Plato's Republic by Alain Badiou Chapter 14

Plato's Republic -- Alain Badiou
Chapter 14 Democracy and Tyranny (555b-573b)


–I think, Glaucon went on, that we can turn to democracy now, its origins, its nature, and its corresponding character type. First, dear Socrates, tell us, how the change from oligarchy to democracy, historically speaking, comes about.

–The impetus for that transition is none other than an infinite desire, aroused by the only object in an oligarchic regime that’s identified with the Good: money. The shift from oligarchy to democracy occurs when the imperative to enjoy, along the lines of a nineteenth-century French minister’s dictum “Get rich!,”1 becomes an unlimited general imperative.

–But how does it happen in actual practice? Glaucon’s empiricist daemon queried.
–The leaders of an oligarchic state are only in power owing to their enormous fortunes. So they don’t want any harsh laws cracking down on the segment of youth called “gilded youth,” who squander the family fortune on gambling, horse racing, fashion shows, cocaine, or high-class brothels. Why are they so lenient? Because the old oligarchs in power are determined to buy up, at dirt-cheap prices, the property these young people will have to sell off to pay their debts, and then, when they’ve practically bankrupted them, loan them money at exorbitant interest rates, which will force these young people to mortgage what little they have left. Thanks to these underhanded tactics, the rich leaders will become super-rich. But it won’t be long before the effects are felt. In any state, it’s impossible for people to worship money and at the same time acquire the self-discipline required for an even minimally sensible collective life. One or the other will definitely have to be sacrificed. In the case of an oligarchy, what happens is that, as a result of the oligarchs’ self-serving leniency, young people who are doubtless weak but gifted, or even exceptionally brilliant minds, are eventually reduced to poverty. Excessive spending, nihilism, brothels, debts, and even prison: people of the stature of Tolstoy and Rimbaud experienced things like that in their youth, didn’t they?

–Sure, said Amantha. But I can hardly imagine Socrates making Rimbaud the model for the philosophical life.

–That’s because you have a stereotypical academic image of me. Rimbaud, sure, by all means! He epitomizes the burning desire for a life lived in accordance with the Idea, Rimbaud does. As he was very young, he looked in every direction, he kept at it relentlessly, he took every experience to the extreme. And at last he was saved, by work, concentration, dedication, and anonymity. He’s the perfect Socratic man! But where on earth were we?

–You were observing, said Glaucon-the-serious, that an oligarchic regime throws scores of intelligent people out on the streets, people who’ve become aggressive like your so-called drones and armed to the teeth, some of them crippled with debt, others disgraced, and all of them knowing they have nothing left to lose.

–Oh, right! These people hate the regime in power that bankrupted them. They secretly plot against those who seized their property and, even beyond them, against the whole ruling class, which they
consider to be complicit in that plunder. In short, these fallen petits bourgeois now long for a revolution. Seeing bankers, hedge fund managers, and other such multimillionaire bigwigs grandstanding on television as if they were the great benefactors of a liberal society is the last straw. Galled by the flaunting of these people’s “newfound wealth” and the ubiquitous publicity showered day after day on people with fabulous fortunes, the entire middle class, its members having slowly become paupers, is ready to give in to political adventurism.

–There’s nothing worse, said Glaucon sententiously, than devoting your whole life to the bountiful joys of the market only to end up being in constant, nagging financial difficulties.

–The evil then becomes like an invisible fire raging throughout the country, spreading far and wide. And yet the ruling class absolutely rejects every means of putting it out. They obviously won’t use the method that we communists have always been suggesting: the collective ownership of all private property. But neither will they accept reforms that would nonetheless be compatible with the oligarchic system, such as passing a law that would eliminate the speculative excesses of modern finance.

–But, as you yourself said, objected Amantha, the appetite for gain, the lust for money, are unlimited desires. How can you expect to restrict them with a law?

–We can still conceive of laws that would introduce certain limits on the aberrations of financial circulation. That’s called market “regulation.” For example, you could prohibit granting loans to people who are notoriously insolvent. It would require loans having to be made at the lenders’ risk, too, not just the borrower’s. Then people would think twice about getting rich by ruining any chance of there being a sort of social harmony, even if it were inegalitarian…

–… and therefore unacceptable in our eyes, Amantha interrupted him. But it seems to me, she continued, that you’re buying into the theory of a virtuous financial market. That’s really like talking about the squared circle.

–I have to admit that the oligarchy won’t hear of my reforms. It regards poor people, its subjects, the losers, as – pardon my French – shit. And as for itself, it just keeps on getting richer with a show of superfluous, vulgar ostentation. The spoiled rich kids live each day as it comes, incapable of making any intellectual effort, needless to say, but hardly any better off when it comes to sports either. Arrogant and lazy in equal measure, they acquire no discipline, not even the discipline of pleasure, let alone that imposed by adversity and conflicts. As for the fathers, who care about nothing but stocks, bonds, bank accounts, complex securities, take-over bids, and the current price of commodities, they’re less concerned about virtue than the lousiest crook.

–I still don’t see, said Amantha, frowning, how all that amounts to a transition from oligarchy to democracy.

–Draw the conclusions from what I just said – from class hatred, in a word. Look at the cases where the rulers and the broad masses of their subjects take part in the same collective action.

–You mean a trip? Or a migration somewhere?

–Yes, or any other situation of that sort: a mission to some distant country, a military expedition, when the officers and soldiers embark aboard the same ship or fight side by side. When they’re thrown together in a dangerous situation, they observe one another, don’t they? And it’s never the rich who look down on the poor. It’s the exact opposite. Very often, the vagaries of a battle will throw some poor, skinny, darkskinned fellow together with a fair-complexioned rich guy with a prominent paunch. And what does the ordinary soldier see? That the other guy is completely worn out, miserable, unable to go on fighting. He then thinks to himself that such people only manage to stay in power owing to the cowardice of the dominated classes, the mental corruption that prevents the formation of a victorious organization of farmers, workers, employees, and their allies among the intellectuals. And so, when the ordinary soldiers are back together again, out of earshot of the high command, in the great twilight in which every battle ends, word goes around pretty much like this: “The people we thought were powerful are really at our
mercy! They derive their existence only from our weakness. By themselves, they’re nothing!”

–And then, said Glaucon, revolution’s in the making.

–You bet! All it takes is a slight outside influence for a living organism, if it’s weak, to become critically ill. It can sometimes even come into mortal conflict with itself without any outside action at all. A state like the one we’ve just described can similarly fall ill and unleash a civil war within itself on the flimsiest of pretexts. Each side calls in help from foreign powers – the oligarchs from oligarchies and the democrats from democracies. The rebellion sometimes even plunges the whole country into a bloodbath without the slightest outside intervention.

–If I understand correctly, said Amantha, democracy arises when the lower classes, led by the political leaders of the middle classes that are becoming paupers, are ultimately victorious. They kill some of the oligarchs, they exile others, and they share the responsibilities of power and governing with the people who are left. Moreover, as we know, these responsibilities are eventually assigned by lottery. But don’t the poor end up being duped by the quasi-rich in this process?

–That’s another story… At any rate, this is really how democracy is established, through originary violence, and then through a sort of secret terror that makes the former rulers, even those who rallied to the cause at first, take flight.

