Abstract

From communism to liberalism: this is the common description of the intellectual itinerary of Claude Lefort. Unfortunately, things are not that simple. Indeed, all Lefort’s work, from the militancy in the Trotskyist Party to the reflection on totalitarianism and democracy, is also a continuous dialogue with Marx’s work: an intensive debate, with hard contrasts of course, under the influence of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology. This latter led Lefort to reject any possibility of objective knowledge, any foundation and any idea of totality. Thus, through his debate with Marx, Lefort comes to abandon the Marxism, to question some of the main categories of political modernity, towards a new conception of Democracy and human rights. This article aims to follow lefortian path from the point of view of his relation with Marx, focusing on three key points. First: the symbolic dimension that Marx rejected reading it only as a product of the structure. Secondly, the interpretation of modernity that Lefort describes as autonomy and disincorporation. Human rights and the lefortian critique against Marxian pages of Jewish Question make the last point. The aim, than, is to understand the complex relationship between Lefort and Marx highlighting the originality of lefortian thought.