"Democratic Republic" or "Democracy against the State"? Notes for a discussion

Abstract

This paper intends to contrast two ways of conceiving “democracy”, “people”, “State”, and “universality”, respectively represented —the first one— by Miguel Abensour and his reading of Marx’s writings from 1843, and —the second one— by the Marx whose object of study focuses on the development of a “critique of political economy”. On this basis, an attempt is made to argue that the kind of universality advocated by Abensour (consistent with his definition of people, State and democracy) in order to ensure singularity and difference is in fact destructive of the possibility of guaranteeing to all equally the free exercise of these. Finally, we underline —by focusing on the question of the people— some of the implications of the second of the opposing positions (that of the critical Marx) regarding “community” and “bond” (“we”).