–What we need to do now, said Glaucon a tad pedantically, is to take a close look at how these democrats govern themselves and at what the true nature of this much-vaunted democratic system of government is. As for the character type corresponding to it, I think, dear Socrates, that you’d call it purely and simply “the democratic man.”

– Of course I would, said an amused Socrates. You know, there’s practically only one word that matters on the lips of our democrats, the word “freedom.” In a democratic country, they claim, you’re free to say and do whatever you like.

–All they do is peddle what the propaganda of the “democratic” countries, our beloved Western powers, is always drumming into us, Amantha remarked scathingly. We’re “free” at any rate to make money and become billionaires on the backs of poor people the world over. But that really needs to be examined a bit more closely.

–That’s just what we intend to do, Glaucon announced in a self-important tone.

–Oh, so now you talk about yourself in the plural? said Amantha sarcastically.

–Quiet, kids, Socrates cut in. Let’s note, to begin with, that wherever people have the right – at least theoretically – to do pretty much whatever they please, each person chooses the model of life he likes and tries to make his own life match it. So in a country with a democratic government there’ll be people with remarkably varied outward appearances.

–Which doesn’t stop them, grumbled Amantha, from being oddly alike and repeating things like parrots as soon as you broach real issues.

–Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It’s nonetheless true that this type of state has all sorts of charms. The big cities, bursting with goods, are like a multi-colored garment, dazzling the eyes of amazed foreigners with every possible and conceivable shade and hue. So they have a tendency to exclaim: “Isn’t democracy wonderful!” And it may well be that most people – beginning with the ones who are like children or the fashion-conscious, inasmuch as their desire is aroused by variety – consider the democratic state to be the most attractive and desirable one of all. What’s more, the freedom that democrats pride themselves on extends to many aspects of the state’s constitutional structure as well. It may be federal or centralized, consist of two, or even three, legislative chambers, or only one, and either have or not have a Constitutional Council that judges the laws without consulting anyone else. In addition to the head of government and his ministers, there may even be kings and queens: “democracy” and “republic” are not synonymous. There are an extraordinary number of methods used to organize the basic rite of this type of system of government: the election of representatives. Voting can be either direct or indirect, by majority
or proportional, by the largest remainder or the highest average method, by one round of voting or by two, by a list of candidates or by individual candidates, held at a national level or narrowed down to tiny constituencies, etc. It’s all very simple: it’s perfectly possible to demonstrate that, with one type of voting, a given party will win, and with another type the opposing party will win, while the number of votes obtained by one or the other of them remains unchanged. You can also have “popular” referendums on the Constitution, on international treaties, on secular schools, and on climate change, but also on the right to carry a revolver on one’s belt or on the odor of pig excrements given off on the plains. In short, there’s something a bit like a “constitutional supermarket” about democratic countries.

–But how does it work? Who makes the decisions, with all these overlapping methods?

–Most of the important decisions, the ones regarding the police, war, alliances, and the big financial and industrial groups, are secret decisions, made in meetings that are not provided for in the Constitution and that the public doesn’t know about. Meanwhile, only for show, there are heated “debates” on minor issues, like the marriage of gay priests or the protection of blue whales. But don’t worry, they’ve still got their so-called freedom! If someone has real leadership ability, he’s not in the least obliged to exercise authority, nor to submit to it either, for that matter, if he doesn’t want to. War is fought only by volunteers, mercenaries of sorts; no one else can be bothered. If some small, powerful group thinks war is in its own interest, and even if the majority of people might want peace, there’s a good chance that war will occur. If the law bars you from being a representative or a senator, you can become one anyway, provided you’re determined, patient, rich, and well-connected with the majority in power. That’s because justice is variable. Criminal defendants, provided they’re part of the political establishment or the financial or media elite, have nothing to worry about. You see people who are likely to cop the maximum sentence, especially for corruption, and who normally could only avoid prison by going into exile, walking around without a care in the world on the streets of their provincial hometowns, or even appearing on the benches of the National Assembly or the Senate, as if they’d become invisible heroes. Naturally, if you’re poor and your skin’s the least bit dark, it’s a whole other story! You’re constantly stopped by the police and you get three years in prison for some trifling offenses. When it comes to knowledge and pure thought, people are perfectly free, too. We argued, you remember, that to become an enlightened citizen, a “guardian,” as we call it, of our communist country, it was necessary to be immersed in high culture right from the games of childhood and for kids’ minds to be taken over, as it were, by what really matters. Well, in our democracies, they couldn’t care less about any of that; they don’t even wonder what a leader does or doesn’t know, what his experience of the world and of truths is. He just has to say he’s everyone’s friend, which is no sweat off his back, and he’s a shoo-in in the elections.

–You’ve got to admit that’s a pretty enjoyable way to live, said Glaucon. The democrat’s like a little god.

–For someone who’s only concerned with the passing moment, or for someone who’s got money, it can be pretty good. In the long run, though, if you want to live by an Idea and, even more, if you’re at the bottom of the social ladder, it’s another kettle of fish. Anyway, those are the advantages of this kind of state. You’ve got a government with an anarchic, many-splendored appearance. In addition to this freedom, so dizzying that it boggles the mind, there’s a sort of purely formal equality that actually lumps equality and inequality together.

–All I have to do now, said Glaucon, is ask my eternal question. How will you describe the man who corresponds to this paradoxical system of government? And, to begin with, how on earth does he emerge, if I can put it this way, from the belly of the oligarch?

–It’s a long and fascinating story. Let’s take an oligarch’s son. His dad, a man who’s very tight with his money, raised him in line with the principles we’re familiar with: get rich and save. Like his dad, the son makes a tremendous effort to control his fondness for the pleasure afforded by the cities, pleasures that are all the more expensive in that they’re less natural. By the way, so as not to neglect a whole part of the
explanation, do you want us to distinguish between desires that are necessary and those that aren’t?

–Yes, said Amantha. And since it’s going to be about desires, don’t be prudish just because a young woman is participating in the discussion for once.

–Fine, fine, replied Socrates with a suspicious little laugh. Let’s start with the obvious. We’ll say a desire is necessary if it has to be satisfied simply in order for us to go on living.

–But can’t we expand the definition? Glaucon put in. We could argue, for example, that a desire is necessary if it’s really beneficial for human beings to satisfy it, without it necessarily being obligatory.

–OK. Let’s say a desire is unnecessary, or artificial, if satisfying it, however pleasant that may be, is neither obligatory nor even beneficial for what my colleague Spinoza calls the conatus.

–Huh? What the hell does that mean? asked a startled Amantha.

–The inclination of every living individual to strive to continue to exist.

–So, said Amantha, a desire is artificial if it’s not directly entailed by the life force? If, in short, it belongs to the symbolic order?

–Oh, that Lacan! A lot of women love Lacan, I really wonder why. OK, the symbolic order it is! But let’s take an example closer to Freud. The desire to copulate is certainly a desire that’s necessary for the continuation of the species in question, even if it’s the noble human species. The desire for a few little peripheral turn-ons – kissing on the mouth, stroking the breasts, touching the genitals, and other such caresses – to the extent that satisfying it helps get the two copulation partners in gear, could also still be said to be necessary by proxy, if we adopt our dear Glaucon’s broader definition. Right?

–I think so, said Glaucon, blushing.

