criticism (Lippmann 1922); on this, see Marres forthcoming. Lippmann’s solution—
technocracy—having triumphed for half a century, we had to wait for its complete de-
mise to fathom the profundity of Dewey’s own solution.
- See for example Callon 1994; and Callon, Laredo, et al. 1995.
- Here we need to bring together the works of people such as Lakatos on the rela-
tive fruitfulness of research programs (Lakatos 1978) and authors such as Habermas on
the quality of consultative procedures (Habermas 1990). If the juxtaposition seems
strange, it is only because of the limits of the old Constitution: Lakatos makes every
possible effort to protect judgment on the sciences from human politics (which for him
are arbitrary); Habermas, for his part, continually strives to protect human judgment
from nonhumans (confused with instrumental reason). However, in order to succeed,
each one needs what the other preserves, sheltered in his trench. The scientific politics
of the French Muscular Dystrophy Association, studied by Callon and his colleagues, is
for me the most striking example of this new conjunction of morality and things in an
original science policy (Callon and Rabeharisoa 1999). - I am not concerned here with the false quarrel between the State and the mar-
ket, which presupposes an abandoned conception of the economy as infrastructure
(see Chapter 4). To the traditional free-market State that claims to liberate markets
from the clumsy control of public power, I am opposing here the State free of any pre-
occupation other than governing, because it has been cured of its intoxication with
mastery and no longer hopes for any transcendence. - Needless to say, it makes no difference whether this politics based on the indis-
putable laws of nature and history comes from the oldPravdaor from the recentWall
Street Journal:Marxists from the Left and Marxists from the Right are twins; for both,
science (that is, economics) should short-circuit politics. - This point is the essential one in John Dewey’s magnificent argument against all
totalitarian or even simply totalizing definitions of the State, which he, too, calls exper-
imental: “The State must always be rediscovered” (Dewey 1954 [1927]), 34). Why? Pre-
cisely because nothing can be already totalized, and especially not the State: “But a
community as awholeinvolves not merely a variety of associative ties which hold per-
sons together in diverse ways, but an organization of all elements by an integrated
principle. And this is precisely what we are in search of. Why should there be anything
of the nature of an all-inclusive and regulative unity?” (38). Yes, the State is concerned
with the public, but the public is precisely somethingwhose mode of totalization is not
known.If it were known, if actions could be controlled, we would indeed have no need,
according to Dewey, for governors. When government comes on stage, it is because all
mastery has failed. Dewey’s minimal State thus has nothing to do with the free-market
State, which can be nothing more than a simple appendix to the economic “sphere.” - This is one way to solve the opposition between procedural and substantive ra-
tionality. Contrary to what is claimed by Callon, Lascoumes, et al. 2001, it is highly un-
likely that agreement can be reached without going to the substance of the proposi-
tions at stake. But it remains true that the third power has to stick obsessively to
procedure. - While Carl Schmitt offers the advantage of rejecting “neutralization” of politics
by economics or technology, along with the advantage of clearly distinguishing an en-
NOTES TO PAGES 201–207
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