Frank Ruda Imagine There Is No Monarch If one seeks to address the question of the contemporary relevance of the Hegelian concept of the monarch, one may begin doing so from a slightly side-ways perspective, not directly and immanently from within Hegel. This will allow locating its actuality in the broader framework of the question of political organization. To do so, I take my cue from Lenin. In Lenin’s “Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder”, a pamphlet released in 1920, one finds a wonderfully clear definition of how revolutionary politics must be related to organization. Lenin therein states the following: “It is common knowledge that the masses are divided into classes, that the masses can be contrasted with classes only by contrasting the vast majority in general… classes are led by political parties; that political parties, as a general rule, are run by more or less stable groups composed of the most authoritative, influential and experienced members, who are elected to the most responsible positions, and are called leaders. All this is elementary. All this is simple and clear.”1 In short, masses are divided into classes, classes are led by parties, and parties are led by leaders. And all this defines the organizational framework of any political organization, emancipatory or otherwise. Lenin then characterizes emancipatory politics further as that mode of politics in which the avant-garde of the party, that is to say, the professional revolutionary leader has to express the contradiction immanent to the masses – immanent precisely due to their organization into classes. Politics is the concentration of contradictions that are always already inscribed into the very social organization of masses and is made explicit or actual by the intervention of parties under the aegis of leaders. This model of political organization seems to have suffered on all fronts today and as a consequence of this, the very idea of political emancipation was weakened, too. Take the idea of the political party within Lenin’s model: It solved some crucial and fundamental organizational problems, namely those that emerged from the organizational failure of the 1871 Paris Commune. 2 The Paris Commune on one hand materially made manifest that egalitarianism, that is, an egalitarian form of organization cannot only be thought but can even be practically realized. Yet, through this very act of practical realization new and very grave organizational problems originated, namely the intricate problem of the durability and 1 V.I. Lenin, “Left-Wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder”, in: Collected Works, Vol. 31, Moscow: Progress 1966, 38. 2 For a more detailed account see: Frank Ruda, For Badiou: Idealism without Idealism, Evanston: Northwestern University Press 2015, 61ff. and 126ff. 1 sustainability of an egalitarian organization and of its potential geographical expansion. Because the Paris Commune was unable to solve the very problems it yielded, it did not last long. Lenin’s model of organization, namely of the political party, was supposed to solve these problems – and this is also why Lenin, as a famous anecdote goes, danced in the snow after the Russian Revolution lasted one day longer than the 100 days that the Paris Commune lasted. But as successful as it may have been in the first place, in expanding and preserving emancipatory politics (that is, after the Bolsheviks took power), it also led to unforeseen, any maybe unforeseeable, problematic consequences of its own, bureaucratism, universalized suspicion and paranoia, state terrorism, to name just the most obvious candidates. And after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the withering away of any obvious alternative to the democratized capitalist and capitalized democratic mode of organization, the party model of emancipatory politics seems to have become completely saturated, at least in its Leninist form and at least as promising a organizational way out. This is because of what happened to the party-form, namely a peculiar fate that one can reconstruct – in a Boltanski and Chiapello, or if you prefer, in a Foucault like manner – as follows: Contemporary representative democracies obviously thrive on the organizational concept of the political party and they seem to have assimilated, swallowed and digested all its previous emancipatory potential. Where there was resistance, (now) there is power. They adapted its potential, re-functionalized it and made it work for the reproduction of the very framework, that is, the state, which it once sought to overthrow. Yet, up to a certain point this is precisely an effect of the unsolved problems that this model itself brought up.3 This can lead to a profound conceptual confusion, so profound that one may even led to conflate the idea of reformism and real political emancipation. In any case, today it seems quite difficult, and because of the historical situation maybe even impossible to imagine that founding a new political party would or even could lead to radical political innovation and not only to a mere extension, a minimal differentiation of the already existing party landscape. This is one of the reasons why with the assimilation of the party model into contemporary representative democracies, the very idea of emancipatory politics itself became problematic, the effectivity of its conceptual power suffered greatly, and it entered into a crisis. Because of the dissociation of emancipatory politics and the party as mode of its organization, or in more technical terms: of its appearance and practice, there seems to be what Fredric Jameson once 3 Therefore one should – conceptually – not be surprised about the incredible amount of bureaucracy and suspicion (surveillance) existing in contemporary societies. One may even argue that today some of the elements at work in Stalinism have also been adapted and put to use for the functioning of the present system. For this see for example: Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?, London: Zone Books 2009. 