–But if, for example, I ask a woman to put on a black corset and boots, to whip me mercilessly then give me a blow job and, when I come in her mouth, to swallow my sperm, I doubt that that desire can be qualified as necessary, even by proxy.
–Oh! exclaimed a shocked Glaucon.

–A certain lady, who I see is not saying a word, ordered me not to be prudish. I always obey the ladies. Anyway, this type of desire probably belongs to what the lady in question calls the symbolic order. If you go to professional women, paid experts of the “symbolic order,” to satisfy it, it can be quite expensive. It’s the taste for that sort of thing, or even for far more complicated – far more “symbolic” things – that the son of the oligarchic dad has been trying to repress in himself ever since he was a child, because the tightwith-his-money dad told him that all that stuff was harmful to the body, bad for the soul, and, on top of that, prohibitively expensive. However, the dad’s not the only one giving advice. Remember the “drones” we were talking about? In an oligarchic world, they’re actually the people who adore the symbolic order! The more sophisticated, artificial, unrelated to any necessity a pleasure is, the more they love it.

–Aren’t we getting off the track of how the democratic character type is created?
–Not at all. Let’s get back to our kid who was raised by his dad to love making money and not to know anything about expensive vices. Now, as a teenager, he starts hanging out with gangs of young “drones,” those hot-blooded, venomous insects who can introduce him to every variety of pleasure, everything from snorting coke to orgies by way of psychedelic music, costume parties, Orangina mixed with vodka, joyrides in a Ford Mustang and what have you. This is when his oligarchic superego starts turning into a democratic one. Just as in a long civil war the balance of power can suddenly shift if one of the factions gets assistance from outside allies who share its political ideology, the young man’s character can change when powerful unconscious desires, counterbalanced up till then by family pressure, get assistance from kindred desires outside him. Naturally, there may be a counter-attack from the oligarchic habits, if outside allies of that party come to the aid of what, in our young man, still remains attached to them. These might be the bitter reproaches and high-handed lectures given him by his father or other family members. The upshot is that a war with himself will be declared within him, and, with regard to the family values, he’ll be torn by a terrible inner conflict between rebellion and conservatism. In some cases the
counterrevolution is victorious. The conservative principles will restrict, or even eliminate, the democratic rebellion. Some of the unconscious desires that had come to light will be repressed, others will disappear, and a sort of guilt will haunt the young hero’s conscience, enabling the old order to regain its hold over him.

–What a disgraceful victory! Amantha exclaimed disapprovingly.

–But a precarious one. Because it frequently happens that, after this initial defeat of the artificial desires, other desires of the same kind, multifarious and powerful, take advantage of a kind of helplessness of the Name of the Father and suddenly surge forth from the inexhaustible reserves of the unconscious. These new desires dragoon him into a sort of acceptance of everything the rich city has to offer: beautiful, superfluous objects, scrumptious food, high-tech gadgets, trips to the other side of the world, fancy scarves and striped dresses, drugs and cars, roofs and bulldogs, and so forth. Life becomes an – often clandestine – expedition of sorts through the infinite variety of little pleasures. In the end, these materialistic impulses storm the citadel of principles that made the young man or woman a Subject. That’s because all resistance was impossible. Up against the temptations of capitalism, what can Subjects devoid of any knowledge or useful practices, Subjects for whom the road to truths is now blocked, do, except disintegrate and dissolve into the individuals who are their live supports? In such circumstances, it’s clear that fallacious arguments and false opinions have invaded the stronghold. As a result, it’s as if these young people were living in a world of criminals whose only principle was to be able to afford consuming whatever they like. Of course, there are occasionally subjective counter-offensives from their families or some of their friends. The thrifty, respectable party that ruled the oligarchic world makes its voice heard in their inner deliberations. But the fraudulent rhetoric within them shuts the gates of the royal citadel of their souls, and neither the rescue forces of thought that might come from outside to defend the failing principles nor the wise counsel, the fruit of long experience, dispensed by their elders can gain entry any longer. The discourse of “personal fulfillment,” as the resident sophists put it, wins the battle. Modesty is regarded as the height of stupidity; women who cover their hair or aren’t inclined to wear skirts that come up to their ass are persecuted. Reserve, a reflective temperament, rational argumentation are considered by the trendy loudmouths as forms of cowardice and by the big shots on TV as being about as worthy of media attention as a burned-out candle. And as for spending moderately and refusing to live on credit, well, that’s just a load of backwoods bullshit. The violence behind all this is basically that of the swarm of unnecessary desires aroused by the inexhaustible supply of objects dumped on the market, even though they’re as ugly, destructive, and strident as a swarm of locusts.

–Oh, Socrates! You raging poet! said Amantha, full of emotion.

–The temptations of consumerism and money can drain the Subject of its virtues and leave it naked and utterly alone. It’s the Eleusinian mysteries in reverse: the Subject thus “purified” is then filled to the brim with pointless insolence, authoritarian anarchy, miserly extravagance, and meek shamelessness. With crowns on their heads, all these splendid attitudes march forward amid a fiendish procession where the latest radio hits blare out over the bass going boom-boom-boom, as though the earth were quaking from such a racket. Names change things. Disregard for everything that’s not your own little self is called “the autonomy of the human subject.” Being rid of every principle connected with collective life is called “personal freedom.” The most ruthless careerism adopts the sweet name of “social success.” Being even the least bit concerned about workers, lower-level employees, or small farmers is denounced as “populism.” Advocating outrageous inequalities, the competition of all against all, and police repression of the poorest people in society is called “the courage to start from realities.” Obviously, with lessons like these, a young person will quickly progress from the – no doubt too narrow – world of necessary desires in which he was raised to the heady world of unnecessary desires, to satisfy which he’ll be prepared to sacrifice every universal truth won by human thought since the dawn of time.

–I can practically continue for you, said Amantha excitedly. And what’s more, I can do it in a contemporary style. The girls in countries like those will invest as much money, time, and trouble in the trivia of looks and luxury as in all the serious things in life. Some of them will eventually fall into nihilism. They’ll end up dead on a sidewalk somewhere, with their straight purple hair, surrounded by a bunch of wasted companions and stray dogs. Most of them, though, when they get older, will give up the craziest of the risks they’d been taking and settle into a humdrum routine of little indulgences. Taking refuge in their precious female “self,” they’ll clear out the clutter in their heads. A little old-fashioned concern with security and a little promiscuity; a little career–family balancing act and a little vacationingin-the-nude in Spain; a big dollop of careerism and a pinch of social discontent; a reliable husband and a few hook-ups on the sly; lots of idiotic celebrity magazines and a smidgeon of the latest novels; a theoretical love of “others” and a practical hatred of women wearing headscarves or burkas. It’s all about being for the equality of everything galore, except for whatever you don’t happen to like. These gals surrender their subjective selves to the first stupid thing that comes along, worry about whether it will affect their “emotional stability,” then give it up and enthusiastically move on to the next stupid thing.

–Not bad, not bad, said Socrates appreciatively. Let’s also mention all these young people’s relationship to truths and rational arguments. Those sorts of things put them off, and they won’t allow them into the citadel of their soul. Suppose we tell them: “Dear friends, there are joys that draw their force from universally valid desires, and pleasures that correspond only to our selfish desires. On the level of conscious choices, at any rate, we should give priority to the former and at the very least acknowledge their superiority. The latter we need to beware of, and there are many situations where it’s necessary to give them up.” Do you know what they’d reply?

