This article focuses on “Sur la démocratie. Le politique et l’institution du social” published by Claude Lefort and Marcel Gauchet in the journal Textures in 1971. Owing in part to the absence of reliable sources, the article does not attempt to attribute parts or concepts of the text to either author. Instead, it examines the significant differences that we can underline in the ways Lefort and Gauchet conceive the overall meaning of the essay and its key ideas, including the overcoming of Marxism, the political institution of the social, and modernity. In the final section, the historical-philosophical model developed by Michel Foucault is mobilized to further develop a reading of the 1971 text within the theoretical frameworks of Gauchet and Lefort and in relation to their respective intellectual trajectories.
