Laclau and Mouffe

The Radical Democratic Imaginary

Anna Marie Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781134855643
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Laclau and Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary is the first full-length overview of the important work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Anna Marie Smith clearly shows how Laclau and Mouffe's work has brought Gramscian, poststructuralist and psychoanalytic perspectives to revitalize traditional political theory. With clarity and insight, she shows how they have constructed a highly effective theory of identity formation and power relations that carefully draws from the criticism of political theory from postmodern anti-foundationalist political theory.

1
RETRIEVING DEMOCRACY

The radical democratic imaginary

Laclau and Mouffe contend that radical democracy is the best route towards progressive social change for the Left today. As we will see, radical democracy embraces many aspects of the socialist tradition. Radical democracy also appropriates the most progressive moments of the liberal democratic, anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobic and environmentalist traditions as well. As Mouffe argues, “The objective of the Left should be the extension and deepening of the democratic revolution initiated two hundred years ago” (1992a:1). These appropriations are complex and reconstitutive in nature. Radical democratic pluralism does not recognize a theoretical division of labor between these traditions: it does not simply add socialism's economic agenda to liberal democracy's political principles. It values, for example, the Marxist critique of liberal politics (Brown 1995:14) and seeks to respond to pluralist concerns about the effects of central planning.

From the authors' perspective, the “democratic revolution” is much more than a series of historical events. Laclau and Mouffe consider it instead as the very condition of possibility for the radicalization of social resistance. Citing Foucault, they recognize that wherever there is power, there is resistance, but they also recognize that resistance can take many different forms. They argue that it is only in specific historical contexts that resistance becomes political in the sense that it begins to aim not only to oppose a specific instance of domination but to put an end to the entire structure of subordination itself (Laclau and Mouffe 1985:152–3).

Referring to the politics of contemporary social struggles, Laclau and Mouffe write,

There is therefore nothing inevitable or natural in the different struggles against power, and it is necessary to explain in each case the reasons for their emergence and different modulations that they adopt. The struggle against subordination cannot be the result of the situation of subordination itself.

(1985:152)

Politicized resistance, then, is discursively constructed; subversive practices never automatically follow from the simple fact of exploitation and oppression. The authors' central argument is that a resistance discourse only becomes politicized insofar as the democratic revolution is reappropriated and redefined in specific historical conditions and transferred to the social site in question. Each of these recitations (in the Derridean sense (Derrida 1988)) introduce innovative and contextually specific new meanings into the democratic tradition and yet simultaneously preserves a non-essentialist trace of previous articulations such that every moment of democratic struggle to some extent stands on historically prepared ground.

The ability of the oppressed to imagine the complete overthrow of their oppressors depends upon the circulation, radicalization and institutionalization of democratic discourse.

Our thesis is that egalitarian discourses and discourses on rights play a fundamental role in the reconstruction of collective identities. At the beginning of this process in the French Revolution, the public space of citizenship was the exclusive domain of equality, while in the private sphere no questioning took place of existing social inequalities. However, as de Tocqueville clearly understood, once human beings accept the legitimacy of the principle of equality in one sphere they will attempt to extend it to every other sphere of life.

(Laclau and Mouffe 1990:128)

Lefort has similarly argued that democratic discourse on human rights can incite remarkably different forms of emancipatory struggles. Writing in the late 1970s, Lefort was inspired by both the 1968 popular protests in France and the struggles of Chinese and Soviet dissidents. He rejected the view that was, at that time, predominant among the leaders of the French Left. The latter assumed that the subject of rights is by definition the possessive and atomistic individual of capitalist society; they therefore concluded that demands for human rights are ultimately bourgeois and reformist in character (Lefort 1986:242–3). Lefort insisted instead that rights should not be regarded as if they were already fully established institutions with fixed meanings, and that notwithstanding its origins in bourgeois liberal discourse, the concept of human rights can be enormously expanded.