2 called a “widespread paralysis of the collective or social imaginary….” 4 This paralysis concerns in the present context especially to two related issues: It firstly concerns new ways of how to conceive of emancipatory politics and secondly, necessarily linked to the first point, is the problem of how these new ways necessarily have to be linked to rethinking the question of organization. The paralysis of the collective imaginary is linked to both of these poles and they are mutually reinforcing the disorienting effect. As should be clear, this is not at all a simple theoretical or cognitive problem, but an immensely practical one. Founding a new party may lead to parliamentary opposition – as a someone that was born in Germany, I cannot but think of the foundation of the German part “Die Linke”, which today clearly embodies what one day might become a text-book example of this very problem. Of course, there is worse than “Die Linke”, but – at least in political matters, although I guess the same holds for love – the simple fact that there is worse should never let oneself be tempted to be satisfied with what one has. And if it is not the “Linke” (parliamentary opposition) what else is there? If it is not another party within a parliamentary framework, one can detect a certain nostalgia for the emancipatory one-party-state-model. Yet, irritatingly this today exists in China (which is formally not-a-one-party-state but practically a one-party-state), or North-Korea, both rather embodying newer or older versions of the very impasses of the old party-model than being promising candidates for paradigms of political emancipation or organization. If the option is either parliamentary integration, that is in one way or the other: resignation, or overtaking of the parliament and state power, that is the old model practiced today – and maybe there are more thinkable options5 – both of these option present no serious solutions to the problem that occurs when the link between emancipatory politics and organization is essentially weakened. This demonstrates that nothing in the party-form “as such” and “in itself” necessitates emancipation – this is not only valid today but may also indicate that the form as such never was emancipatory, but only functioned in an emancipatory manner when situated in a political context that itself was. The paralysis of the collective imaginary is linked to the fact that there (conceptually) can be no politics without organization but that this very link has to be at the same time historically specified: As much as politics can only exists in an organized form (and this is a transhistorical thesis) as much does the form of emancipation thus depend on the historical specificity of the forms of organization employed (this is why today neither of the 4 Fredric Jameson, “Totality as Conspiracy”, in: The Geopolitical Aesthetic. Cinema and Space in the World System, London: Indiana University Press 1995, 9. 5 Recently for example Jameson proposed to return to Lenin’s idea of dual power, although in a different guise, which might present another way out than the one I pursue here, although this remains to be discussed. See: Fredric Jameson, “An American Utopia” (unpublished typescript). 3 two options are real options for emancipation). But if, so to speak, one is faced with the choice between either “Die Linke” or “China” one cannot but think of Stalin’s old formula: No, thanks, both are worse. But if this is the case, how not at the same time throw out the concept of organization completely because of the present historical weakness of the partyform? How to not dissolve the link between politics of emancipation and organization and hence reinforce both effective weaknesses? To return to Lenin’s, at least temporarily successful, scheme: The party did formally and crucially one thing, namely it mediated between leaders and the masses. In short, it provided a framework in which one was able to combine a universal appeal with a singular claim and thereby it enabled to universalize a singularized stance. It was possible to do so by making the masses realize that they are not only masses but that they are also always already structured into classes. So, if the party as model has become historically as well as conceptually problematic, one may raise the question if one of the other two concepts at stake here, the masses and the leader, can provide a solution to the delineated problem? Here I just want to address the second of these terms, namely the leader (and am thereby slowly approaching Hegel here). Today, the idea of political leadership seems to cannot but trigger associations of authoritarianism and it therefore seems to embody one of the main reasons why Lenin’s model did not work out. If most people today hear a defense of the idea of political leadership, they maybe do not draw their gun, but they think of Stalin or worse, if there ever was. Leadership in a strict sense smells of political and social verticalism. In short, it implies hierarchy and therefore seems to embody the very opposite of a politics that aims at establishing an egalitarian framework. Leadership within the realm of emancipatory politics thereby seems to be straightforwardly contradictory: Its concept seems to imply that one singles out one guy (mostly historically it was a guy) and makes him into the condition of possibility of egalitarian, emancipatory politics. Any politics relying on strict leadership, any self-proclaimed egalitarianism following this principle therefore seems to indicate that egalitarianism itself is a lie, an unthinkability, since one guy always