The Parties that are not There

English Editorial (translated by Silvia Benso)

Abstract

What do political parties do? What kind of organisms are they? The classical idea is that parties are “the part of the soul” (an unaware Aristotelian move), that is, that from the outside they introduce into an otherwise amorphous social body the form, as in Kant’s determinant judgment: according to Lenin, “class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without (только извне); that is, only outside of the economic struggle, outside of the sphere of relations between workers and employers.”

This idea, however, seems to have no longer currency; power that gives form has lost its point, and the amorphous seems to prevail. Nowadays we observe parties that are no-places, ambiguous and formless since the beginning, parties that, when facing reality, reactively produce a decisionist output. Rather than giving form to the formless, parties are in danger of becoming the form (the mask) that the formless takes up.

Is this not a hallmark of fascism?