I'll talk to you today riots in Tunisia. We do not get out of the topic of the seminar this year - that means "change the world? - An expression which I have already reported the equivocal nature.
If the term "riots" action in the streets of people who want to overthrow the government by means of a variable degree of violence, we must emphasize at the outset about what makes the rarity of these riots Tunisia: they were victorious. There was a regime which for 23 years, seemed well in place and here is overthrown by a popular action which, ipso facto, makes its retroactive nature "weakest link". Why do we need to analyze this phenomenon, then we could just let us rejoice? Peeps is that a wave concern related to binding of the satisfaction he agrees to post, his character, let us say, consensual, despite the illegality of the events concerned land. It is not easy today to say "I love Ben, I'm really sorry he's leaving office." When they say, it is placed in an awful position. Why we must pay tribute to Minister Alliot-Marie, who has publicly regretted the delay in putting the "expertise" of French police at the service of Ben Ali in which she expressed aloud what his political colleagues thought softly. Beside her, Sarkozy is a hypocrite and a coward. Like everyone, right and left, who just weeks ago, boasted of having Ben Ali in a strong bulwark against Islamism and an excellent student of the West, and who today are required, because a consensus of opinion, to pretend to celebrate his departure tail between legs.
we insist again: a government overthrown by popular violence (and especially the youth, who was the spearhead) is a rare phenomenon for which we must if we want to find a comparable precedent, up thirty years ago, namely the Iranian revolution (1979) [1]. Thirty years during which the dominant belief was that such phenomena were more accurately possible. It stated in particular that the thesis called "end of history". This thesis does not obviously mean that nothing was going to happen, "end of history" meant "end of history eventhood" end of this power structure that could be called into play to the favor a when, as Trotsky said, "the masses entering the stage of history." The normal course of things, it was the covenant of the market economy and parliamentary democracy, an alliance that was the only tenable standard of subjectivity generally. This is the meaning of the term "globalization": the subjectivity subjectivity become global. Which was not otherwise inconsistent with punitive wars (Iraq, Afghanistan), civil wars (in African states decaying), the repression of the Palestinian intifada etc.. Thus, what has fascinated above all in the events of Tunisia is their historicity, the highlight of an intact ability to create new forms of collective organization.
The assembly formed by the market economy and parliamentary democracy, given set as a standard unsurpassable, I propose the name "West". This is also how he calls himself. Among other names circulating note "international community", "civilization" (where it is opposed, as it should, to various forms of barbarism, cf. The phrase "clash of civilizations"), "Western powers" ... I remember thirty years ago or more, the only group claiming the name - "West" - as the standard was a small fascist group with iron bars (with whom I had to do in my youth). A name may change as dramatically referent can only mean that the world itself has changed. The world has the same transcendental.
Are we in a time of riots?
One would think seeing the recent events in Greece, Iceland, England, Thailand (the shirts), the food riots in Africa, considerable Workers riot in China. In France itself, there is a tension as pre-riot; through phenomena such as factory occupations, people have tended to accept the edge of riot.
To explain, there are of course the systemic crisis of capitalism appeared 2-3 years ago (and which is far from over) with its attendant social impasses, misery, and the growing feeling that the system is not viable nor so beautiful as people said before, the emptiness of political regimes became apparent, with the only substance being in the service economic system (the episode "save the banks" was particularly demonstrative), which greatly contributed to the décridibiliser. In the same period, and precisely because they are operators of systemic survival, states have taken steps reactionary dramatically in several areas (railways, post office, schools, hospitals ...).