has to be more equal than the others. Therefore any politics of emancipation that relies on leadership seems to be doomed from its very beginning, singling out one guy such that everyone else can be equal, with the exception of this very guy. But if this is the case – and if egalitarianism would need a leader – egalitarianism itself becomes contradictory, conceptually peccable and ultimately unthinkable. It is such an understanding that also stands behind the widespread and seemingly unquestionable, because super-evident critique of the personality cult. If the masses adore one 4 person and orient themselves mostly or solely by his words or sayings, one may think of Mao’s little red book, the very foundation of an egalitarian emancipatory political organization seems to be in contradiction with what it declares to be. Yet, if the contradiction appears at the fundament of emancipatory politics, how could the politics itself not be contradictory and hence inconsistent, untenable, too? This is why the personality cult has always appeared to provide the easiest piece of attack for anyone that is opposed not only thus far experience experiments of emancipatory politics but even the idea of emancipation tout court.6 Yet, one should not forget that evidences frame the imaginary. What one takes for granted and considers to be unquestionable becomes something like a peculiar window through which one views the world, without noticing that the frame itself is not simply given by (human, political or historical) nature (or worse: God). The collective and social paralysis of it therefore does also seem to be linked to the absolute evidence that emancipation might be nice, but that pretty much no one is y ready to swallow the mostly not only ugly-looking but often bad-tasting pill of political leadership anymore. Yet, if political leadership seems to be invalidated as instrument of organizing political emancipation because of the historical effects of the personality cult, can one also witness an assimilation of this concept and its function in contemporary representative democracies? The answer is yes, yet this assimilation comes with a fundamental change of it’s functioning. Contemporary representative democracies in fact assimilate the idea of political heads and chefs, but replaced the charisma of the former leaders with the pragmatist and administrative skills of a technocrat – and this is strangely already the best option, as there are also political chefs that actually do not even shy away from openly admitting that they actually do not know what they do. Yet, even in the average form of assimilation one cannot but notice a complete dissociation of the concept of leadership them from the imaginary surplus they previously transported. Today, no one, or say very few people will try to live their whole live according to the little dark diary of Angela Merkel or David Cameron, if such things existed. Usually present-day politicians rather publish at one point in their life rather boring or biographies (mostly not written by themselves) that then often become short time bestsellers.7 A kind of charismatic and emphatic form of political leadership seems today unimaginable 6 One should here draw a line of demarcation between different kinds of personality cult. Certainly the cult surrounding Hitler is different from the one surrounding Mao. I am not suggesting that any personality cult is “per se” and “in itself” an emancipatory tool. But I am suggesting one should not shy away from rethinking why and under which conditions it can function in an emancipatory way. To be clear: I am not in any way endorsing the peculiar personality cult, if it is one, around Kim Jong-un, but would be very hesitant to too swiftly criticize or even condemn the one around Che Guevara. 7 A strikingly unfortunate example of this is the renegade-jogging-propaganda-biography of Joschka Fischer: Joschka Fischer, Mein langer Lauf zu mir selbst, Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch 2000. 5 and this became practically manifest in many of the most recent attempts of collective political action, at least at those attempts that were prominently discussed in western news (one can obviously think of Occupy). 8 Many if not most of them embraced the idea of organizational horizontalism. And does it not somehow feel right today? Yet, even if it feels right, it does not have to be right. Philosophy since Plato was for this very reason quite suspicious of anything that occurs as unquestionably true feeling, as evidence of something that cannot be doubted. Without any nostalgia for the Leninist model, could one not rightly infer that today one way of re-articulating the link between emancipatory politics and the organizational question is to question the very evidence that political leadership is untenable? 9 Maybe this conceptual move could ultimately even allow for a different revivification of the idea of the political party. But here I limit myself to addressing the concept of political leadership. And as devastating as the argument against the personality cult may seem to be, one can today also witness what seems to be a horiziontalized, highly particularized, privatized and atomized form of personality cults everywhere: from attachments to some actor or actress, the newest (or oldest) singer or band. But with this form of what one may call a personality cult of the successful it is structurally similar to the appropriation and pacification of the concept of political leadership in contemporary societies. The proper political dimension is cut off and with it one can detect a loss of any form of motivational energy with regard to collective political actions. For, one effect that is clearly at work in the personality cult surrounding for example Mao (again no nostalgia involved) is that it effectively generated