알랭 바디우의 국가론 연구

Abstract

Alain Badiou’s theory of the State exposed in Chapter 9 of Being and Event has two sources:the Marxist conception of the State proposed by Engels and Lenin, and the mathematical ontology based on the set theory. Engels argued that the state did not exist from the beginning of the history, but was created through class confrontation, and that if class confrontation disappeared, the state would be abolished. Lenin adopted Engels’ idea while emphasizing the violent socialist revolution which was inevitable for the abolition of the state. Badiou describes the state starting from his ontological concept of ‘the state of the situation’. His set theory based ontology gives a justification of Engels and Lenin’s idea that the state was, while created from the socioeconomic classes, separated from the classes themselves. He also presented the ontological basis for the idea that the essence of the state is bureaucracy and public force. However, Badiou did not agree with the classical Marxist state theory on two points. First, in opposition to the Marxist idea that the state is for the interests of the ruling class only, he argued that the state performs administration and coercion in the general sense. Second, contrary to Marxism’s idea that the state will abolish if class conflict disappears, he argued that the state inevitably exists in all social and historical situations. As a result, Badiou’s politics is not aimed at the inevitable extinction of the state, but rather a new relationship with the void and the excess.