In his academic career, Lefort taught at the University of São Paulo, at the Sorbonne and at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), being affiliated to the Centre de recherches politiques Raymond Aron.
Socialisme ou Barbarie considered the USSR to be an example of state capitalism and gave its support to anti-bureaucratic revolts in Eastern Europe — especially the uprising in Budapest in 1956.
In 1952 (following a dispute with Gurvitch), he was detached from the sociology section of the CNRS, until 1966, with a break of two years (1953–1954), when he was professor of philosophy at the University of São Paulo (Brazil).
As for the CNRS, the support of Raymond Aron led to his recruitment as a teacher of sociology at the University of Caen, where he worked from 1966 to 1971, the year when he defended his doctoral thesis.
That same year, he was again hired as a researcher in the sociology section of the CNRS until 1976, when he joined the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), where he stayed until his retirement in 1989.
These last two as well as Claude Habib formed the reading committee of the Littérature et Politique that Lefort founded for the publisher Éditions Belin in 1987.
The differences of opinion, one of the values of democracy, is abolished so that the entire social body is directed towards the same goal; even personal tastes become politicized and must be standardized.
The aim of totalitarianism is to create a united and a closed society, in which the components are not individuals and which is defined completely by the same goals, the same opinions and the same practices.
In order to ensure its proper functioning and to maintain its unity, the totalitarian system requires an Other, "the evil other",[18] a representation of the exterior, the enemy, against which the party combats, "the representative of the forces of the old society (kulaks, bourgeois), [...] the emissary of the stranger, of the imperialistic world".
For example, Stalin prepared to attack the Jews of USSR when he died, i.e., designing a new enemy, and in the same way, Mussolini had declared that bourgeois would be eliminated in Italy after World War II.
This exceeds the simple rhetorical effect that was commonly used in the contemporary political discourse, yet in an underlying way it is part of the metaphorical vision of the totalitarian society as a body.
If the will of the totalitarian party to realize the perfect unity of the social body controls the magnitude of its action, it also implies that the goal is impossible to achieve because its development necessarily leads to contradictions and oppositions.
"Totalitarianism is a regime with a prevailing sense of being gnawed away by the absurdity of its own ambition (total control by the party) and the active or passive resistance of those subjected to it" summarised the political scientist Dominique Colas.
Lefort's vision makes the disappearance of the leader as a political body – the putting to death of the king, as Kantorowicz calls it – the founding moment of democracy because it makes the seat of power, hitherto occupied by an eternal substance transcending the mere physical existence of monarchs, into an "empty space" where groups with shared interests and opinions can succeed each other, but only for a time and at the will of elections.
Power is no longer tied to any specific programme, goal, or proposal; it is nothing but a collection of instruments put temporarily at the disposal of those who win a majority.
Democracy is innovation, the start of new movements, the designation of new issues in the struggle against oppression, it is a "creative power capable of weakening, even slaying the totalitarian Leviathan".
A democratic country can also experience this inventive character when any group of citizens with a legitimate struggle may seek to establish new rights or defend its interests.