an immense motivational power. Even that much that it brought people who were uneducated and actually illiterate into the participation in a political movement. The personality cult thereby proved a means necessary to reach the rural, mostly peasant population which otherwise would have never been motivated and actively engaged in supporting political collective action. Yet, and this is obvious, one can neither simply return to Lenin nor to Mao.10 8 Certainly this point would deserve a longer discussion – as one may think of Podemos in Spain or Syriza in Greece. Here I do not want to deal with the concrete analysis of concrete political organizations, I am rather interested in the dogma of organizational horizontalism, even the better if in political practice this dogma itself is loosing some of its force. Yet, one needs to remark here that this idea is conceptually inscribed in some highly influential contemporary positions within so-called ‘political philosophy’ (one may here think of Negri and Hardt and others). In some sort, they provide the philosophical framework that legitimizes and reinforces the evidence that I consider to be an expression of the historical failures and impasses of the Leninist model (and what was made of it after Lenin). Therefore I contend that they (unwillingly) do not provide conceptual means for conceiving of political emancipation, but the very opposite. 9 I am certainly not the first to make this point. Inter alia Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek have argued in what I take to be a similar direction. 10 If one may not return to them the question may be: What could it mean today to repeat them, that is, to repeat their political gesture (having learnt from the disastrous and indefensible outcome of their respective political 6 It is precisely at this point that it can prove instructive to return to one concept of political leadership that was articulated before Lenin, and this even more so because in difficult situations returning to Hegel is always quite instructive. One can give also give a historical reason, namely because Hegel also unfolded and shaped his thought in a time of transition. The French Revolution had failed, a life-long defender even of its violent and most radical aspects, clearly saw the need for philosophy to systematically grasp not only its internal grounded shortcomings and deadlocks, but also the conceptual paths it opened and the consequences that can be derived from it. If Hegel therefore can be said to be our contemporary, it may also help to turn to him with the question of how to conceive of political leadership. He developed this concept with his notion of the monarch – and at first sight here it seems to get even worse. Hegel’s conception of the monarch never has caused high esteem of his so-called political thought, rather to the contrary. Many influential Hegelians including were dismissive of this notion. But before one dismissed it too swiftly, one should take a closer look. The monarch embodies for Hegel precisely the position in which the political organization as a whole, that is, in his terms: the state, reaches effective actuality, its Wirklichkeit.11 The leader is thus what in a certain sense ‘symbolizes’ – although this is conceptually the wrong term – the very idea of organization. For Hegel, monarchical power unites in itself, in one point universality (addressing without exception everyone), the relation between universality and particularity (embodying the way of how to address everyone) and particularity (one singular person, one individual embodies the idea – in a Hegelian sense of the term, that is, the concept and its actuality, of singularity – as he is a singular individual that thereby singularizes the whole internally universal organization). In Hegel it is not the party, but precisely the leader operates as the necessary mediating and actualizing instance of any true political organization. The monarch makes the unity of the political organization and as there is and can be no sustainable organization without unity, he or she is the “absolutely decisive moment of the whole….”12 In the monarch’s position the collective will is condensed. Jean-Luc Nancy rightly stated that “the oneness and uniqueness of the monarch – the concept of which is above all determined endeavors)? For this also see: Slavoj Žižek, “Afterword: Lenin’s Choice”, in: Revolution at the Gates: Žižek on Lenin, the 1917 Writings, ed. by Slavoj Žižek, London / New York: Verso 2004, 305-312. 11 Hegel: “Taken without its monarch and the articulation of the whole which is the necessary and immediate concomitant of monarchy, the people is a formless mass and no longer a state.” G.W.F. Hegel, Outlines of the Philosophy of Right, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2008, 269. 12 Ibid., 267. 7 by the monos – makes the truth of the union, the ein of the Vereinigung.”13 Yet, this does not at all imply any defense of arbitrariness. Although the monarch is the embodiment of “groundless decision” 14 , he is depending on the constitution of the whole of the political organization.15 Nancy has argued that therefore the monarch does not simply have a symbolic function within the political whole, rather he embodies the very point of what one can characterize as a process of symbolization, of a process that repeatedly generates a unity of the many differentiated particular elements of the state. Because the monarch does not simple embody a symbolic position, but (re-)constitutes the organization through his acts is also the reason why it is impossible to justify the monarch through instrumental reasoning. For, if one starts to think of the monarch as a means, as an useful instrument for the political organization, “it is always possible to point out counterbalancing disadvantages.”16 That is to say