Perversion the Social Relation

122 Slavoj Èizekmolecular collectivity and the "bad" paranoiac-molar one: molar/rigidversus molecular/supple; rhizomatic flows, with their molecular segmentarity(based on mutations, deterritorialization, connections, and accelerations),versus classes or solids, with their rigid segmentarity (binaryorganization, resonance, overcoding). 10 This opposition—a variation ofSartre's old thesis, from his Critique of Dialectical Reason, about the reversalof the praxis of the authentic group dialectics into the "praticoinert"logic of the alienated institution (Deleuze himself often directlyrefers to Sartre)—is a false ("abstract") universalization, insofar as itoffers no space to articulate the key distinction between the two differentlogics of the very connection between micro- and macro-, localand global. The "paranoiac" State that "reterritorializes" the schizophrenicexplosion of the molecular multitude is not the only imaginableframe of the global collective social organization; the Leninist revolutionaryparty gives body to (or, rather, it announces) a totally differentlogic of collectivity. (What lies beneath this opposition is, of course,Deleuze's profoundly anti-Leninist distrust of any form of global firmorganization.)As it was clear already to Deleuze, one cannot provide in advance anunambiguous criterion allowing us to delimit the "false" violent outburstfrom the "miracle" of the authentic revolutionary breakthrough.The ambiguity is here irreducible, since the "miracle" can only occurthrough the repetition of previous failures. And this is also the reasonwhy violence is a necessary ingredient of a revolutionary political act.That is to say, what is the criterion of a political act proper? Success assuch clearly doesn't count, even if we define it in the dialectical way ofMerleau-Ponty, as the wager that the future will retroactively redeem ourpresent horrible acts (this is how, in his Humanism and Terror, Merleau-Ponty provided one of the more intelligent justifications of the Stalinistterror: retroactively, it will become justified if its final outcome will betrue freedom); 11 neither does the reference to some abstract-universalethical norms. The only criterion is the absolutely inherent one: that ofthe enacted Utopia. In a proper revolutionary breakthrough, the Utopianfuture is neither simply fully realized, present, nor simply evokedas a distant promise that justifies present violence. Rather, it is as if,in a unique suspension of temporality, in the short circuit between thepresent and the future, we are—as if by grace—for a brief time allowed