Yellow Vests & the Deadlock of a Devolving Liberal Democracy

Several political commentators announced that the Yellow Vests’ protests signify a new quality in Western politics. They might be right, but if so, what does that really mean? What is it that makes their movement different against the backdrop of the angry political polarization and the splitting of societies in half that everybody has gotten accustomed to these days? Could mimetic theory shed some light on it? (Caveat: The argumentation advanced below is based on much evidence in place that come next French presidential election, French societal polarization is most likely to assume levels characteristic of countries such as the USA and the UK with its Brexit referendum – if it is not at those levels already – unless the whole system collapses or is reformed; the latter in fact being one of the preeminent demands of the Yellow Vests.)

For one, though some call it a “populism from below” that transcends class differences, their protests seem instead to be a reflection of broad economic class divisions, and are mostly able to avoid being embroiled in political distractions nonessential to this perspective: having succeeded in terms of the immediate cause of their movement – Macron scrapping the fuel-tax hike – they demand now a repeal of some other taxes, higher pensions, an increase in the minimum wage, THE RESTORATION OF A WEALTH TAX, AND A LAW FIXING A MAXIMUM SALARY.

Of course societal classes being what they currently are, given the effects of the dominant neoliberal paradigm, are nowhere near as neatly divided around vital issues into class-blind groupings, in many countries into two deeply polarized halves, that manipulations of political demagogues working that paradigm to their advantage would have the populace believe. Consequently, the Yellow Vests so far have rejected any political affiliation, disregarding attempts on the part of opposition political parties, both left and right, inescapably emanating from within the system as they do, to show their support for the movement, while demanding instead a paramount role in politics for referendums, as well as that Macron resign and the National Assembly be replaced with a “People’s Assembly.”

In what way a return of grassroots class-oriented politics might signify a new quality? Certainly that would not mean a lessening of the political polarization in the West, not in an era of social media dominance, when highly-charged developments can spread like wildfire: if it were not for Facebook the leaderless Yellow Vests would not have become a nationwide movement that quickly, if at all. So if one acknowledges deepening societal polarization as one of the biggest problems besetting Western society, how might this development be welcomed as a sign of change? Well, on account of its having a potential to redefine the dividing lines in a context of radical political change, and consequently to reverse this trend in a climate of social solidarity, if only for some time.

To see that potential of unabashed populist class politics one has to realize that presently, on top of mutually and instantaneously reciprocating anger and resentment, the ever more polarized societal moieties resemble one another also in that they both are similarly socially stratified: both right-wing populists and liberal “centrists” have their share of the poor and the wealthy, just as their ancient predecessors before them. It is fair to say that the poor and lower middle classes have been neutralized by society’s reigning oligarchy, who time and again have resorted to coopting their elected representatives into politics as usual or to foisting demagogues on them to further its causes, using smoke and mirrors to show that the existing political divisions are natural and that they reflect those over issues of vital importance to all in society. But obviously that is not the case, and a return of class politics might throw it into sharp relief.

If it were not for this ability to coopt and obfuscate the picture, “the people”, i.e. the poor and lower middle classes, a majority in most Western states and increasingly so, would not demand just lower taxes for themselves (any populist might grant them that; in fact that is what Macron claims to have done in advance of the gasoline tax hike, namely compensating for it by cuts in payroll taxes), but also TAX INCREASES FOR THE WEALTHY, for the state to be able to pay for the essential good quality public services, just as the Yellow Vests are now doing (again: a neoliberal Macron rolled back the so-called solidarity tax on wealth, first introduced back in the 1980s).

And how to avoid the danger of cooptation? Again one such way is by following what the Yellow Vests are doing: staying as a leaderless movement, not electing any official representatives, at least as long as a “People’s Assembly” they are calling for is not convened, and generally keeping at arms’ length any political suitors that (might) appear. (Cf. French philosopher Jacques Rancière, who has long denounced representative democracy, as incapable of producing a genuine democracy, interviewed before the 2017 French election: “The solution is to fight against the system that produces the likes of Marine Le Pen, not to believe that you will save democracy by voting for the first-placed corrupt politician. I still remember the slogan from 2002, ‘Vote for the crook, not the fascist’ [in the second round pitting Jacques Chirac against Jean-Marie Le Pen]. Choosing the crook to avoid the fascist is to deserve both of them. And to prepare the way to having both.”)

