Brain Temple

“Here it is necessary to bring to the fore a major and highly revealing difference, at least in the common sense pervading our historical conjuncture, between the idea of communism and that of democracy. It is sometimes said of communism that it was, in fact, a good idea on paper,
but that the reality was a veritable catastrophe. One thereby highlights a discrepancy between political theory and historical reality by insisting on the fact that the idea of communism is perhaps quite simply not realizable. One sometimes adds for good measure that it was precisely
faith in the communist idea—a faith that lies beyond the reach of the manifest evidence of concrete experience—that led to the totalitarian turn of actually existing communism. Yet on the other hand, when one speaks of democracy, this type of criticism is no longer operative. One
frequently admits that contemporary institutions are not perfect, that actually existing democracy has insufficiencies, that there is still progress to be made, that there is a democratic deficit, or that democracy quite simply remains to come. But despite all the setbacks and all the limitations
of contemporary practices, people shout themselves hoarse proclaiming that it is a good idea, or even that it is the sole and unique Idea. In one instance, reality takes precedence over the idea; in the other, the idea gains the upper hand over reality. At base, the same operation is at work, which is a comparison between an ideal system and its historical institution. Yet a revealing discrepancy manifests itself in the criteria of evaluation. In the case of communism, history is capable of refuting the idea, whereas for democracy the idea transcends historical reality and orients it toward something that is perhaps always to come. Whatever the case may be, it is impossible to call into question the democratic idea, for it hovers well above concrete practices. Towering over the real, democratic discourse thereby functions as a pseudo-science, which is to say a discourse that is beyond the reach of material refutations. Illustrating another surreptitious recuperation of vulgar Marxism, faith in the idea—this time democratic—can never be refuted by experience. If this sort of belief was what sustained the misdeeds of Soviet bureaucracy, should not one expect that the liberal recuperation would come full circle and that the icon of democracy would come to allow innumerable “anti-democratic abuses,” and even the development of what Sheldon Wolin has called “inverted totalitarianism”?”
― Gabriel Rockhill, Counter-History of the Present: Untimely Interrogations into Globalization, Technology, Democracy