The struggles for human rights have always been open-ended: in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, subjects with a long history of struggle such as workers, peasants, slaves and the colonized took on new identities—as trade union members, citizens, anti-colonial nationalists, anti-imperialist internationalists, and so on—as they demanded rights in innovative ways. New subjects also emerged—women, racial/ethnic minorities within nation-states, peace activists, environmentalists, lesbians and gays—and framed their rights-based claims in language borrowed from previous struggles. By its very nature, the whole projectof securing official recognition for human rights remains contested and incomplete. This is even more true today as reactionary forces continue to gain strength in many contemporary political formations and threaten to empty the emancipatory content out of the “rights” that they claim to uphold. Lefort calls human rights the “generative principles of democracy” for it is through the promotion of an “awareness of rights”—the dissemination of democratic discourse to new areas of the social, the radicalization of the concept of human rights, and the institutionalization of democratic principles—that disempowered political subjects can win their struggles for recognition (Lefort 1986:260).

Laclau and Mouffe's position vis-à-vis the subversive effect of the democratic revolution can be clarified by examining their distinction between relations of subordination and relations of oppression. In the former, a social agent is subjected to the will of another, but does not see the subordinating agent as someone who blocks her from fully realizing her identity. In the latter case, the social agent is also subjected to the will of another, but she recognizes that that relation of subordination is indeed an antagonistic one, for she believes that that relation is stopping her from developing her identity. To achieve this profound shift in her perspective, she must have access to the tools that allow her, first, to envision a world that lies beyond subordination and to imagine what she could become in that alternative space, second, to analyze the ways in which she has become caught up in and thwarted by the relation of subordination, and third, to grasp the possibilities for collective struggle to overthrow the entire subordinating structure. As an example of this difference, Laclau and Mouffe point to the fact that women have been subjected to male authority for centuries, and have engaged in many forms of resistance against that authority, but that that relation of subordination was transformed into a relation of oppression only when a feminist movement based on the liberal democratic demand for equality began to emerge (1985:153–4).

In another illustration, they consider the differences between the workers' struggles that have sought limited reforms as opposed to those that have challenged the entire capitalist system (1985:156–8, 167–8). Their point is that in itself, the experience of subordination does not guarantee that the subordinated social agent will develop a radical perspective vis-à-vis her subjection. The subordinated agent only becomes radicalized when she finds a compelling political discourse that gives an effective account for her condition, provides her with the critical tools that she needs to join with others in constructing an alternative world, and shows her how the entire subordinating structure might be overthrown through collective struggle. It is precisely a radicalized interpretation of the principles of liberty and equality that can interrupt relations of subordination in this manner. Radical democratic discourse thereby creates the discursive conditions in which even the most normalized forms of subjection can be viewed as illegitimate and the elimination of subordination can be imagined. As we will see in Chapter 4, democratic discourse is also marked by an irresolvable tension, for there will always be some degree of incompatibility between liberty claims andequality claims. For Laclau and Mouffe, however, this tension is not a fatality but a vital resource for radical democracy.

As mere ideas, “liberty” and “equality” do not change anything. Democratic discourse cannot exert this interruption effect upon relations of subordination until the democratic imaginary becomes embodied in norms and institutions.¹ The extension of democratic principles into new spheres of the social² did not take place until actual democratic struggles won some concrete strategic ground through political struggle. Political struggle does nevertheless depend in part on the ability to imagine alternative worlds. Laclau and Mouffe locate the first significant advance of liberal democracy in the French Revolution, for it was in this moment that the ancien régime was displaced by a new order whose political legitimacy was based on nothing other than the “rule of the people” (1985:155).

As the ideas of liberty and equality were given a material life by becoming embodied in more and more political practices and institutions, it became possible for increasing numbers of people to take up a democratic imaginary that allowed them to envision their worlds differently.

This break with the ancien regime, symbolized by the Declaration of the Rights of Man, would provide the discursive conditions which made it possible to propose different forms of inequality as illegitimate and anti-natural, and thus make them equivalent as forms of oppression.

