Dussel, Enrique. Twenty Theses on Politics.

AuthorBenjamin, Dave O.
PositionBook review

Dussel, Enrique. Twenty Theses on Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009. xiii + 160 pages. Paper, $19.95.

In Twenty Theses on Politics, Enrique Dussel modernizes political philosophy and explores the evolution and dynamics of popular power in the transformation of society in Latin America. Superficially Marxist but substantively constructivist, Dussel contemplates the meaning of political transformation in Latin America from the point of view of both philosophical and political theory. The product is a deeply insightful treatise on the articulation of mass politics and transition from hegemonic power dominated by an oligarchy that was the product of European colonial adventurism to mass political activity that would see the rise of the indigenous classes through an Evo Morales or other representatives of the dispossessed. This work could easily be subtitled: From Marx to Morales.

Divided into twenty chapters, each of which represents a thesis, this monograph explores definitions of power, corruption, institutional politics, and mass politics. The starting point is the notion that centralized political power, especially that in the "maximum" leader, often regarded as the sovereign, is the origin of political corruption. The outcome is absolutism and arbitrary rule that makes power a "fetish" pursued with "self-referential authority" by the sovereign who co-opts institutions of the state and feudal system for self-aggrandizement. This and other manifestations of feudalism produce a distorted consensus in society that defies rationality by placing the interests of the sovereign and its cohorts above those of the people.

Power, according to Dussel, is the faculty or capacity one has or does not have, and can be used by the ruled as readily as by the ruler. Over time, subjects of the feudal system revolt against the political order by defining and representing their interests. They seek a state and system in which the interests of the whole supersede, even transcend, those of the sovereign and the 'Old Order.' However, the trek is arduous and protracted. In Hegelian fashion, Dussel explores the theses and anti-theses that characterize the transformational process--consensus to dissensus to new consensus; bourgeois revolution that usurps the power of, and turns on, the people; and, the invention and dissolution of institutions of the state that represent those in power.

Dussel sees ethics as essential to society and political...

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