In those circumstances if they were to succeed it would only be on a powerful wave of popular support, one that might give them enough steam to carry on politically for quite some time while enjoying considerable majorities – long unseen in polarized Western democratic societies. If they did not manage to succeed, fizzling out just as the Occupy movement has, they at least would not have contributed to an entrenched polarized politics as usual of the West, not on a sustained basis.

So those political commentators announcing that the Yellow Vets’ protests signify a new quality in Western politics might be onto something. Our dysfunctional societal moieties, with their leaders always talking about “the people”, the real people they claim to represent, are not worth defending, and possibly beyond repair from within the system anyway. Rancière: “Today the ‘real people’ is a figure forged by the system itself. We get to a point where we no longer know who will take the different roles: nowadays, a billionaire can represent the people spat upon by the billionaires.” A perfect description of the West’s smoke and mirrors-produced “classless” moiety-based societies, led by demagogues who invariably deceitfully claim to be “against the system.” This is the very configuration that the French Yellow Vests are fighting against from outside that ressentiment-charged scandal-driven system.

To see this movement from a slightly different perspective one might turn to the work of the late Ernesto Laclau, a leftist-populist politics theorist. Some students of his thought are now thinking how to exploit the potential they see in the “empty signifier” (in their Lacanian lingo) that the yellow vest as a symbol is or rather might become if and when the movement fails, which they see as a distinct possibility, at least as long as the movement stays leaderless (contra Rancière). In line with that theory they see a growing need to advance a more consistent political narrative, to forestall a threat of appropriation of some “floating signifiers” associated with the movement, especially by a populist right-wing (as has already been attempted e.g. in Great Britain, with yellow vests donned by far-right Brexiteers resorting to intimidation tactics against “Remoaners”), with a concomitant threat of cooptation of at least a part of the movement, which might result in realigning the remaining fragments possibly along the existing moieties’ lines. Preventing that, as proposed by this progressive-leftist theory, would require turning to outright political action, complete with a charismatic leader. Only then would a protest movement stand a chance of shifting the political balance and the axis dividing society to one broadly based on economic class, which would be anything but a moiety-like division we see currently prevailing, with oligarchs or their proxies busy working their deceit on both sides; in fact on both sides of any artificial division in society. Or so a leftist vision would have it.

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Though Rene Girard referred to societal moieties only on a few occasions, and in contexts much different from those of our postmodern reality, it bears repeating that he in effect acknowledged the double nature of those primitive moieties, namely their tendency to (potentially) foster both differentiation as well as undifferentiation stemming from explicit, potentially conflictual reciprocity (their dangerous twin-like character), though he seems to have seen them preeminently as structured and governed by ritual, thus tending toward societal peace despite being precariously poised. But it is different today, Western societies are now seemingly on a downward spiral, descending into conflictual emotional or expressivist undifferentiation, democratic rituals more and more ineffective, the system’s checks and balances ever more threatened, an equilibrium effected ever more unstable: our postmodern moieties are a far cry from their ancient and primitive predecessors.

Students of mimetic theory would benefit from combining their perspective with those described above, class-oriented as they are, and consequently might see the discussed developments as essentially the breaking of a fraught twin-like deadlock configuration, as a needed and valid societal re-differentiation, and as a return of at least a modicum of meaningful pluralism into the bloodstream of Western liberal democracy. It is doubtful, however, that this would result in a lessening of societal tensions and resentments: even if that was an explicit goal, triumphing egalitarian attitudes most probably would not further it, not in the long run, given their dynamic as predicted by mimetic theory. But that is another story altogether.

