"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 FranAois 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
abouttotalitarianism and a more vital democracy.
General
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