(Laclau and Mouffe 1985:155)

The authors depict the democratic principles of liberty and equality as a “fermenting agent.” Once they were institutionalized in one context, these principles were spread to other sites with an accelerating chain-reaction effect (1985:155). Referring again to Tocqueville, Laclau and Mouffe state that “It is not possible to conceive of men as eternally unequal among themselves on one point, and equal on others; at a certain moment, they will come to be equal on all points” (1985:156).³ Hence the multiple appropriations of democratic discourse: nineteenth-century English workers drew inspiration from the French Revolution, abolitionists cited the American Constitution, and suffragettes combined the myth of a morally pure feminine nature with Enlightenment ideals. American civil rights leaders of the 1960s borrowed from various sources: the Anglo-American liberal democratic tradition, radical religious discourse, anti-racist and anti-imperialist resistance, and socialist discourse. Contemporary feminists, progressive lesbians and gays, environmentalist activists and radical trade union leaders in the United States now fashion much of their political discourse out of elements borrowed from the civil rights movement.

The success of these circulations, appropriations and radicalizations of the democratic imaginary depends largely on historical conditions. The new social movements, for example, have brought a whole new field of demands onto the political agenda in the 1960s and 1970s. They owed much of their effectiveness to the ambiguous effects of the commodification of social life, the rise of theinterventionist state, and the expansion of mass communication (Laclau and Mouffe 1985:159“71). Because the extension of the democratic revolution depends in part on the contingencies of historical conditions, its extension into new areas of the social is not guaranteed (Laclau and Mouffe 1985:158, 168). Instead of proceeding in definite stages or unfolding according to a single logic, democratic struggles are shaped by local conditions, historical peculiarities and the uncertainties of political contestation. As we now witness the rise of the new right, the neo-conservatives, and the religious right, along with the resurgence of many types of sexism and racism, we also have to consider the possibility that much of the liberatory and egalitarian potential of the democratic revolution may be eviscerated as these forces attempt to impose their own reactionary definitions of “liberty” and “equality.”

Laclau and Mouffe's conception of radical democratic pluralism can be further clarified through an exploration of the work of leftist theorists who have attempted to construct a new hybrid democratic theory through the “retrieval” of the most progressive aspects of the liberal democratic and socialist traditions. Like the “retrieval” theorists, Laclau and Mouffe argue that the liberal-democratic definition of human rights is open to contestation: just as the unfixity of this definition is now permitting various right-wing redefinitions, that same unfixity also allows for radical democratic appropriations (1985:176). Mouffe asserts that Macpherson became a key figure in contemporary political theory precisely through his work on the radical potential of liberal democracy (1993b: 102). In the following section, Macpherson's political theory and the “retrieval” tradition will be discussed. The hybrid and complex character of both the liberal democratic and socialist traditions, as well as the illegitimacy of the neo-conservative alternative, will then be considered. An initial sketch of radical democratic pluralist strategy and the processes through which imperfect democratic societies can be radically democratized will be offered. Finally, it will be argued that the mere addition of extra elements to an otherwise unchanged Marxist theory would be insufficient for radical democratic pluralist thought.

The contested meaning of liberal democracy

Macpherson, like Laclau and Mouffe, argues that democratic theory must be taken beyond its liberal-democratic origins (Macpherson 1973). These limits are, in a sense, internal to liberal democracy, for they stem from irreducible tensions that are present in the very foundation of this tradition (Cunningham 1987:141–202; Golding 1992:3–18; Green 1985). Liberal democracy marks a liberatory break with the traditional hierarchies of pre-Enlightenment society: it defines the individual as an equal and rational self-determining agent and it attempts to construct socio-political obligation on the basis of consensual contracts. For example, Locke's critique of feudal obligation and his theory of government by the consent of the people (Locke 1963) are extremely valuable for radical democracy. Although Locke's Eurocentric view of the indigenous peoples of the Americas is unacceptable, his defense of individual rights can be mobilized wherever discrimination and exclusion are bolstered by theories of natural, social and moral hierarchies.

