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Frank Ruda

Organization and its Discontents


In Lenins Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder, a pamphlet released in 1920, one
finds a wonderfully clear definition of how revolutionary politics must be related to
organization. Lenin therein states the following: It is common knowledge that the masses are
divided into classes, that the masses can be contrasted with classes only by contrasting the
vast majority in general classes are led by political parties; that political parties, as a
general rule, are run by more or less stable groups composed of the most authoritative,
influential and experienced member, who are elected to the most responsible positions, and
are called leaders. All this is elementary. All this is simple and clear. In short: masses are
divided into classes, classes are led by parties and parties are led by leaders. And all this
defines the organizational framework of any politics, emancipatory or else. Emancipatory
politics is then further qualified by Lenin as that mode in which the avant-garde of the party,
that is to say, the professional revolutionary leader has to express the contradiction immanent
to the masses, immanent precisely due to their organization into classes. Politics is the
concentration of contradictions that are always already latent in the very social organization
of masses and is made explicit or actual by the intervention of parties under the aegis of
leaders.
This model of political organization seems to have suffered on all fronts today and with it the
very idea of political emancipation itself. Take the idea of the political party within it: it
solved some problems, namely those that occurred within the organizational failure of the
1871 Paris Commune. The Paris Commune somehow materially realized the fact that
egalitarianism cannot only be thought but even be practically realized. Yet, it came with very
fundamental problems, the problem of durability and geographical expansion. Lenins model
of organization, namely of the political party was supposed to solve these problems. Yet, as
successful as it may have been in the first place, in expanding and preserving emancipatory
politics (after it took power), it led to radically problematic consequences of its own and after
the collapse of the Soviet Union and the complete withering away of any apparent alternative
to the capitalist mode of organization, nowadays it seems to be completely saturated, at least
in the Leninist form and at least as promising organizational model of political emancipation.
Additionally what happened to the party is what in a Boltanski and Chiapello, or if you wish,
Foucault like manner could be depicted as follows: contemporary representative democratic
obviously thrive on the concept of political parties and assimilate, swallow and digest all their
previous emancipatory potential. They adapted its potential and made it even work for the

reproduction of given frameworks, which is why one may from time to time be led to even
conflate the idea of reformism and real political emancipation. In such historical context is
becomes quite hard, maybe even impossible to imagine that founding a new political party
would or even could lead to radical political innovation. With the assimilation of the party
model the idea of emancipatory politics itself became problematic and due to the dissociation
of emancipatory politics and the party (as mode of its organization, technically put: of its
appearance and practice) that resulted inter alia from the assimilation of the party into the
present way things are run, there seems to be a paralysis of the collective and social imaginary
with regard to two things: 1. Concerning new ways of conceiving of emancipatory politics
and necessarily depending on that 2. How these new ways necessarily have to be linked to
rethinking the question of organization. Founding a new party may lead to nothing but
parliamentary opposition, think of the German Linke. There is worse, of course, but the
simple fact that there is worse should never let oneself be tempted to be satisfied with what is.
And if it is not the Linke, one may imagine even flirting again into a one-party-state-model,
maybe as nowadays existing in China (formally not-one-party but ultimately-one-party state).
Both options (parliamentary integration or overtaking of the parliament in one way or the
other), and maybe there are more (winning elections, etc. etc.), seem to be no serious
solutions to the problem that occurs when the link between emancipatory politics and
organization is weakened. Nothing in the party-form as such seems today to stand for
emancipation (and maybe the form as such never was emancipatory, considered without its
link to the politics it embodied). In some sense, the paralysis of the collective imaginary
seems to be linked to the fact that there (conceptually) can be no politics without organization
and this very link has to be historically specified: as much as politics can only exists in an
organized form (and this is a transhistorical thesis) as much does the form of emancipation
thus depend on the historical specificity of the forms of organization employed. But if, so to
speak, faced with the choice of either Die Linke or China one immediately is led to say:
no, thanks, both are worse, how not to throw out the concept of organization with the present
historical weakness of the party-form? How to thus not dissolve the link between politics of
emancipation and organization?
If one returns for a moment to Lenins at least a certain period quite successful scheme, the
party did formally and crucially one thing: it mediated between leaders and the masses. In
short it provided a framework in which one was able to combine what one may call a
universal appeal and a singular claim, in which it one was able to universalize a singularized
stance. This was doable by making the masses realize that they are not only masses but also

