Judith Balso Agrees: Politics without the State

In her contribution to The Idea of Communism book, Judith Balso (whose work I was not familiar with–that will change) agrees with Badiou (see my last post) that we must forge ahead politically without the State.

Politics…must be organized without reference to a party.  The Stalinist party-State and the democratic State parties are proof of the fact that party fuses with State, and politics grows corrupt and criminal when it fuses with the State.

She admires the Shanghai Commune precisely because in it

all links between the working class and the socialist State that was supposed to express their interests were broken; as they were between the workers and the party supposed to represent them.

Similarly, Paris 1968

separated and distinguished workers and the Communist Party, workers and trade unionism, and opened up the question of the political capacity of the workers…

We can think of other cases as well, the Paris Commune, or Hungary 1956, or Argentina in 2001…

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