Mimetic Theory and Societal Moieties, Ancient, Primitive & Post-Modern

Towards the end of Chapter IX (Lévi-Strauss, Structuralism, and Marriage Laws) of Violence and the Sacred, Girard makes mention of an interesting configuration appearing on man’s entering a state of society, namely societal moieties (two identical halves of a society):

“The original violence certainly did not bring into conflict two such neatly differentiated groups as those of the two uncles [a form of familial differentiation distinct from the patriarchal model, discussed earlier in the book]. It can be stated as a principle that violence precedes either the division of an original group into two exogamous moieties, or the association of two groups of strangers, gathered together to effect matrimonial exchanges. The original violence took place within a single, solitary group, which the mechanism of the surrogate victim compelled either to split in separate groups or to seek an association with other groups. Ritual violence invariably takes place between already constituted groups. Ritual violence is always less internal than the original violence. In assuming a mythico-ritual character, violence tends toward the exterior, and this tendency in turn assumes certain sacrificial characteristics; it conceals the site of the original violence, thereby shielding from this violence, and from the very knowledge of this violence, the elementary group whose very survival depends on the absolute triumph of peace. The ritual violence that accompanies the exchange of women serves a sacrificial purpose for each group. In sum, the groups agree never to be completely at peace, so that their members may find it easier to be at peace among themselves. We see here the principle behind all “foreign” wars: aggressive tendencies that are potentially fatal to the cohesion of the group are redirected from within the community to outside it. Inversely, there is reason to believe that the wars described as “foreign wars” in the mythic narratives were in fact formerly civil strifes. There are many tales that tell of two warring cities or nations, in principle independent of one another—Thebes and Argos, Rome and Alba, Hellas and Troy—whose conflicts bring to the surface so many elements pertaining directly to the sacrificial crisis and to its violent resolution that it is hard not to view these stories as mythic elaborations of this same crisis, presented in terms of a “fictive” foreign threat.” (emphasis added)

References to societal moieties, such as the one above, are rather rare in Girard’s corpus (at least to my knowledge; I know of some in Oedipus Unbound, there is another in Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World). To me this is strange: given his preoccupation with how an original state of societal undifferentiation (essentially Hobbes’ and Rousseau’s state of nature) is necessarily overcome by an act of “original violence”, in order to produce peace needed for society’s survival, Girard seems rather nonspecific as to the patterns then emerging to shape peaceful coexistence, albeit temporarily. Of course he speaks about rituals in general, and can be very specific about certain particular rituals, tracing relentlessly as he does any sacrificial vestiges that might corroborate his “originary violence” hypothesis. But he seemingly fails to set his sights on elaborating possible scenarios, or looking for specific patterns of development afterword. Maybe that is what should be expected of someone who sees the original act of violence as absolutely random, contra such researchers as e.g. Christopher Boehm, who sees alpha males killed (or thieves, for that matter), not random victims, in semi-state-of-nature bands trying to maintain or restore a peaceful egalitarian equilibrium. (Nota bene, Boehm’s approving emphasis on societal equality is another factor that differentiates his view of early humanity from that of Girard.)

And yet a moiety-based society is as close as one gets to a twin-like situation on a societal basis – but moieties are supposed to effect peace in society, not to wreak havoc upon it that the appearance of twins is purported to cause! And not that tribes’ moieties are somehow kept from reciprocation: most of the time they are strictly exogamous, they exchange women, and engage in other reciprocal relations, but such whose violence may only be ritual. Plus Girard openly claims (in Oedipus Unbound) that moieties are essentially identical – just like twins. What separates them in terms of how they are perceived by society is that tribesmen believe that their two moieties are markedly different, and consequently also experience them as such; they resort to a series of ruses to make sure this perception holds (such as different totems adopted), whereas twins are viewed as really identical – and thus are condemned as bearers of rivalrous reciprocity.