that if one only investigates his internal usefulness one necessarily ends up loosing sight on the whole of the political organization and one ends with a criticism of a highly particular position. But the legitimacy of the monarch can also not spring from objective attributes. Since this would turn him into a kind of super-subject, a superman of the state.17 He then would or could be the smartest, strongest etc. Bet such properties are always simply particularizing (because strength or intelligence is not what we all have in common) and thus he could not address whomever in the state. Slavoj Žižek once stated with regard to Hegel’s monarch: “in so far as the master is indispensable in politics, we should not condescend to the common-sense reasoning which tells us that ‘the Master should be at least as wise, brave and good as possible…’. On the contrary, we should maintain the greatest possible gap between the Master’s symbolic legitimation and the event of ‘effective’ qualifications; localize the function of the Master to a place excluded from the Whole, reduce him to an agency of purely decision whereby it does not matter if he is effectively an idiot.”18 13 Jean-Luc Nancy, “The Jurisdiction of the Hegelian Monarch”, in: Social Research, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Summer 1982), 500. 14 Hegel, Outlines of the Philosophy of Right, 275. 15 This is brought to him by the counsel. And therefore all this “is not to say that the monarch may act capriciously. Rather, he is bound by the concrete content of the counsel he receives, and if the constitution is stable, he has often no more to do than sign his name.” Ibid., 271. Here one could and should raise one crucial question: if the monarch has no symbolic position (simply because he is bound to the content of what has to be decided, which originates from within the political organization) when is the monarch truly a monarch (deciding groundlessly)? Following Hegel here one can suggest that the moment of ungrounded decision rather lies in the acts of pardoning “criminals” and acts alike (ibid., 275). The monarch when he signs with his name is a monarch, but he is truly a monarch when he pardons, groundlessly forgives against the basis of the constitution on which he depends. 16 Ibid., 274. 17 Such an idea of ‘sovereignty’ seems to be critically at stake in Zack Snyder’s forthcoming movie: Superman vs. Batman. 18 Slavoj Žižek, For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment As Political Factor, London / New York: Verso 1991, 84. 8 Only if he could also be an idiot he is able to relate to whomever, even to the idiots – and who is not from time to time an idiot.19 It is therefore on one hand important that anyone could do the job – the job of the political leader – but also, one the other, that someone, a singular someone, actually does it. Only in this sense one can relate within the same function the universality of its address and the absolute uniqueness of his position. The Hegelian argument rather functions as follows: Anyone thinks that he could also be king (pretty much as anyone thinks he or she could paint like Picasso did). It thus seems to be nothing special to be king, but it is important, if all are able, that someone actually does it. And this is why the monarch is not elected but selected, determined by nature. The last point of the argument is not easy to get. Hegel emphasizes with this not only the ungroundedness of any true political decision which (possibly) ensures the unity of the political organization, but more radically the groundlessness of the political organization as such. Why that is becomes intelligible when one takes into account what Dieter Henrich has shown, namely that “nature” in Hegel is just another name for contingency. 20 This point simply means that why there are say 68 and not 74 sorts of turtles is not a conceptually relevant question, since it is entirely contingent and not conceptually inferable. If the monarch is determined by nature, he is determined by such a conceptually unexplained contingency. This indicates that chance stands necessary at the ground of political organization and has to be embodied within it to keep it alive. This is one of the crucial reasons for Hegel’s defense of constitutional monarchy. This is also why he claims that “the concept of the monarch is therefore of all concepts the hardest for ratiocination (Räsonnement), i.e. for the method of reflection employed by the understanding. This method refuses to move beyond isolated determinations and hence here again knows only reasons (Gründe), finite points of view, and derivation from such reasons.”21 If one starts from good reasons and particular points of view one will never comprehend the “purely self-originating”22 momentum that is constitutive for real political organization. This obviously also disables all representative frameworks. For in in any representative elections the whole swarm of arbitrariness appears and if one of the competing interests wins this would lead to a privatization of a the political organization.23 Hegel thinks that representative democracy immanently flips over into an economy of interest 19 Here it is important to remark that he does not have to be an idiot. For, substantializing idiocy as characteristic of political leadership is rather one way of contemporary societies of appropriating it (just think of George Bush, or in a different way: Angela Merkel). 20 Dieter Henrich, “Hegels Theorie über den Zufall”, in: Hegel im Kontext, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1975, 157-186. 21 Hegel, Outlines of the Philosophy of Right, 268. 22 Ibid. 23 Hegel: ”It is truer to say that elective monarchy is the worst of institutions….” Ibid., 274. 