestions and ideas that are communal! That reinforced my belief that it’s wrong, in a sense, to view this situations as incomparable with one another. The situations today are comparable, precisely within their extreme difference. The difference between these people, between the individual situations, was very great, but what they ended up discussing – even though they described the differences between their situations – was the question of how to join forces, how to be strong in this situation of weakness, how one can imagine a future shared by us all, without ruling out a return to our respective home countries.
Everyone found it completely natural to talk about all these things. That is, for all their differences, the great wealth of experiences ultimately made it possible to find a shared position. In this situation it’s important to highlight such a commonality and to show how strongly this commonality really connects people, although it draws on very different experiences. That’s astonishing! Even when everyone can talk about what happened to them personally, what ultimately becomes apparent at such a meeting is that there are one or two common points. First of all, that’s something that unites them in their current situation, but beyond that, it could potentially unite all people. That’s extremely precious, because it’s not simply about an international conference of delegates from different nations, but also about the expression of a true internationalism. Because the great weakness of globalized internationalism is that it’s based on the idea of representing nations that are different. That’s not the same thing at all!
PE I think that’s also important for the third group you mentioned: the youth!
AB Absolutely! The youth are themselves becoming increasingly nomadic. The youth also has a potential for intervention. It’s more mobile today than ever.
PE And we should also mention the middle class in this context.
AB In France the problem of the middle class is actually closely connected to that of fascism, because a part of the middle class will declare a strong solidarity with the capitalist oligarchy, or is already doing so. The middle class forms the mass base of the oligarchy. There are parts of the middle class that view this solidarity with the oligarchy more critically, either because they feel threatened by the development of capitalism, from which the middle class is now profiting considerably less than it used to, or because they hold the view that the future has nothing good in store for them. I think this will lead to a conflict within the middle class, because part of it might succumb to the temptation of fascism.
From a historical perspective, the part of the middle class that fears sliding into poverty and wants to defend its endangered privileges at all costs shows a consistent susceptibility to the temptation of fascism. That also applies to the fascistoid nationalist reactions one can observe today in some European countries or in the USA. That’s why one of the responsibilities of the new communism is to offer the middle class an alternative perspective to fascism, and thus to accept its fears about the developments in contemporary capitalism and take them seriously. Hence the new communism, whatever form it might take in the concrete situations, will encounter radical hypotheses within the middle class that it must confront. By radical hypotheses I mean ones that are incompatible with the tenets of democracy, such as fascism. Historically speaking, it was ultimately always communism that led the battle against fascism, and it’ll stay like that! And anyone who thinks that only the democratic will is capable of keeping fascism in its place is sorely mistaken! Because one can see that the democratic will can lose force very quickly, in fact, as soon as capitalism finds itself in crisis. And then the middle class will call on the new communists for help in order to defend itself. Because the only possible ally I see in this situation is the nomadic proletariat.
PE How can philosophy contribute to all this? What help can it offer those who refuse to accept globalized capitalism as an immutable given? Is there a philosophical approach, a philosophical concept of the human being or humanity that can open up new perspectives?
AB Let me answer your question by pointing out a few facts: the leaders of the communist movement have always been philosophers too. That doesn’t apply to all rulers. Hollande or Sarkozy aren’t interested in philosophy. Marx, on the other hand, engaged with philosophy. Lenin engaged with philosophy. Mao engaged with philosophy. So it’s clear that communist politics has a connection to philosophy that other forms of politics don’t have. And why? Quite simply, because it constitutes the possibility of a politics for all of humanity. It’s concerned with something that can be equally true for all people, with finding paths to solutions that can be taken by everyone. And this question is a fundamentally philosophical question. It can become political, but it’s always been philosophical. Plato already tried to find out what was good for all people – that is, not simply good for a certain group of people.
So I think it’s the question of universality, in a sense, that brings together the philosophical and the communist political ones. The question of a universal value: what is a genuinely universal value? One has to realize that communism is a politics which abandons the idea that politics is always the politics of a single group, regardless of whether that happens to be Europe, France, the bourgeoisie or whatever. To this day, every form of politics has been the politics of a single group, and even when it’s global – as in the case of globalized capitalism – it’s still the politics of a single class. Because globalized capitalism lies in the hands of a very small group.
So I think that the philosopher assumes the role of a ‘specialist in generalities’, as Auguste Comte put it.3 Or let’s say, a specialist in universality! That’s why the communist orientation has always existed in various forms in philosophy. Let’s remember that it was Plato himself who introduced the communist idea into political philosophy, for just as the rulers had to make the common good their sole concern, they also had to maintain a strictly communist lifestyle. That also included a ban on private property and such things. One can read about all of that in Plato’s Republic.
Here we find the first appearance of the idea that politics should be strictly tied to universality. From Plato to Rousseau, Marx and Hegel, one finds this connection of politics and philosophy via the category of universality. That’s why there’s always a certain complicity between philosophy that accepts the idea of universality and politics of a communist bent. Of course, there are other philosophies too! There are sceptical and relativist philosophies. There are philosophies that don’t accept the idea of universality or the idea of the absolute, and ultimately have to face the fact that there is inequality, that some people earn more than others: ‘As equality is impossible anyway, it’s better if the people who are good have more money than those who aren’t good.’ But for philosophies that advocate something like that – which are clearly not philosophies of universality – there is no real need to become political, because politics, which has always sanctioned inequality, can easily maintain that condition without its help.
In contrast, there’s a much stronger connection between philosophy and politics in communism, because the motive of equality for all is present here – a presence that simultaneously assures the existence of a universal truth. And that’s why the enemies of communism have always accused it of pretending to be a politics while actually being a philosophy. People say, ‘That’s a utopia!’ And if one calls something ‘a utopia’, one means that it’s not real, not realistic. It’s true that Plato accepted that this utopia wasn’t real. He admitted that it didn’t exist, but since the nineteenth century this connection of politics and philosophy has been acknowledged by politics itself, on the one hand, because it considers philosophy necessary, and on the other hand, because it explicitly advocates the possibility of a political universality. That’s why it’s worthwhile to commit oneself to the idea of communism, and that’s why Sartre was right when he said, ‘Every anti-communist is a dog!’4