–They’re going to give you hell! I can already hear them. And so saying, Amantha put on her aggressive tough-girl act:

–“Socrates! You’re just an old stick-in-the-mud! All our desires are great. They’re all good, because they’re my desires, not yours. And what’s really awesome is enjoying everything at the same time. Long live the equality of everything in myself!”

–There you go!

–That is in fact the life led by someone for whom everything’s equal to everything else, observed Glaucon.

–I’m afraid so! The man of the worldwide exchange and instant communication of everything. In what he calls his incomparable, his irreplaceable self, a man like that combines a hundred different, everchanging personalities. He’s so attractive and versatile, this democratic individual! He’s so like the state with the same name! It’s easy to understand how loads of people, men and women alike, all of them like eternal adolescents, can’t imagine any better system of government than this illustrious democracy.

–All you have to do now, if I understand correctly, is present tyranny and the corresponding character type to us.

–The tyrant…, Socrates began.

–The fascist, no? Amantha interrupted him.

–The fascist tyrant, if you like. What a great subject for a talented portrait painter!

–But how is it that we go from democracy to this kind of tyranny? Glaucon inquired. Didn’t Mussolini, Hitler and Salazar all come to power in a democratic context? After being elected?

–And so did Pétain, Amantha remarked.

–Isn’t the overthrow of freedom – even corrupt, enslaved freedom – even when it’s assented to, paradoxical? asked Glaucon.

–To get around that problem we can perhaps recall the means by which the transition from oligarchy to democracy takes place. When carried to extremes, the norm of oligarchy is a relentless concentration of wealth. The indifference to anything but wealth, the absence of any real principles lead to the destruction of that regime. But what’s the norm of democracy – in the ordinary sense of the word, that is?

–Freedom, suggested Glaucon.

–No, it’s not! protested Amantha. Not freedom like that, crude freedom, “freedom” reduced to the compulsory gratification of personal desires through the objects available on the market. The norm is in fact normless “freedom,” meaning sheer animality, because the essence of such normless personal freedom is, quite simply, private interest.

–OK, said Socrates. And the competitive fury of private interest, the indifference to anything else, including any principle, or even any truth – that’s what destroys our third system of government, democracy, from within and replaces it with one version or another of the fourth: a fascist-like tyranny.

–How so? said Glaucon, who was a bit lost.

–The leaders of “democratic” countries gradually become run-of-the-mill demagogues who, under cover of “freedom,” destroy all reference to any norm other than the ruthlessness of private appetites. Anyone who wants to curb the expansion of these appetites and the absolute “value” of satisfying them is called a communist, a totalitarian, and an enemy of freedoms. Those who call for the collectivization of everything in the public interest – medicine, education, means of transportation, energy sources, drinkable water, banks – are deemed to be old-fashioned, people stupidly opposed to modern methods of production and exchange. For the political leaders to be ruled by their own self-interest – to remain at all costs in power, be re-elected indefinitely, profit from the ambient corruption – and for the people they govern to have no relationship with the leaders other than one of envy and curiosity – photos in celebrity magazines, absurd opinion polls, gossip, and anecdotes – is all it takes to destroy public spirit and to transform politics, which is a thought, into mere shadow play.

–But they still have freedom! said Glaucon stubbornly. Even in families. With the old symbolic authority of the father gone, the son is naturally anxious, but he’s free, he can do whatever he wants.

–Except there’s nothing he wants to do, Amantha cut in.

–Oh, come on! You’re exaggerating. Fathers, who were once real dictators, often end up being afraid of their sons. Isn’t that a kind of liberation? And look at foreigners, too – aren’t they free? If they’ve got money, at any rate, they’re just as free as other citizens. And if they’re poor, they’re no more nor less free than the bum down the street. But in a democracy, it’s not like in hereditary oligarchies. Poor people are still free to become rich some day.

–You can’t really believe that! said Amantha with supreme contempt.

–In any case, Socrates resumed, the truth is that, in this sort of democracy, as our good old Marx said, all the relations of authority have been dissolved “in the icy waters of egotistical calculation.”2 Even in places that are theoretically safe from corruption by money – schools, for example – some teachers…

–Oh, I know a thing or two about that, cried Amantha. A lot of teachers are scared of the students, so they play up to them and only make them read or study the latest trendy bullshit. The students, moreover, don’t give a damn about anything. They’re on a first-name basis with the teachers, who joke around ridiculously to avoid being heckled in class. I’ve even seen some of them sing rock or rap songs and shimmy to the music on their desks!

–You’re such a pessimist! protested Glaucon. There are some really great teachers.

–Yeah, but they’re few and far between. A really firm grip is required, or else older guys who have an incredible aura of authority about them. I happen to have my own theory about all this, incidentally. Fathers, teachers, even policemen, even judges or presidents are worthless now, and respect for them is gone, because, in democracy, they’ve become merely the equals of us girls.

–What do you mean? said a shocked Glaucon. How can you, a woman, say such a thing? After all these decades of feminism?

–Precisely because I know women, today’s women in particular. They’re not worth a damn. All they think about is getting ahead by stepping on men and their girlfriends. And on top of that they make everyone feel sorry for them, the poor dears! If the world were run by women it would be like a beehive,
a nest of ants, termites! What an awful thought!

–I have a feeling Amantha’s trying to provoke us with this, said Socrates, attempting to arbitrate. But let’s put this burning issue aside, at least for the time being.

–But, persisted Glaucon, we agreed that under communism men and women are the same.

–Obviously, said Amantha with a shrug. Did I say anything different?

–Well, I don’t get you, confessed a frustrated Glaucon.

–At any rate, said Socrates, smiling, men, who’ve already got their hands full with women, are no better off when it comes to animals. In a democracy, a pet is as free as its owners. And, what’s more, it eats better than an African; its food is top quality! Horses and donkeys, if there were any left, would walk proudly through the streets with their heads held high, jostling anyone who got in their way.

–In a democracy, the horses neigh that they’re free, Amantha snickered, and the donkeys bray the same thing.

–Oh, that’s idiotic, said a disheartened Glaucon. Socrates thought they should really be a bit more serious and said:

–The truth is that the war of private interests makes everyone become irritable and overworked. At the slightest obstacle, the slightest hindrance, people protest, they cry, they accuse, they sue. Everyone’s a victim of everyone else. General “victim protection” laws are passed, on the basis of isolated incidents that TV has transformed into public scandals. These arbitrary laws that keep piling up, detached from any principle, are only of use to the police, so that they can persecute the weakest in society. All this legal and law enforcement chaos, like the lack of any strong political conviction among the people, creates an environment in which the fascists will thrive.

–So how do they gain strength? Glaucon asked worriedly. How is it that in certain circumstances they manage to take power?

–We saw that a disease intrinsic to oligarchy inevitably leads to its destruction. Similarly, the obsession with individual free will, once it has spread like a disease to all spheres of the public interest, leads, virulently and insidiously, to democracy’s enslavement. Dialectics, in the ordinary sense of the term, teaches us that an extreme action in one direction causes a violent reaction in the opposite direction. This phenomenon has been observed with respect to climate, plant life, and all living organisms. It seems that the same thing has also been proven true as regards a country’s political organization. If personal freedom, in large quantities, remains foreign to any truth, it can only turn into slavery.

