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What is to be done? A Dialogue on Communism, Capitalism and the Future of Democracy. By Alain Badiou, Marcel Gauchet, translated by Susan Spitzer (Oxford: Polity, 2015), pp.176 £12.99 (pb).

Marcel Gauchet's recently published theory of democracy sheds light on the way his understanding of modernity emerged from Castoriadis's notion of autonomy but also deepened it by contextualizing it within a discussion of modern historicity. Modern autonomy means re-shaping the world through a new, transformative, form of power that draws on humanity's capacity for imaginary creation. Gauchet's theory of modernity, however, rejects the possibility of radical historical creation. Faithful to the teachings of structuralism, it explores the structural conditions behind the genesis of modern power, which favoured the emergence of a new societal form that produces its own future. Encompassing capitalism, Gauchet's modern power proposes an essentially paradoxical definition of modern democracy that stresses its essentially liberal dimension neglected by Castoriadis. In modern democracy, humans make their own history by liberating individual subjectivities but this deprives them of the means to direct history: liberalism goes against the aspirations to collective sovereignty.

Cover -- Endorsement -- Half Title -- Series Information -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of Contributors -- Preface: Why Read Marcel Gauchet? -- Notes -- References -- Introduction: Marcel Gauchet: His Work in Context -- Gauchet's Post-Marxist Critique -- Processual Autonomy and Its Disenchantment -- A Social Ontology Stressing the Central Role of the Political -- The Contribution of This Collection -- Acknowledgements -- Notes -- References -- Part I Marcel Gauchet and the Contemporary Crisis of Democratic Politics -- 1 Democracy From One Crisis to Another -- What Crisis? -- Modern Autonomy -- The Liberal Reality -- The First Crisis of Democracy -- The Liberal Democratic Synthesis -- The Expansion of Autonomy -- The Democracy of Human Rights -- A Minimal Democracy -- A Crisis in the Foundations of Democracy -- Towards Recomposition -- Notes -- References -- 2 Populism as Symptom -- An Empty Space to Be Filled -- A Unifying Transgression -- Populist Society -- The Forgetting of the Political -- Post-Script: The Symptom and the Disease -- Globalisation and Populism -- The Contradiction in Democracy -- A Demand for Democracy -- The Revenge of the Political -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Part II Insights Into Marcel Gauchet's Exploration of Political Modernity -- 3 Marcel Gauchet and the Eclipse of the Political -- Liberal Democracy as a 'Mixed Regime' -- The Rights of Man and 'Market Society': Individualism Against the Political -- The Becoming of the Political: What 'Transcendence in Immanence'? -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- 4 The Political Forms of Modernity: The Gauchet-Badiou Debate Over Democracy and Communism -- Praxis Philosophy: The Subject and History -- Political Forms -- Democracy and Communism -- Totalitarian Regimes -- Democracy: Consolidation and Crisis -- Conclusion -- Acknowledgement -- References.

Abstract
This interview was initiated by Natalie J. Doyle in Paris, a few months only after the publication in 2017 of Le nouveau monde, the last volume of Marcel Gauchet's four volume history of liberal democracy, published over the course of ten years. It was then continued via email over the course of the following four years.
Le nouveau monde offers a wide-ranging historical and theoretical analysis of the contemporary crisis of Western liberal-democratic culture on which the 2020 pandemic has thrown more light because of the neo-authoritarian management of the heath crisis in the Western world. In 2021, it was thus seen necessary to extend the interview to include questions about this reassertion of the political in Western societies but in an illiberal form.