9 (and thereby ultimately into despotism). Yet, again, if neither objective properties nor official election can justify the monarch and the monarch may nonetheless provide an interesting approach to the question of how to deal with political organization today: how does Hegel justify the contingent implementation of the monarch, of a political leader? How can we understand that “millions submit to their rule” if one “People are not so stupid.”24? His answer is brutal: namely “it is their need, it is the inner power of the Idea, which even against their apparent consciousness, constrains them to accept this rule and keeps them in this relation.”25 The need Hegel speaks about is a desire of anyone and exceeds objectifiability, it is not simply a natural need. And it is also not a form of voluntary slavery. For this need is the very need to realize one’s freedom as a member of a collective organization of equally free agents. But therefore the substance, namely this very need of each and everyone, needs to be externalized, that means firstly that it is facing seemingly accidently and specific contexts in which it is supposed or intends to realize itself. But only through overcoming these seeming obstacles, one can ultimately become a (part of the) political subject. The need to be free thereby itself is turned from being a substance into becoming a subject. This happens through and by the function of the monarch. In other terms: the desire to realize one’s freedom is realized because there is someone, namely the monarch who “cuts short the weighing of pros and cons between” which particularity “oscillates perpetually now this way and now that….”26 Hegel here anticipates what Lenin stated in his 1917 “The task of the proletariat in our revolution”, namely “he who wants to helps those vacillating, must begin to stop vacillating himself.” 27 The monarch in Hegel embodies a symbolizing process for the whole political organization because he does not only appear where he appears for contingent reasons, but he also functions as expansion of this contingency through contingent decisions that manifest and realize the collective desire to be free. But his actual decisions stand under three conditions: firstly under the condition of the need of everyone to be free (universality), secondly also under the condition of the concrete things that always have “pros and cons” (the relation between universality and particularity), for they emerge within and out of the practice of the political organization and thirdly these things occur within the frame of the political constitution (particularity). The leader only decides – unless he decides otherwise – what is brought to him and thus always already treated by 24 Ibid., 275. Ibid. 26 Ibid., 267. 27 V.I. Lenin, “The Task of the Proletariat in Our Revolution”, in: Collected Works, Vol. 24, Moscow: Progress 1964, 59. 25 10 skilled and qualified vanguards of the organization. He thereby stands in a transcending position that is supposed to enable a constant selftranscending practice of the political organization itself such that it does not fall into bad repetition, stagnation or mere positivity. This is why the leader in Hegel embodies not only the necessity of chance and contingency, he also embodies the necessity to repeat and reinscribe the contingency from which this very political organization emerged such that it is continually able to keep itself alive. His function therein is to ensure the unity, against the fractionalism and particular hesitation, because anyone can identify with the leader, since anyone could do his job. He is thereby for Hegel able to treat the multiplicities of ideas, interests, and visions by mediating them with the unity of the whole organization that he instigates. He enables that individual projections and fantasies about how to realize one’s freedom onto something purely contingent become focused, unified and collectivized and thereby a collective desire to desire collectively emerges in an organized form, since anyone shares this desire. This is why his name is for Hegel of great importance: it is precisely through his purely contingent and thus empty name without content that he is able to ensure the unity and singularity of the organization and to subjectivize it. He subjectivizes it is because in him the substance (will and need) becomes subject, substance becomes stance, without any sub-stantial ground and because by being the empty screen (name) onto which all individual desires are projected (as anyone can identify with him) these desires are collectivized and hence the whole political organization is subjectivized. This should also not lead one to advocate a return to monarchy – although people still have a thing for the royals, weirdly. But maybe with the collapse of the Leninist model and its aftermaths, one has to swiftly given up and handed over certain concepts, like the idea of political leadership. Against the current unimaginability of any alternative form of how to organize political emancipation, one should not shy away from some of these concepts. But maybe, today it could not only be the concept of the monarch one needs to resuscitate, but also, or rather the concept of what Hegel calls the “great man” who “the one who can put into words the will of the age, tell his age what its will is, and accomplish it… he actualizes his age.”28 Maybe what is needed is a great man, a great individual and not yet a monarch. But if one can indifferently state (concerning great men or monarchs) that today one can and should modify Mao’s famous word about war, namely “We do not love the war, but we are not afraid of it.” One should start from the following assumption: We may not want a leader, but we are not afraid of her. Or even more precise: we may not want a leader, but we need her anyhow. 28 I owe this idea to Zdravko Kobe. The whole text in its current version originated in a public discussion with him. 11