–It seems to me, remarked Amantha, that that same dialectical reversal affects individuals as well as communities.

–Absolutely. And, as a result, tyrannies and fascisms – exemplifying the fact that freedom, albeit sophisticated but lacking either principle or concept, reverses into brute slavery – always arise in circumstances that are claimed to be democratic or republican.

–That’s a historical fact, agreed Glaucon. Think about Caesar and Augustus, Mussolini, Salazar, Hitler, and so on. But I had a different question in mind: what’s the disease, common to both democracy and oligarchy, that ultimately puts everyone in chains?

–I think it’s the group of people who are both extravagant and lazy, the parasites, in a word. A few loudmouths among them march in the lead, and the troop of cowards follows behind them. We called them the drones of a political community, remember?

–But only the leaders, the caudillos, the führers have stingers, Glaucon reminded him.

–Yet it’s still the case that they behave in the collective body the way an infectious microbe does in the individual body. Good leaders, on the model of good doctors, need to monitor this parasitic social group very carefully. You can also think of a savvy beekeeper: he prevents drones like these from arising in the hive. If he sees any, he destroys them mercilessly and throws the honeycombs they live in into the fire.

–Wow, you’ve turned into a man of Terror now! exclaimed Amantha.

–I’m getting carried away, you’re right; it’s an easy way out. Let’s get back to analytical methods. A country of our liberal West can be divided into three classes. The first of these is the class of evil drones, those parasites who, owing to the combination of economic liberalism and their own laziness, proliferate in “democratic” countries at least as much as they did in the old feudal oligarchies. What’s more, this group of parasites is a lot more active in the new environment than it was in the oligarchic one.

–And why is that? grumbled Amantha.

–Because the oligarchic regime, set in its ways, looks down on upstarts like them and won’t give them any positions of power, whereas in a democracy their scope of action is, so to speak, unlimited. In the assemblies and during electoral campaigns, ruthless ringleaders and shrewd orators hold forth, while the backbenchers and provincial VIPs sit on the benches and merely applaud. Under these circumstances, almost all business falls into the hands of a few cliques of wheeler-dealers.

–So what are the other two classes? asked the impatient Glaucon.

–The capitalists, first of all, whose determination to hold on to and increase their assets keeps them away from the turmoil and risks of getting involved in politics. It’s from them that the drones, who secretly promise them that they’ll protect their established fortunes, get most of their honey…

–They’re obviously not going to try to get it from people who have nothing! Amantha joked. And what about the third class?

–It’s the working people, the great mass of workers, farmers, employees, minor civil servants, and so on. They’d be the most powerful group if they united under the banner of an Idea.

–But they only rarely do, observed Glaucon. They don’t constitute an organized political force.

–They’re kept from doing so in every way possible. And, to begin with, they’re divided by bribery. The self-proclaimed “popular” leaders distribute to a segment of the working people – whom they call the “middle class” – what they’ve managed to screw the rich out of, keeping a big share of it for themselves while they’re at it. That way, said “middle classes,” whose chief concern is to hold on to their ill-gotten standard of living, will flat-out refuse to be aligned with the poorest and most vulnerable workers, who also happen to be, always and everywhere, the ones most eager to unite under the banner of a new egalitarian politics.

–Not to mention that the capitalists, too, will defend themselves, Glaucon said. They’ll establish political parties, buy up newspapers, engage in large-scale corruption.

–Of course! And even though they have neither the means, nor the intention moreover, of overthrowing the established order, the rumor will be spread that it’s them, not the drones, who are plotting against the people. They’ll be made to appear like raging oligarchs.

–And they’ll inevitably become ones! Glaucon added. When they see the corrupt middle class, the populist demagogues, and the most ignorant segment of the working people turning against them, their old oligarchic, feudal reflexes will return and, with the help – they hope – of the army, the police, the clergy, and the courts, they’ll set their sights on a conservative revolution. There’ll then be a period of social unrest, with trials, factional struggles, shock troops, the army divided, enormous demonstrations, conspiracies of every kind, and so forth.
–And it’s then, I think, that a charismatic leader will make his appearance, right?

–He’s the man of the hour. The motley conglomeration of the corrupt middle classes and the deluded people will install as its leader some guy who was created out of nothing and whose power only comes from this alliance, against a backdrop of social unrest and fears. This creature of circumstance will declare himself to be “the nation’s savior” and will combat conservative moderation, of course, but he will especially combat any independent popular organization whose aim is to unleash the people’s political power and bring its scattered masses back together.

–So is it this “savior,” asked Amantha, who’ll become a tyrant or a fascist leader?

–Every time. His transformation reminds me of a story told by Pausanias. If you sample human entrails
cut up in pieces and mixed with bull, calf, and goat innards, you’ll be instantly changed into a wolf. When the “nation’s savior” sees the crowds mesmerized by his speeches, he won’t be able to keep from sampling the bloody entrails of his own people. Look at how, only a year after taking power, Hitler had the whole wing of his party that believed in a true fascist popular “revolution” murdered, the SA stormtroopers of his old buddy Röhm, whom he went to insult and humiliate in prison before they executed him. That’s how it always is. While claiming to be reducing the debt, bringing the bankers under control, making the nation stronger and getting rid of unemployment, the fascist leader turns over to the police torturers everyone in his own camp whom he doesn’t like or who’s stealing his thunder. He appoints special courts, where paid informers get innocent people sentenced to death. With his big voracious wolf’s tongue he greedily laps up the blood of his parents, whom he sends into exile or murders. It’s an inexorable law that such a man will either die from the blows dealt him by his innumerable enemies or else build up absolute tyrannical power, a ruthless fascist dictatorship.

–For that, remarked Amantha, he’ll need an enormous, loyal personal bodyguard, a ubiquitous secret police.

–I think he’ll always be able to find enough thugs, replied Glaucon, if he gives them permission to loot one category or other of the population: Chinese merchants, Armenians, Jews, Arabs, Gypsies, communists, and so on.

–And even a lot of middle-class types who are hostile to that kind of regime, Socrates added. If someone who’s fairly well-off is suspected of being an enemy of the fascists, he’d be well advised to obey what the Delphic oracle, according to Herodotus, revealed to Croesus: “Since a mule has become the king of the Medes, my friend, may your tender feet not prevent you from fleeing along Hermus’ pebbled shore, without for a second fearing that you’ll be regarded as a coward.”
–It’s a safe bet that if the fascists catch him they’ll hang him, after methodically torturing him.

–No doubt about it. And, unlike our old Homer, we won’t say about the “nation’s savior” that his greatness was lying there in repose, like a great recumbent effigy. On the contrary, after turning lots of his enemies into recumbent effigies, he’ll stand alone in the chariot of the state and, with his “savior” disguise tossed aside, he’ll appear in his true guise as a fascist dictator.

–Not right away, though! objected Amantha. The build-up of his power and the display of his bloodsoaked happiness come about more slowly, in my opinion. In the early days, at the beginning of his reign, he’s all smiles with everyone, he kowtows to everyone he meets. He loudly proclaims how much he hates dictatorship and makes a lot of promises, both to his entourage and in his public declarations. He announces a moratorium on debts, he nationalizes a few factories and turns their management over to his friends, he confiscates a few abandoned estates and gives the land to the farmers who supported him. He’s all sweetness and light. Socrates was amazed.