always already structured into classes. So, if the party as model has become historically as
well as conceptually problematic, may one not raise the question if one of the other two
concepts at stake here, the masses and the leader, may provide a solution to this problem? I
here just want to address the second of these terms, namely the leader (we can get to the other
in the discussion). The idea of political leadership today cannot but trigger associations of
authoritarianism and it seems to embody one of the main reasons why Lenins model did not
work out. If one hears political leadership, one does maybe not draw ones gun but one thinks
of Stalin or worse, if there is. Leadership smells of political and social verticalism, in short: of
hierarchy and thus embodies the very opposite of a politics that aims at establishing an
egalitarian framework. Leadership is contradictory, because it singles out one guy (mostly
historically it was a guy) and makes him into the condition of possibility of egalitarian,
emancipatory politics. Therefore any politics of emancipation that relies on leadership seems
to be doomed from its very beginning, singling out one guy such that everyone can be equal,
with the exception of this very guy. From such an understanding, I think, also the seemingly
unquestionable critique of the personality cult unfolds its evidence. If the masses adore one
person and orient themselves mostly or solely by his words or sayings (think of Maos little
red book), the very foundation of an egalitarian emancipatory political organization seems to
be in contradiction with what it declares to be. This is why the personality cult is the easiest
piece of attack for anyone that is against the experiments of emancipatory politics thus far
experienced.
Evidences frame the imaginary (they are, in a more technical language, the phantasms, the
windows through which one views the world) and the collective and social paralysis of it, that
I referred to before, therefore does also seem to be linked to the absolute evidence that
emancipation might be nice, but one is not really ready to swallow the not only ugly looking
but also bad tasting pill of political leadership anymore therefore: representative
democracies are the less bad options; they did assimilate the idea of political heads and chefs,
but completely dissociated of the imaginary surplus they previously transported (no one, or
say: very few people will nowadays try to live their whole live according to the little dark
diary of Angela Merkel or David Cameron, if there were such a thing). Political leadership is
unimaginable and this became manifest in all recent attempts of political action, that made
the, at least, western news (Occupy, etc.) They all completely embraced organizational
horizontalism. And does it not somehow feel right? But if it feels right, it does not have to be
right (in philosophy Plato or Hegel were for this very reason quite suspicious of anything that
occurs as a true feeling, as evidence of something that cannot be doubted). So, maybe, I am

without any nostalgia to the Leninist model, one way of re-articulating the link between
emancipatory politics and the organizational question is to question the very evidence that
political leadership is untenable. Maybe thereby one could even return to the idea of the party
that seems to be so problematic today as organizational model. I today simply want to start to
tackle the concept of political leadership. And as devastating as the argument against the
personality cult may be, can one not witness a horiziontalized and highly particularized form
of personality cults everywhere from attachments to Brad Pitt, Beyonc, etc., yet in one way
or the other they do not come with any form of motivational energy concerning political
actions. One effect of the, and I owe this insight to a conversation with Peter Hallward,
personality cult of say Mao actually did generate immense motivational power, even that
much that it brought people who were actually illiterate into participating in the political
movement. The personality cult was therefore even necessary to reach the rural population
which otherwise would have never been motivated to become a part of political collective
action. But certainly, one cannot simply return to Mao.
I think that here it may be instructive to return to a concept of political leadership that was
articulated before Lenin, and this may be, because I think in difficult situations returning to
Hegel is always quite instructive. Hegel developed the idea of leadership within his notion of
the monarch at first sight here it seems to get even worse. Hegels conception of the
monarch never has generated high esteem, to the contrary. But before one dismissed this
concept too swiftly, lets take a closer look. The monarch generates for Hegel precisely that
position in which the political organization as a whole (the state in his terms) reaches
actuality, Wirklichkeit. The leader is thus what symbolizes the very idea of organization. For
Hegel, monarchical power unites in itself universality (addressing everyone), the relation
between universality and particularity (addressing how to address) and particularity as such
(singular person embodying the idea of singularity). For Hegel not the party, but precisely the
leader operates as the mediating instance of any political organization. The monarch makes
the unity of the political organization and as there is no organization without unity (this was
always the problem with left-wing fractionalism), and (s)he is the absolutely decisive
momentum of the whole.
Without this point, Hegel believes, the people are nothing but a shapeless mass. In the
monarchs position the collective will is condensed. Jean-Luc Nancy rightly stated that the
oneness and uniqueness of the monarch the concept of which is above all determined by the
monos makes the truth of the union, the ein of the Vereinigung. Yet, this does not mean a
defense of arbitrariness. Although the monarch is the embodiment of groundless decision

