The Political Forms Of Modern Society

Claude Lefort is one of the leading social and political theorists in France today. This anthology of his most important work published over the last four decades makes his writing widely accessible to an English-speaking audience for the first time. With exceptional skill Lefort combines the analysis of contemporary political events with a sensitivity to the history of political thought. His critical account of the development of bureaucracy and totalitarianism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is a timely contribution to current debates about the nature and shortcomings of these societies. His incisive analyses of Marx's theory of history and concept of ideology provide the backdrop for a highly original account of the role of symbolism in modern societies. While critical of many traditional assumptions and doctrines, Lefort develops a political position based on a reappraisal of the idea of human rights and a reconsideration of what "democracy" means today. The Political Forms of Modern Society is a major contribution to contemporary social and political theory. The volume includes a substantial introduction that describes the context of Lefort's writings and highlights the central themes of his work.

This is the first English language volume to offer such a wide-ranging scholarly and intellectual perspective on Claude Lefort. It constitutes the most comprehensive attempt to reconstruct Lefort's engagement with his theoretical interlocutors as well as his influence on today's democratic thought and contemporary continental political philosophy.

In Machiavelli in the Making, the influential French scholar and public intellectual Claude Lefort introduces a wholly novel interpretation of Niccoló Machiavelli's oeuvre, revealing in the Florentine's thought a thoroughly modern concept of the political with implications for "our experience of politics here and now." Lefort extricates Machiavelli's thought from the dominant interpretations of Machiavelli as the founder of "objective" political science, which, having liberated itself from the religious and moralizing tendencies of medieval political reflection, attempts to arrive at a realistic discourse on the operations of raw power. Lefort ultimately finds that Machiavelli's discourse opens the "place of the political," which had previously been occupied by theology and morality. An essential contribution to the ongoing reassessment of Machiavelli's significance, Machiavelli in the Making also stands as a crucial text for the understanding of Lefort's later writings on democracy and totallitarianism.

This study of Claude Lefort offers an account of Lefort's accomplishment - its unique merits, its relation to political philosophy within the Continental tradition, and its great relevance today.

"Mitchell Dean has written an outstandingly clear and scholarly introduction to the central theses and methods of the analysis of the mentalities and techniques of rule... He not only provides a guide to Foucault′s own thought in this area, but he also draws upon other key thinkers in contemporary social theory to develop original and illuminating analysis of some principle formations of political power. Dean′s book should become required reading not just for those interested in the work of Michel Foucault, but for all those who are concerned with the dilemmas of contemporary politics." - Nikolas Rose, Goldsmiths, Praise for the First Edition Originally published in 1999 this exceptionally clear and lucid book quickly became the standard overview of what are now called ′governmentality studies′. With its emphasis on the relationship between governmentality and other key concepts drawn from Michel Foucault, such as bio-politics and sovereignty, the first edition anticipated and defined the terms of contemporary debate and analysis. In this timely second edition Mitchell Dean engages with the full textual basis of Foucault′s lectures and once again provides invaluable insights into the traditions, methods and theories of political power identifying the authoritarian as well as liberal sides of governmentality. Every chapter has been fully revised and updated to incorporate, and respond to, new theoretical, social and political developments in the field; a new introduction surveying the state of governmentality today has also been added as well as a completely new chapter on international governmentality.

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Complications: Communism and the Dilemmas of Democracyties together the central concerns of the work of Claude Lefort over the past half-century. A pivotal figure in French thought, Lefort studied under Maurice Merleau-Ponty, cofounded with Cornelius Castoriadis the influential journal Socialisme ou Barbarie, and famously engaged in a heated debate with Jean-Paul Sartre over the Soviet Union and Communist parties in the West. He has influenced generations of political thinkers and throughout his career has offered invaluable leftist, non-communist critiques of both liberalism and Communism. It is the prevailing belief that the death of communism was a victory for liberal democracy. In Complications, however, Lefort challenges this interpretation and provides new ways of understanding the rise and fall of the Soviet Union and the Communist phenomenon. Lefort engages the work of prominent historians Martin Malia and Francois Furet and shows how their emphasis on "illusion" and ideology led to their failure to understand the logic and workings of the Communist Party, and its impact on Soviet society, and the reasons why so many in the West had Communist sympathies. He also maintains that those who regard the end of Communism as the triumph of markets and "freedom" restrict the scope of democratic thought and the possibility of greater social equality. Lefort contends that Communism must be seen as part of a larger history of modernity and believes that the diagnosis of its death is dangerous to the future of democracy. In the tradition of Hannah Arendt and Raymond Aron, Lefort complicates the pieties of historical understanding and offers a new approach to thinking about totalitarianism and a more vital democracy.