–You took the words right out of my mouth, he said. And then what happens?

–Once he has disposed of his sworn enemies by bribing some and destroying the others and he thinks he’s got nothing more to worry about on that front, he immediately stirs up wars, because he knows that if there’s a war the people will accept to obey a leader. He also knows that, since war requires very high taxes, the citizens, reduced to poverty, will be preoccupied with daily survival and will have neither the time nor the will to plot against him.

–Brilliant! commented an ecstatic Socrates. And what then?

–If he suspects any people of having too free a spirit to tolerate his absolute power, war is a good pretext for eliminating them: you send them off to the front where there’s next to no chance of getting out alive, or you simply hand them over to the enemy. For all these reasons dictatorships of this sort need
war.

–But all these underhand tactics, objected Socrates, won’t make him very popular. How will he be able to go on?

–He’ll have to crack down even harder, over and over again. Inevitably, in his immediate entourage, among the people who gave him a boost in his march to power, there will be a few who say what they think amongst themselves, or even in his presence. The bravest ones will openly criticize his policies. So he’ll have to get rid of those people if he wants to preserve his monopoly on making all the important decisions. As a result, there will be no strong personalities left in the end, either in his own camp or in his enemies’. It will be the universal reign of the mediocre and the losers. But Socrates had admired the beautiful Amantha’s eloquence long enough and wanted to regain control now.

–That means the dictator and his cronies will have to keep a sharp eye out for any people who have even so much as an ounce of courage, intelligence, or high-mindedness, he said. The “happiness” promised by the fascists, whether they like it or not, inevitably involves declaring war on all these people of merit, setting traps for them until the country is totally purged of them.

–That’s the kind of purge that’ll kill the patient, said Glaucon sardonically.

–I’m afraid so! said Socrates with a smile. The fascist dictator is the opposite of the doctor. The doctor removes the worst from the individual body in order to save the best. The fascist works the other way around as far as the collective body is concerned: he eradicates the best to save the worst, which he rules over. But Amantha wasn’t about to give up trying to outdo Socrates.

–In short, the fascist is hostage to a beautiful necessity, she said. Either he spends his life among a bunch of despicable people who hate him or he ends up being murdered. Socrates, however, determined to take charge again, replied:

–Given these circumstances, the more he’s despised by his fellow citizens, the more he’ll need a large, loyal police force under his orders. And I don’t think there’ll be a shortage of candidates from the social classes destabilized by the crisis of democracy. All the drones we were talking about will see it as a great opportunity for them to live the good life at the expense of the masses. Amantha didn’t consider herself to be out of the running quite yet, though, and added:

–Let alone the foreign mercenaries attracted by the pay. And even some workers, yanked out of the factory and relocated to the führer’s palaces, so bedazzled that they can’t imagine ever going back to work. That’s what the great leader’s new buddies, his crowd, are like, surrounded by the hatred of all those who haven’t given up on a modicum of integrity. At one extreme, there’s the corruption and heinous practices of the mercenaries and, at the other, the total, absolute refusal of any compromise with the regime. Socrates, amazed by such a precise description, now turned to one of his favorite subjects:

–If what you say is true, this might make us doubt the wisdom of the poets, even Sophocles, because in Ajax the Locrian he writes:
 Wise the tyrants who from tyrants more wise Have chosen their friends and seek their advice.
 Amantha then returned to the charge, saying:

–Euripides, dear Socrates, is not to be outdone either. In The Trojan Women he praises tyranny as making one “godlike.” Socrates, though, wouldn’t let her overtake him.

–Well, what about in The Phoenician Women, then? he said. Do you remember?


For laws to be broken and crime succeed, The tyrant, in whom ferocious joys breed, Seeks the unjust as the man he will need.
 But Amantha wasn’t defeated yet. She said:

–I know, I know… You’re going to tell me that as soon as the poets have a chance to take advantage of the rulers’ benevolence, they rush in, gather the people together, and, making use of their beautiful, sonorous, persuasive voices, sway them over to seemingly democratic but actually despotic forms of government. You’re of course going to point out that they’re paid a lot of money by tyrants as well as by parliamentary leaders, and that it’s only when they’re in the vicinity of truly popular governments incorporating an Idea that they suddenly run out of breath. Trust me, though: our great poets are charitable enough to forgive you for your speculative fury toward their artistic innocence.

–Are you done yet? asked Socrates, irritated.

–This is all just a digression, after all, said Amantha, backing off. Let’s get back to the issue at hand: how will the fascist leader come up with enough money to maintain a secret police force, his personal bodyguard, his underground residences and his conquering army?

–If the state has reserves, particularly in the form of gold or foreign currency, he’ll sell all of that off. Nor will he have any compunction about selling to the top bidder national treasures like paintings or sculptures from the museums or the vast quantity of sacred objects found in churches. Every little bit will help the police budget, and taxes won’t even have to be raised!

–That’s all very well, objected Amantha, but once he’s sold everything off, he’ll be flat broke. The bitter, hard-up cops will start plotting behind the scenes.

–No problem, Glaucon, throwing up his hands, replied to his sister. The Great Leader, the Guide, will then sponge off the people who put him on the throne. They’ll have to pay for his entourage, his minions, his secret advisers, his mistresses, his cops, his executioners, and his court jesters.

–Do you mean, Socrates shot back, that the people who, owing to their confusion and passivity, enabled the fascist gangs to take over the state will now have to support this whole crew as well?

–They won’t have any choice.

–But come on, the people will rebel! A lot of people will say that once a political creature of the people – a son of the people, in short – has grown up and been elevated to a position of absolute power, his people-father can’t go on supporting him, his lackeys, his snitches, his whores, and the whole bunch of thugs around him indefinitely! For a father to become the slave of his son’s slaves – perish the thought! The people wanted to be rid of the oppressive domination of the rich, of the self-proclaimed “democrats,” or “civilized people.” They didn’t want to be plundered by a bloodthirsty mafia. So they’ll order the usurper – him and his whole coterie – to leave the country, the way a father kicks out of his house an ungrateful son and all the disreputable freeloaders the son has invited into it.

–Just let the people-father try to kick out the dictator born from their own womb! They’ll soon realize how great their misfortune is. They’ll rue the day they fathered, cuddled, and raised such a baby. It’s too late now, though. He’s stronger than they are.

–Good God! exclaimed Socrates. According to you, the tyrant is a parricide! He slits his old parents’ throats and tramples on their dead bodies!

–That’s precisely (and Glaucon was thrilled to be steering the discussion) what everyone calls fascist tyranny. The people have fallen from the frying pan into the fire. They tried to avoid the suffocating smoke of the upper middle class’s secret despotism but ended up in the boiling pot of the rabid lower middle class’s despotism. Before, they had all the deadlocks and illusions of confused freedom, but now they’ve had to don the uniform of the harshest and bitterest kind of slavery, that of those who are slaves of other
slaves. Amantha, not wanting to be left out, commented:

–That’s what the colonized people of African countries are like, too, when the poor Whites from the mainland look down on them and abuse them, calling them “Camel Jockeys,” “Ay-rabs,” “jungle bunnies,” and other lovely things of the sort.

–Yes, said Glaucon pedantically, as Hannah Arendt correctly observed, there’s a historical continuity between the imperial savagery of the “democrats” and the cruelty of the fascists.

