Institutionalising the Instituting Power? Castoriadis and the Councils

Abstract

This chapter engages with the Greek French political thinker Cornelius Castoriadis and his interpretation of the workers’ councils’ movement. The chapter argues that Castoriadis developed two different theories of council democracy; an early theory developed while he was the figure head of the radical French group Socialisme ou Barberie, and a late theory developed in tandem with his overarching theory of autonomy, the imaginary, and the instituting power. While Castoriadis has often been criticised, for example by Jürgen Habermas, for not theorising the institutional preconditions for democratic autonomy and for deploying a groundless and normless account of political action as instituting ex nihilo, the chapter argues that Castoriadis’ late theory of council democracy provides a vantage point through which Castoriadis’ concepts of ‘instituting power’ and ‘autonomy’ can grounded in institutional structures, i.e., the council system.

Non-domination and constituent power: Socialist republicanism versus radical democracy

“…Moreover, one the fiercest attack by a socialist republican on radical democracy, although it is not framed as such, could be Michael J. Thompson’s reconstruction of council republicanism. The experiences of the Russian and German workers’ councils are central for radical democratic thinking, and have been analyzed by Castoriadis, Lefort, Arendt and Negri among others (Popp-Madsen 2021). What unites the radical democratic interpretations of council democracy is their appraisal of the spontaneity of the councils’ emergence, their transgression of the established boundaries of political life and their direct democratic reliance on the power of ordinary people.…”

“…Generally, many radical democrats began as critics of totalitarianism – this certainly goes for Lefort, Castoriadis and Arendt – meaning that their attempt was to wrest free a novel concept of politics and democracy after the horrors of fascism, Nazism and Soviet communism. For elaboration on this argument, see Popp-Madsen 2021, 8-10.…”