Self-Limitation and Democracy Lefort’s Model of Council Democracy

This chapter explores the theory of council democracy developed by the French political thinker Claude Lefort. Like his onetime compatriot in Socialisme ou Barberie, Cornelius Castoriadis, Lefort also developed an early and a late theory of council democracy. While Lefort and Castoriadis were basically in agreement on the principles of council democracy at the time of Hungarian Revolution of 1956, while they were both members of Socialisme ou Barberie, Lefort provided a markedly different analysis of the council system after he broke with Socialisme ou Barberie and developed with famous theory of the democracy as the empty place of power. In Lefort’s late theorisation of council democracy, the councils collaborate with trade unions and political parties to make up a conglomerated, federalised polity, which is founded upon the principles of self-limitation and mixed constitution. While liberal interpretations of Lefort have stressed how representative, parliamentary government is the best expression of ‘the empty place of power’ and radical democratic interpretations have argued of inherent hostility between democracy and institutions in Lefort’s writings, this chapter argues that Lefort’s theory of council democracy could productively be understood as an institutional approximation of democracy as an empty place of power.