–Great job, dear friends! Socrates congratulated them. Thanks to you two, I think that we can take pride in having brilliantly described the transition from democracy to fascist tyranny and, while we were at it, the overall form of that type of system of government. But we still need to examine the corresponding character type.

–The prototype of the tyrant, Amantha agreed.

–Only here’s the thing: we’re missing a conceptual tool.

–After so many hours of discussion, Glaucon moaned, we’re still missing a tool? Which one?

–A rigorous analysis of the different kinds of desires. Tyranny is the point where political violence and libidinal violence become impossible to tell apart. Glaucon, anticipating an enormous digression, felt depressed and said glumly:

– Well, go on then, if you must.

–We’ve already distinguished between pleasures that are necessary and those that aren’t. Let’s take it one step further. Of the pleasures and desires that aren’t necessary, there are some that seem to be positively exempt from any law. They exist in every person right from the start, lurking in the depths of the unconscious. But they’re partly repressed by the law, itself driven by the desires, with which it has a dialectical relationship. In some individuals, with the help of rational thought, these rogue desires can be rendered harmless for the most part. In other people, though, they remain plentiful and strong.

–Could you be more precise about these “rogue desires”? asked a wary Amantha.

–You, like everyone else, know what they are, since they’re the ones that wake up when you’re asleep. The agency of the Subject that’s associated with the supreme calmness of rational thought is precisely the one whose rest is ensured by sleep. However, that’s when the wild, animal-like agency, the one that ferociously demands its daily ration of food and drink, rears up. It fights off sleep and tries to give free rein to its own inclinations. This is what are called the drives. In this drive state, the agency of the Subject called desire will stop at nothing! It breaks all bonds, whether of morality or thought. As Freud correctly observed, the Subject’s liberated desire is then the desire to have sex with the mother and, through object transference, with all sorts of things: men, garter belts, prostitutes, goats, panties, gods, or children. By the same token, this desire is also the desire to murder the father, and, through transference, it becomes an aggressive drive that nothing can stop. In a nutshell, in the middle of night the drive combines a freefloating object with unlimited transgression. In response to this colorful description Amantha struck an ironic pose. Glaucon was pensive for a moment, then asked:

–But what can we do when sleep, that irresistible force, delivers us over to our drives?

–How about a good psychoanalysis? said Amantha facetiously.

–Hey! Socrates retorted. Didn’t your great French thinker Jacques Lacan say that I, Socrates, was the forerunner of all psychoanalysts?5 After all, even if we hadn’t discovered the ideal political constitution, since we’d have become, by virtue of speaking, intellectually nimbler, more capable of being positive and creative and less focused on brief, destructive pleasures, we’d fall asleep, after practicing mental concentration this way, armed with a rational agency full of beautiful proofs illustrated by conclusive examples, and meanwhile we’d have taken care not to subject the desiring agency either to pure abstinence or to the vain, all-consuming quest for total gratification, so that it might settle down and not
disturb the Thought agency with either its sorrows or joys, thereby helping that agency preserve its ability to attempt on its own, with only its own resources, the difficult investigation of what it does not yet know about what the past erases, the present dissipates, or the future obscures; and all this we’d have done at the same time as, on the verge of sleep, we’d have soothed the agency of Affect enough for us not to be angry at anyone, so that, having kept in check the drive aspect to which Desire and Affect are exposed and having given a strong impetus to the third agency, Thought, we’d be able to give in to true rest, when dreams have finally stopped communicating only forbidden desires disguised as enigmatic images, and we’d then have a chance to make it through the night to our truth.

–Well, we at any rate have made it through one hell of a sentence! exclaimed Amantha. At the “even if” at the beginning I held my breath, and I was sure that by the time you got to the “so that” at the end I’d die of suffocation!

–I was trying to say things the way I see them – in the totality of their immanent relationships. Let’s just keep in mind what’s going to be of use to us: deep within each of us there lie astonishing, wild, rogue desires. Those of us who consider ourselves to be in the small minority of sensible people are no safer than anyone else, as our dreams prove.

–All right, all right, said Glaucon impatiently. But where does politics come into all this?

–Remember what we said about the democratic man now. Brought up by a rather tight-fisted oligarchic father who hated unnecessary desires like parties, luxury, gambling, prostitutes, etc., he was given a counter-upbringing by the gang of kids he hung out with once he became a teenager. His friends, who were already corrupt, loved the desires that are considered sophisticated and subversive at that age. Under their influence, our young man, motivated in fact by a very understandable hatred of his father’s stinginess, gave in to every excess. Since he was endowed with a sounder character than that of his corrupters, however, a fierce struggle raged within him. Pulled in opposite directions, he chose a middle way between two fundamentally incompatible lifestyles. Making use of both of them – stinginess and extravagance, respect and insolence, family discipline and debauch, and so forth – he believed he was behaving sensibly. And in fact his life was neither completely dissolute nor completely law-abiding. That’s how he went from being an oligarch, like his father was, to being a democrat.

–Yeah, right, grumbled Amantha. The middle ground, the happy medium, not this but not that either… That’s what democracy’s all about, neither fish nor fowl.

–No doubt, no doubt, admitted Socrates. If we’ve got the communist Idea in mind, that sort of democracy is certainly not the best thing there is. But remember that it’s not the worst thing either.

–And so it’s back to tyranny, fascism…

–… which are democracy’s offspring. Suppose our young democrat has grown older, faithful as ever to his fragile existential compromise. He has children and he naturally brings them up in accordance with his “happy medium” principle. As they grow up, these children will rebel, as usual, against the paternal principle. But their inner defenses will be a lot weaker than those of an oligarch’s son. Boys and girls alike will indulge in a chaotic lifestyle that’s vehemently defended by their corrupters as “freedom,” “rebellion,” or “nihilism.” Try as the old democrat might to come to the aid of the “happy-medium” desires, to preach the ordinary democrat’s noble eclectic “wisdom,” the faction of boundless, lethal desires will win out. This time, the corrupters will resort to a sort of unrecognizable erotic passion with increasingly repulsive objects, so that this desire, as the lead drone, will bring along with it a taste for looting, brutality, and ultimately racial hatred, torture, and murder. Hewing as closely as possible to the mindset of the fascist gangs’ future members, the corrupters will naturally begin with the ordinary forms of corruption. Although it’s only an accomplice of the other desires at first, the eroticism I’m talking about will buzz around among the clouds of incense, the mind-numbing music, the hashish smoke, the gambling for money boozed up with beer and vodka, the ridiculous, drunken choruses, the impromptu hook-ups, and so on. But little by little the stinger of boundless desire and its demand for absolute power over the others
and for readily available means for its instant gratification will be implanted deep within the young democrats’ flesh. Propelled by a sort of fatal dark drive, their self will then fall prey to true madness, pushed to the point where, if they detect any opinions or desires in themselves that are ordinarily regarded as respectable and requiring a vestige of modesty or personal restraint, they’ll kill them all off and expel them from their psyche, to such an extent that, having now become Subjects devoted to the cult of death, they’ll end up purged of every acceptable standard of behavior, and this will leave the place wide open for a madness that has come from somewhere else.

–That’s some vivid portrait of the young fascist! said Amantha, full of admiration.