(s)he depends on the constitution of the whole of the political organization. Nancy has argued
that therefore the monarch does not have a symbolic function within the political whole;
rather he characterizes what functions as a process of symbolization (of the unity of the
multiple). This is because one cannot justify the monarch through instrumental reasoning,
there would always appear disadvantages, that is to say if one simply would consider
his/her usefulness one necessarily ends up not taking the whole political organization into
account, but rather only a particular positions. At the same time the legitimacy of the monarch
cannot refer back to objective attributes that would make him into a super-subject of the state.
For then he would be the smartest, strongest etc., yet such properties are always simply
particularizing (because strength is not what we all have in common) and thus he could not
symbolize whomever in the state. iek once stated with regard to Hegels monarch: If the
master is unavoidable in politics, one should not follow the reflections of common sense that
claims: he should be the most capable one should rather keep the gap that separates
symbolic legitimacy and actual capacities as big as possible and locate the function of the
master in a separate point of the whole where it does not matter if he is stupid.
Only if he could also be an idiot he is able to relate to whomever, even to the idiots. It is
important that anyone could do the job the job of the political leader. Only in this sense
one can relate within the same function the universality of its address and the absolute
uniqueness of his position. Anyone thinks, as Hegel states he could also be king... It is thus
nothing special to be king, but it is important if all are able to do it that only one does it. This
is why he is determined by nature. The last point is not easy to get. Hegel emphasizes with
this the unfoundedness of any true political organization. This is, because, as Dieter Henrich
has shown, nature is just another name for contingency in Hegel; why there are say 68 and
not 74 sorts of turtles is entirely contingent and not conceptually inferable. Chance is thus
necessary at the ground of political organization. This is why the concept of the monarch is
therefore of all concepts the hardest for ratiocination, i.e. for the method of reflection
employed by the understanding. This method refuses to move beyond isolated determinations
and hence here again knows only reasons (Grnde), finite points of view, and derivation from
such reasons. If one starts from good reasons and points of view then one will never
comprehend the purely self-originating momentum constitutive for political organization.
This obviously also disables representative frameworks, since in any representative elections
the whole swarm of arbitrariness appears and if one of the competing interests wins this
would lead to a privatization of a the political organization.
He thinks that representative democracy immanently flips over into an economy of interest

(and ultimately into despotism). Yet, again, if neither objective properties nor official election
can justify the monarch and the monarch may nonetheless provide an interesting approach to
the question of how to deal with political organization today: how does Hegel justify the
contingent implementation of the monarch, of a political leader? How and this is like him
raising the question of the personality cult in his own terms can we understand that
millions of people let themselves be governed although they are not stupid? His answer
seems brutal: namely it is their desire, which forces them against their seemingly conscious
reflection into this relation. Yet the desire Hegel speaks about is a desire of anyone and
exceeds objectifiability, it is not a natural need. This desire is the very desire to realize ones
freedom as part of a collective organization of equally free agents. But therefore the
substance, namely this very desire of each and everyone, needs to be externalized, i.e. firstly
facing seemingly accidently and specific contexts but only thereby can ultimately become
subject. The desire to be free becomes subject through and by the symbolizing function of the
monarch. In other terms: the desire to realize ones freedom is realized because there is
someone, namely the monarch who cuts short the weighing of pros and cons between which
particularity oscillates perpetually. One may here be reminded of what Lenin stated in his
1917 The task of the proletariat in our revolution, namely he who wants to helps those
vacillating, must begin to stop vacillating himself. The monarch in Hegel operates as
symbolizing process for the whole because he does not only appear where he appears for
contingent reasons, but he also functions as expansion of this contingency through contingent
decisions that manifest and realize the collective desire to be free. This decision therewith
stands under two conditions, firstly under the condition of the desire, but secondly also under
the condition of the concrete things there are pros and cons for they emerge within and out
of the practice of the political organization. The leader only decided what is brought to him
and thus always already treated by skilled and qualified vanguards of the organization.
He thereby stands in a transcending position that is supposed to enable a self-transcending
practice of the political organization itself such that it does not fall into bad repetition,
stagnation or mere positivity. This is why the leader in Hegel embodies not only the necessity
of chance and contingency, also he embodies the necessity to repeat and re-inscribe this
contingency perpetually to keep the organization alive. His function therein is to ensure the
unity, against the fractionalism and particular hesitation, because anyone can identify with the
leader, since anyone could do his job. He is thereby for Hegel able to treat the multiplicities of
ideas, interests, and visions by mediating them with the unity of the whole organization that
he instigates. He thus becomes something like what Fredric Jameson recently called a

collective fetish that is needed for social and political cohesion. It enables that individual
projections and fantasies about how to realize ones freedom onto something purely
contingent become focused, unified and collectivized and thereby a collective desire to desire
collectively emerges.
This is why his name is for Hegel of great importance: it is precisely through his purely
contingent and thus empty name without content(Hegel) that he is able to ensure the unity
and singularity of the organization and to subjectivize it: subjectivized it is because in him the
substance (will and desire) becomes subject and because by being the empty screen (name)
onto which all individual desires are projected (as anyone can identify with him) these desires
are collectivized and hence the whole political organization is subjectivized.
I am not trying to advocating a return to monarchy (although people still have a thing for the
royals, weirdly) or to the old Leninist model. But maybe with its collapse, one has to swiftly
given up and handed over certain concepts, like the idea of political leadership to the wrong
side or just directly threw them in the dustbin of history. I think one should against the current
unimaginability of any alternative form of how to organize political emancipation, not shy
aways from some of these concepts. Or maybe, to vary Mao famous word about war (We do
not love the war, but we are not afraid of it), one should at least start strategically start from
the following: we may not want a leader, but we are not afraid of her.

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