Economics —> politics?
Amid this extended — and pointless, I’d say — discussion of whether capitalism has an “outside,” Badiou avers the following: “So we must go from politics to economics and never from economics to politics.” Which is odd, because Organisation Politique’s motto is: “those who work and live here belong here.” In other words, what makes migrants, sans papiers, politically a part of France is their economic function: going from economics to politics. Communist Badiou, however, insists on moving from politics to economics. Rather than see this is a contradiction, though, I’d say it reveals something else: Badiou sees the nation as the foundational political unit, replacing the state and parties. So migrants must first translate their economic subjectivity into a political one, and a distance from the state can be achieved and communism approached by this established national subjectivity.
If Badiou sees the nation as the fundamental political unit, then he isn’t a communist but merely a pseudo- mathmatical mumbojumbo mungering metaphysician.
Comment by Steve Brown — July 30, 2009 @ 6:31 am
I’m beginning to think that is so.
Comment by Eric — July 30, 2009 @ 3:16 pm