–The literally pornographic drive whose effects I’m trying to describe can be called the Subject’s tyrant. But this same sort of insanity can also be found in intoxication – alcohol and drugs – or in pathological rage, when people think they can order the gods around.

–So, said Glaucon in conclusion, a young adult like me will be prone to joining the ranks of a tyrant or a fascist leader when, with his own natural disposition and incidental corruption reinforcing each other, he becomes drive-ridden, an addict, and aggressive.

–Ultimately, remarked Amantha, aren’t you talking about what Freud calls the death drive? Isn’t that what prevails in the fascist subjectivity?

–Absolutely. And that’s why we can now describe the inner life of the tyrannical or fascistic character type, so as to gradually get to the portrait of the Great Leader, of the Führer, who always rules a state given over to this type of government.

–Can I try? The question had come from Amantha, who immediately launched into the description without waiting to be asked.

–He feasts, he fucks, he smokes, he drinks. Where money’s in abundance, hookers, mafiosi and informers are superabundant. He sends his servants packing, abuses his cronies, humiliates his acquaintances, holds women in contempt, gets blow jobs in the corridors, struts around in his underwear in the early morning in the dining room of a luxury hotel. But immediately thereafter he dons a military uniform covered with medals and clicks the heels of his big shiny black boots on the parquet floor. He wants to have power over everyone, men and women alike, since he doesn’t have any over himself. At this rate, he goes through all his money. He borrows, he sells. But one fine day he’s really and truly broke. And then the aggressive bitterness of the bankrupt petit bourgeois hits him. The host of desires within him, under the sway of the great drone Thanatos, drive him here and there like a maniac, looking all over for anyone he can squeeze money out of. He gets used to things like blackmail, mugging the elderly and the disabled, and the most sordid shenanigans as though they were self-evident. Money! He’s got to have money! And power! Or else all his anxiety and suffering will come back, with the voice of death. Nor are his parents spared. So he squandered his share of the family estate? Big deal. The rest of it will be his, too, one way or another. Destroy his mother and father? Why not, if it means he can go on enjoying other people’s fear, their obedience, the look of simultaneous complicity and fear in their eyes? If it means he can screw willing bimbos and be wiped out at roulette at the casino one evening, surrounded by all the low-cut dresses and tuxedos? If his old mom and pop should put up a struggle, why not scream, hit them, threaten to throw himself out of the window right before their eyes? What’s a shriveled, tearful old mother next to an alluring top model with naked thighs, discreetly siliconed boobs, and a juicy pussy? What’s a bald father bent over by arthritis next to a pretty boy with his shirt open to his navel, a wiggly little ass, and a big dick? Only, at this rate, the father and the mother will have no money left either, while the swarm of drone-desires, the Death horde, buzzes louder than ever. Won’t our young hero be tempted, for lack of anything better, to break into an ATM, snatch an old lady’s purse in the street, or sell some impure heroin on dark street corners? As a result, the old ideas he used to think were right, even if he didn’t comply with them, the ideas that enable you to distinguish between what’s honorable and what’s
despicable, will die a definitive death within him. The new ideas, the ones accompanying the death instinct, will win a decisive victory…

–Yes, an enthusiastic Socrates cut in, yes! Previously, those new ideas only appeared in his dreams, when, for a few hours, sleep lifted the censorship imposed on his conscious mind by the Law of the father; when democracy, despite its mediocrity, its worship of the happy medium, prevented the death drive from entering the paths of the conscious mind. This is – this is precisely – what the tyrannical man, the convinced fascist, is like: in his waking state and all the time now, he’s what he only occasionally was as a young democrat in his nightmares in the middle of the night. Now he doesn’t shrink from any horrific crime and seeks out every sort of pleasure, even the most loathsome ones. The drive he harbors within him, which fosters an oppressive state of inner lawlessness, controls the poor guy the way a tyrant rules the state. He’ll stop at nothing to gratify his corrupt self’s obscene desires, both the desires that were put there by the group mentality of his teenage years and those that were lying dormant in his unconscious, whose chains have gradually been broken by his life choices and their criminal energy set free.

–The question is how all that’s connected, overall, with the origins of a fascist state, Glaucon mused.

–If, in a given country, people whose subjectivity is of the fascist type – the type we’ve just described – are few in number and average opinion has no liking for their machinations, they’ll probably join a foreign tyrant’s praetorian guard or lend their assistance, as mercenaries, to some imperial power in dirty wars. If they can’t find a fascist country prepared to take them in or a war in which they can give free rein to their death drive, all they can do is remain in their own country and commit a bunch of loathsome minor crimes.

–Of what sort?

–Spraying walls with anti-Semitic graffiti, attacking Blacks or Arabs with iron bars on dark street corners, desecrating graves, insulting women, forming commando units in the service of the state or the bosses in order to break strikes, and so forth. They also love informing on people, like writing to the police that their neighbor is an undocumented African worker. They’re born snitches, who commit perjury with a straight face in exchange for an envelope stuffed full of dollars.

–And that’s what you call “minor” crimes?

–Well, it’s because all these crimes can seem almost petty compared with the disaster that the fascists’ coming to power represents. And, in order for that disaster to come to pass, the tyrannical character type has to have proliferated, and all these people together, realizing how many of them there are and aided by the popular masses’ inertia and the so-called “leftwing” parties’ stupid conservatism, have to bring to power the one person among them who expresses the most complete conviction in his speeches. They make a tyrant of him. From then on, either a popular revolt led, if possible, by some supporters of a new system of government sympathetic to the communist Idea will sweep out the tyrant and his henchmen, or else the tyrant, bringing in, if need be, foreign mercenaries as corrupt as he is, will drown the rebellion in blood and mercilessly punish his fatherland – or his “motherland,” as the Cretans, perhaps more correctly, put it – in the same way as he once abused his parents without a qualm.

–Unfortunately, there are more instances of the second possibility than of the first, said Glaucon gloomily.

–Note that these people were exactly the same in their private lives as they are when they exercise power. Either they surrounded themselves with sycophants who were prepared to go all out to assist them in their vile deeds or, if they needed a favor from someone, they were the ones who groveled like an obedient dog, ingratiating themselves with the person on whom the favor depended and playing all the roles of the loyal lackey, only to disappear and behave like perfect strangers, or even ruthless enemies, once they got what they wanted. That’s why these people, throughout their lives, neither love nor are loved, since they’re always either tyrants or slaves. A fascist will never be able to taste either freedom or friendship.

–In short, Amantha, who was finding all this a bit long, summed up, it’s a dog’s life, ferocious and/or obedient. But Socrates, for the time being, didn’t care about the young woman’s gloomy reaction. He had, moreover, turned toward Glaucon and seemed to be speaking only for him:

–Can’t we say that it’s absolutely impossible to trust these people about anything?

–Absolutely’s the word all right.

–And that they take injustice to its extreme?

–Given our agreement on the definition of justice, there’s no doubt about it.

–So let’s sum up. The worst of men is the one who, in his waking state and all the time, is what the good man is only in his dreams, and only rarely even then. In order to fall to such a sorry state, this sort of man, being a fascist character type from early on, has to have succeeded, through intrigues and violence, in wielding power all alone. And the longer that solitude lasts and grows, the more the Subject will be devoured by the tyrannical corruption harbored within him. Tyranny is the solitude of the person who has lost the power to love and thus can only wield the sterile power to doom both himself and others to death.