As with any crossover success, Balibar’s offered grounds on which purists might complain of betrayal. Civil rights, women’s rights, and gay rights activists all spoke the language of rights. (This has also been true, though more obliquely, of the antiwar and environmental movements.) By demanding legislative action, these movements acknowledged the legitimacy of the state to make laws and guarantee rights. In the eyes of some, such an acknowledgment, even a tacit one, could only be a right-wing deviation. It’s the liberals, not us, who talk about democracy and human rights. We’re the ones who know that the state is a tool of the capitalist class, right? How is it possible that Balibar lets himself be seen shamelessly keeping company with bourgeois concepts and institutions?

Something like this was no doubt going through Badiou’s mind when he called Balibar a reformist.