Complications

The so-called triumph of capitalism that accompanied the real collapse of communism in 1989 has led Americans to 'bury communism'--and forget it. But in Europe and especially France, the attempt to understand and explain both the 'totalitarian temptation' that drew so many around the world to communism's 'promise' as well as the abrupt collapse of a system thought to be deeply entrenched has engendered vigorous debate. In Complications, Claude Lefort takes on his great compatriots Francois Furet and Martin Malia, arguing that Communism was not an ideology based on a seductive illusion or liberal myth (the Party will free you from the State), but a complex product of modernity itself. He does not wish to excuse Communism, but to complicate its meanings and, in the tradition of Raymond Aron and Hannah Arendt, to show that its perniciousness was built into a European radical revolutionary project that began with the French Revolution and whose dangers should have been apparent from the outset. For those who think history is not over and that communism's remarkable worldly successes and its abject collapse demand understanding, this book is indispensable. You need not agree with Lefort (I don't) to appreciate the way in which he clarifies the central questions of Communism's relationship to radical liberalism, on the one side, and totalitarianism, on the other. -- Benjamin R. Barber, Distinguished Senior Fellow, DEMOS Kekst Professor, University of Maryland Claude Lefort is to French political philosophy of the second half of the twentieth century what Maurice Blanchot was to its literature: a hidden but decisive master. I belong to those who owe him a great debt in this regard. Lefort is first of all the most lucid and most penetrating analyst of totalitarianism, and Complications is a remarkable synthesis of his approach to the subject. But this heir of Maurice Merleau-Ponty was always and equally a great citizen, his lucidity never leading to either apathy or cynicism. The analysis of totalitarianism and the demand for a more active democracy have always been bound up indissolubly in his life and thought. -- Pierre Rosanvallon, author of Democracy Past and Future

Presents fresh ways of understanding the rise and fall of the Soviet Union and the Communist phenomenon. This book engages the work of prominent historians Martin Malia and Francois Furet and shows how their emphasis on 'illusion' and ideology led to their failure to understand the logic and workings of the Communist Party."Complications: Communism and the Dilemmas of Democracy" ties together the central concerns of the work of Claude Lefort over the past half-century. A pivotal figure in French thought, Lefort studied under Maurice Merleau-Ponty, cofounded with Cornelius Castoriadis the influential journal "Socialisme ou Barbarie", and famously engaged in a heated debate with Jean-Paul Sartre over the Soviet Union and Communist parties in the West. He has influenced generations of political thinkers and throughout his career has offered invaluable leftist, non-communist critiques of both liberalism and Communism.It is the prevailing belief that the death of communism was a victory for liberal democracy. In "Complications", however, Lefort challenges this interpretation and provides new ways of understanding the rise and fall of the Soviet Union and the Communist phenomenon. Lefort engages the work of prominent historians Martin Malia and Francois Furet and shows how their emphasis on 'illusion' and ideology led to their failure to understand the logic and workings of the Communist Party, and its impact on Soviet society, and the reasons why so many in the West had Communist sympathies.He also maintains that those who regard the end of Communism as the triumph of markets and 'freedom' restrict the scope of democratic thought and the possibility of greater social equality. Lefort contends that Communism must be seen as part of a larger history of modernity and believes that the diagnosis of its death is dangerous to the future of democracy. In the tradition of Hannah Arendt and Raymond Aron, Lefort complicates the pieties of historical understanding and offers a new approach to thinking about totalitarianism and a more vital democracy.