I would try to situate these phenomena within a historical periodization. In my opinion, the provisions rioters arise during periods intervallaires. What is a period intervallaire ? A sequence in which the revolutionary logic is clarified and where it occurs explicitly as an alternative, followed by a period when the revolutionary idea intervallaire between dormant, during which it is not yet backed up, a new alternative provision does is not yet built. It is during such periods as the reactionaries can say, precisely because the alternative is weakened, that things have returned to their natural course. This is typically what happened in 1815 with conservators of the Holy Alliance. In periods intervallaires, discontent exist but are not structured, because they can draw their strength from the sharing of an idea. Their strength is mainly negative ("they go away"). It is for this reason that the form of mass action for a collective period intervallaire is a riot. Take the 1820-1850 period: it was a great period of riots (1830.1848, the revolt of Lyon silk workers ...), but this does not mean she was barren, on the contrary, it has been of great fertility although indiscriminately. It is this period that are out the broad policy guidelines that aggregate vertebrate next century. Marx said it well: the French labor movement was one of the sources of his thought (next to German philosophy and English political economy).
What is the endpoint of the riots?
The problem unique to the riot, as it involves state power is that it exposes the State to a policy change (the possibility of its collapse), but that it does not change this: what will happen in the State is not preformed by the riot. It's the major difference with a revolution in itself offers an alternative. That's why, historically, the rioters have complained that the new system is identical to the previous (the prototype is, after the fall of Napoleon III, the constitution in September of a 4-regime established policy of the previous staff). I tell you that the Party, as the concept was created by the RSDLP then by the Bolsheviks, is a structure that is explicitly adapted to form an alternative government in power. When the figure riot becomes a political figure, when it has in itself political staff it needs and that the use of old horses politics becomes useless, we can say at this moment the end of the period intervallaire.
Returning to riot Tunisia it is very likely that it will continue - and divides - by proclaiming that the figure of power that will put in place is so unhooked from the popular movement that she does not want it either. On what criteria can one assess the riot? It must first there is a certain empathy vis-à-vis her condition absolutely necessary. There is recognition of his negative power, the power reviled collapsed at least in its symbols. But what is said? The Western press has responded by saying that what happened there was an expressed desire of the West. Can we ensure is that this was a desire for freedom and such a desire is without question a legitimate desire against a regime as despotic and corrupt as was that of Ben Ali. That this desire is a desire such as the West is more problematic.
It should be remembered as a power that the West has so far given no evidence that he cared in any way whatsoever to organize freedom in places where it occurs. What matters to the West is, "do you walk with me or not?", Giving the phrase "walk with me" the meaning of interiority to a market economy, if necessary in cooperation font-cons with a revolutionary. Of "friendly countries" such as Egypt or Pakistan are just as despotic and corrupt as was Ben Ali of Tunisia, but we do not hear much speak on this subject who have appeared at events in Tunisia, as ardent defenders of liberty.
How to define a popular movement reduced to a "desire of the West"? One could say, and this definition would apply to any country that is performing a movement in the figure of a riot anti-despotic power which takes the negative and popular form of the crowd and If so, whose power has no other standard than that which the West relies. A popular movement with this definition has every chance of ending in the elections and there is no reason for another political perspective comes from. I propose to say that after such a process, we will have attended a Western phenomenon of inclusion. This tells us that the Western press is that this phenomenon is the inevitable outcome of the process rioter, Tunisian here.
While, as Marx had predicted, the space of realization of emancipatory ideas is the global space (which is said brackets, has not been the case with revolutions 20th century), then a Western phenomenon of inclusion can not be taken for real change. What would be a real change, it would be an exit from the West, "a désoccidentalisation" and it would take the form of an exclusion. Reverie, you might say, but it is just a daydream of a typical period intervallaire like the one we know.
If there was a different pattern of evolution toward including Western, what could certify? No formal response can be given here. We can simply say that there nothing to expect from the analysis of the state process itself, necessarily long and tortuous, will eventually lead to elections. What is required is a patient and thorough investigation with people in search of what, after an inevitable process of division (as is always the two that carries truth, not the a) will be increased by a fraction of the movement, namely statements. Say things that are not soluble inclusion West. If any, of these statements, they are easily recognized. It is in new condition that these statements may to design a process of organizing collective action figures.
Transcript by Daniel Fischer's seminar of Alain Badiou at ENS, January 19, 2011.
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