The Politics of Emancipation: Democracy against the State

In this final chapter, it is Abensour’s model of a democracy against the State that is considered and explored as a second theoretical model of the antinomies of politics. Against the backdrop of Lefort’s Machiavellian conception of the political, through a series of close textual readings of the young Marx, Abensour isolates and develops the enigmatic idea of “true” democracy in which Marx postulates the formal disappearance of the State itself. Therefore, with Marx, Abensour not only successfully disentangles the concept of democracy from that of the State, but at the same time, binds it categorically to the perpetual struggle for emancipation and autonomy. This is what Abensour at times calls “insurgent” democracy. After placing Abensour’s larger project in context and situating his political theory with respect to some of his most important sources from the Frankfurt School to Machiavelli to Pierre Clastres to utopian thought, it is this conflict between democracy and the State that remains the focus of chapter 5. Contrary to the longstanding tradition of political philosophy, it is demonstrated that Abensour’s work helps us forge the vital connection between politics and emancipation. This is very much at the heart of his democratic theory.