Abolish Everything?

Abolish Everything? confronts the question of whether it is possible or even desirable to envision a world without institutions such as the state, police, and money, among many other examples. Drawing on Spinoza’s philosophical corpus to reconceptualise the notion of the “institution” itself, Lordon tests this question against solutions provided by a wide range of forms of anti-institutional thought prevalent in leftist French intellectual circles of the last few decades.

Lordon excavates the anti-political theoretical positions of contemporary French and Italian philosophers and groups, including Jacques Rancière, Giorgio Agamben, the Invisible Committee, and the autonomist ZADist movement in rural France. He tests the feasibility of “living without” institutions, drawing on examples ranging from heterodox economics, history spanning the Paris Commune to the Cultural Revolution, and above all else, the philosophy of Spinoza, to argue the fundamental impossibility of establishing and maintaining human community without institutions. Therefore, he calls for the necessity of theorising our collective future with them differently.