Now moieties seem to be a widespread occurrence in primitive societies, if not having a universal incidence, a fact referred to e.g. by Emile Durkheim, an author well-known to Girard – in his book on Australian Aboriginals, but with references also to e.g. North American Indians (incidentally, in the book, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, he calls them phratries). Phratries existed also in ancient Greece, Homer mentions them on several occasions. Why wouldn’t then Girard have devoted more attention to this phenomenon – given its uncanny similarity to twins, those fraught human doubles of primitive – and not so primitive – societies?

Surely humanity have differentiated widely ever since those early days. An important symbolic stage for political differentiation may be traced to Greece and  Cleisthenes' reforms of 508 BC, when demes, subdivisions of land in Attica, were also established in Athens, and acquired particular significance: enrollment in the citizen-lists of a territorial deme became the requirement for citizenship, supplanting citizenship based on membership in a phratry, where oligarchy dominated. In most Western democracies there is now a plethora of parties to choose from, and causes to pledge allegiance to. But of late, with angry political polarization ever deepening, real choices seem to have dwindled instead, voting for parties that do not command large support to begin with increasingly seems a stupidity, or at least naivety. We are becoming reduced to two moieties (an excellent indication of that are the results regularly returned by most of those recently staged highly charged referendums) – but on this side of the intervening millennia (“twenty centuries of stony sleep”?) they do not seem able to effect peaceful societal coexistence for us. Might it be that democracy as a ritual is (about to be) finished? Its checks and balances are under siege in many places: the violence is increasingly threatening to become real instead of just ritual.

One might say: no, those would-be moieties are not what they on the face of it might seem to be to some – my (our) moiety is in fact very different from theirs, and it’s not just my (our) belief, a member might exclaim! And he would be right: we do not exchange women across moieties’ boundary lines (in fact any such exchange would be unthinkable these days), nay, we do not even marry across those lines anymore! And yet we are similar to the other moiety, but seemingly in one respect only: ill feeling toward those others. Yes, we have become “the worst… full of passionate intensity.” (In fact there is yet another important similar feature: postmodern moieties’ inner diversification in terms of their social stratification, both having their share of the wealthy/elites and the poor, not unlike that of moieties of old.) And yet as long as we stay approximately equally divided into our latter-day unstructured, haphazard moieties, as well as equally emotionally committed to our respective causes, we might inadvertently enjoy at least a modicum of one of the benefits experienced by people of yore that their well-defined moieties were able to effect, namely societal peace – though it be superficial and relative, if not in name only, more like deferred violence than anything else, one that psychologically does not feel peaceful at all, being constantly threatened as it overwhelmingly appears to be these days. Moreover, whereas ancient moieties were a waystation on humanity’s way upward via increasing differentiation, ours – if we may call them that – are but their decadent functional equivalent, ressentiment-filled humanity’s katechon-like bulwark against its possible final emotional undifferentiation into chaos and decline.

Back to Rene Girard: not having devoted more attention to the phenomenon of primitive tribes seemingly universally forming moieties, though it may have been their default bulwark against societal violence, something that was of paramount interest to him, he was also mostly unwilling to analyze through the lens of his theory the moiety-like character of contemporary political divisions – in fact he may not have seen them as such. A possible clue to this (non)development might be found in his theory: quite in line with it, Girard himself may have been oblivious to the similarity if not fundamental identity of those cross-cultural and over-millennia societal divisions, possibly because some of the effects they seemingly produce, while arguably again similar if nor identical (peace or deferral of violence, at least for the time being), intuitively should not be so, given the psychological and political climate of today. In fact in Oedipus Unbound this obscurity of moieties as (potentially) fostering both differentiation AND undifferentiation (viz. too explicit reciprocity, shading into conflict) is discussed in the context of primitive moieties. But one should realize that the same holds true in the present context, and also on both counts: obscurity and double fostering.

If the author of mimetic theory may have been oblivious to some signs and aspects of its unfolding, why should we fare any better? Well, maybe because our very survival as society depends on it. Unless we firmly realize where we’re at right now, and then spare no effort to switch from reciprocity of conflict to reciprocity of peace by way of tolerant differentiation, we’re doomed. Or at least ripe for a Second Coming in whatever shape or form, regardless of what it might entail.