You say that, for liberal capitalism, evil is always elsewhere, the dreaded other, something that liberal capitalism believes it has thankfully banished and kept at bay. Yet isn’t there also, in the contemporary imagination, a powerful idea of internal (social, psychological, domestic) evil? For decades, popular films and novels have been obsessed with the idea of evil lurking within (in the mind, in the house, in the neighborhood). The Timothy McVeigh affair in the US seems to have renewed political worries about “the evil within” (within each one of us, within the heart of the US). Just over a month ago, Andrea Yates, a Texas mother, systematically drowned her five children, prompting a national discussion about whether or not we are all capable of such evil. Philosophically, the new interest in Kant’s conception of “radical evil” (and its Lacanian reinterpretation) would seem to fall in line with this idea of internal (rather than external, political) evil. Indeed, throughout most of the history of the West, it would seem that evil has been conceived as “internal,” as something that morally haunts each one of us. So, my questions: In addition to the notion of “external” evil you propose, do you also recognize this notion of “internal” evil? Is this idea perennial, or does it tell us something peculiar about our historical moment? Do you see these two notions of evil (external and internal) as connected with one another in any way?

There is no contradiction between the affirmation that liberal capitalism and democracy are the good and the affirmation that evil is a permanent possibility for any individual. The second thesis (evil inside of each of us) is simply the moral and religious complement to the first thesis, which is political (parliamentary capitalism as the good). There is even a “logical” connection between the two affirmations, as follows:

1. History shows that democratic liberal capitalism is the only economic, political, and social regime that is truly humane, that truly conforms to the good of humanity.

2. Every other political regime is a monstrous and bloody dictatorship, completely irrational.

3. The proof of this fact is that political regimes that have fought against liberalism and democracy all share the same face of evil. Thus, Fascism and Communism, which appeared to be opposites, were actually very similar. They were both of the “totalitarian” family, which is the opposite of the democratic-capitalism family.

4. These monstrous regimes cannot produce a rational project, an idea of justice or something of that sort. Those who have led these regimes (Fascist or Communist) were necessarily pathological cases: One needs to study Hitler or Stalin with the tool of criminal psychology. As for those who have supported them, and there were thousands of them, they were alienated by the totalitarian mystique. They were finally directed by evil and destructive passions.

5. If thousands of people were able to participate in such ridiculous and criminal undertakings, it is obviously because the possibility of being fascinated by evil exists in each of us. This possibility will be called “hatred of the Other.” The conclusion will be, first, that we must support liberal democracy everywhere, and, second, that we must teach our children the ethical imperative of the love of the Other.

My position is obviously that this “reasoning” is purely illusory ideology. First, liberal capitalism is not at all the good of humanity. Quite the contrary; it is the vehicle of savage, destructive nihilism. Second, the Communist revolutions of the twentieth century have represented grandiose efforts to create a completely different historical and political universe. Politics is not the management of the power of the State. Politics is first the invention and the exercise of an absolutely new and concrete reality. Politics is the creation of thought. The Lenin who wrote What is to be Done?, the Trotsky who wrote History of the Russian Revolution, and the Mao Zedong who wrote On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People are intellectual geniuses, comparable to Freud or Einstein. Certainly, the politics of emancipation, or egalitarian politics, have not, thus far, been able to resolve the problem of the power of the State. They have exercised a terror that is finally useless. But that should encourage us to pick up the question where they left it off, rather than to rally to the capitalist, imperialist enemy. Third, the category “totalitarianism” is intellectually very weak. There is, on the side of Communism, a universal desire for emancipation, while on the side of Fascism, there is a national and racial desire. These are two radically opposed projects. The war between the two has indeed been the war between the idea of a universal politics and the idea of racial domination. Fourth, the use of terror in revolutionary circumstances or civil war does not at all mean that the leaders and militants are insane, or that they express the possibility of internal evil. Terror is a political tool that has been in use as long as human societies have existed. It should therefore be judged as a political tool, and not submitted to infantilizing moral judgment. It should be added that there are different types of terror. Our liberal countries know how to use it perfectly. The colossal American army exerts terrorist blackmail on a global scale, and prisons and executions exert an interior blackmail no less violent. Fifth, the only coherent theory of the subject (mine, I might add, in jest!) does not recognize in it any particular disposition toward evil. Even Freud’s death drive is not particularly tied to evil. The death drive is a necessary component of sublimation and creation, just as it is of murder and suicide. As for the love of the Other, or, worse, the “recognition of the Other,” these are nothing but Christian confections. There is never “the Other” as such. There are projects of thought, or of actions, on the basis of which we distinguish between those who are friends, those who are enemies, and those who can be considered neutral. The question of knowing how to treat enemies or neutrals depends entirely on the project concerned, the thought that constitutes it, and the concrete circumstances (Is the project in an escalating phase? Is it dangerous? etc.).