For Locke, however, the defense of market relations and the defense of individual rights and freedoms are inextricable. Indeed, the predominant definition of liberal democracy combines Locke's contract theory with Smith's laissez-faire bourgeois economics (Watkins and Kramnick 1979:11). The individual proper to liberal democracy is supposed to possess a specifically instrumentalist type of rationality and a fundamental interest in the acquisition of more and more goods. Because liberal democratic theory is based on what Macpherson (1962) calls “possessive individualism,” it portrays the infinite competition for scarce goods, the institution of private property, the class divisions that necessarily follow from these conditions, and the social contract that preserves the class-divided society from self-destruction, as natural and inevitable (Golding 1992:4–5). As we will see below, a liberal democratic order can be entirely compatible with the perpetuation of non-class-based forms of domination as well.

In short, liberal democracy begins with an egalitarian and freely self-determining conception of the individual, but ultimately tolerates and even promotes the formation of a highly inegalitarian social order. John Stuart Mill's vision of a society that is governed by “the people” and that secures the conditions necessary for every individual's realization of their own capacities, is an especially promising moment in the liberal democratic tradition (Macpherson 1977:1). Macpherson nevertheless contends that even Mill's ethical liberalism does not resolve the tensions between egalitarianism and domination. Like Locke, Mill expresses various ethnocentric views that are problematic. Further, Mill does not pay sufficient attention to the fact that individuals will be truly free to develop their capacities only after the relations of exploitation and oppression that structure modern societies are fully dismantled. Following Macpherson's lead, the task of contemporary radical democratic theory is to “retrieve” the most progressive moments of the liberal democratic tradition and the most democratic moments of the socialist tradition and to bring them together in a fusion that is suited to contemporary political conditions.

Progress towards radical democratic pluralism would necessitate a radical transformation of capitalism. Such a transformation would have to address the unlimited accumulation of wealth and power and the private ownership of the means of production that prevail in every capitalist formation, as well as the exploitation of labor that follows from these conditions (Green 1993b:10). Radical democratization must also involve the elimination of the structural relations of oppression—such as sexism, racism and homophobia—that are often combined with class relations in many complicated ways. Exploitation and oppression are deeply rooted in social relations; they are much more extensive and intensive than isolated moments of bigotry. In structural relations of exploitation and oppression, the dominant group achieves its power through the disempowerment of the dominated group. Where that asymmetry is institutionalized, the relations of exploitation or oppression become so entrenched that their reproduction does not exclusively depend on individuals' personal attitudes (Cunningham 1987:114).

One of the achievements of the radical civil rights movement in the United States was precisely the normalization of the idea that racial inequality is the product of deeply embedded social structures (Omi and Winant 1994:69). Centuries of systematic exclusions based on race—slavery; genocidal policies towards Native Americans; racist immigration, citizenship, and property laws; the de jure and de facto disenfranchisement of blacks, Latinos, Asians and Native Americans; the super-exploitation of black, Latino and Asian workers; racial discrimination in the banking, insurance and housing sectors; segregated workplaces and education systems; organized violence and so on (Takaki 1993)— have led to the vast over-concentration of racial minorities among America's unemployed and working poor. Consequently, upward socio-economic mobility has been much more difficult for these groups to achieve. In this manner, racial inequality tends to perpetuate itself. Some of the data on inequality in the United States will be examined below. The point here is that inequality should be understood as a structural phenomenon. Once a “playing field” is established that is sharply tilted against an exploited or oppressed group, that inequality will be generally reproduced and extended even if key social institutions operate in a basically unbiased manner, and even if leading decision-makers do not hold prejudicial attitudes.⁴

Neo-conservatism and its socialist critics

In the Western media's coverage of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc, the political terrain was reduced to a simple choice between two caricatures: the “good” choice, “democracy”—meaning a neo-conservative free market system à la Thatcher, Reagan and Friedman—or the “bad” choice, “socialism”—meaning planned central...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Retrieving democracy: the radical democratic imaginary
• 2 Essentialism, non-essentialism and democratic leadership: from Lenin to Gramsci
• 3 Subject positions, articulation and the subversion of essentialism
• 4 Self-determination, community and citizenship
• 5 Power and hegemony
• Conclusion: multicultural difference and the political
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index