politalX Politics Store - Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (Phronesis)

• Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left (Phronesis)
• Discourse Theory and Political Analysis: Identities, Hegemonies and Social Change
• Emancipation(s) (Radical Thinkers)
• Prison Notebooks: Selections
• On Populist Reason

Laclau and Mouffe largely began their intellectual contributions in the 1970s, in journals such as 'Economy and Society', working in a broadly Althusserian, and then Gramscian, paradigm.Their trajectory seems to have been always to move away from economism,determinism and reductionism, and Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (from hereon HSS) is still the main statement of their position.It is the precipitate of this process of critiquing the aforementioned limitations of the Marxist tradition, even those of Gramsci.This said, it is the huge new suite of analytical concepts either originated by, or developed by, Gramsci-especially the concept of 'hegemony' - which form the prime focus of this work.These are then articulated with concepts from the 20th Century development of philosophy, psychoanalysis, and the theory of the sign, to develop a concept of hegemony, and thereby a concept of political change,for the purposes of a radically libertarian,democratic and egalitarian society:socialist, feminist, culturally and sexually tolerant,and internationalist.

In Chapter 1,
Laclau and Mouffe (hereon LM) perform a Foucauldian 'genealogy' of the concept of 'hegemony' , from Russian Social Democracy to Lenin,Sorel, and Gramsci's work and beyond,tracing the attempts made, in various conjunctures by various writers, to address the
'contingent', the 'plural', ie those conjunctures in which progressive alliances were made in ways and upon assumptions which 'overflow', 'supplement' or simply contradict the explanatory and predictive categories of classical Marxism as it had developed from Marx through the late 19th Century and beyond.
They outline Lenin's strategy for a class alliance of workers and peasants , which brought about the first successful socialist revolution in a nation which classical Marxism would regard as being on the capitalist periphery.LM draw out the conclusions from this conjuncture, and how Lenin's success questioned the 'essentialisms' with which classical Marxism regarded things:class reductionism, economic determinism, and change taking place through an Hegelian simplification of the social structure into two antagonistic camps. LM then go on to discuss the development of Marxism subsequent to Lenin, with main reference to Gramsci.(Chapter 2).

It is in Chapter 3 in which LM develop their position against the aforementioned background.LM's two main innovations are ,firstly,a post-idealist reunification of discourse or 'the discursive',to include those physical acts which have hitherto been regarded as 'extra-discursive',and,secondly, an equally post-idealist assertion of the non-algorithmic nature of social antagonisms. LM quote Wittgenstein's famous example of the 'language game' of the words, thoughts and actions of a team of people building a wall ,as their example of a discursive structure.Equally, LM regard antagonism as the END of social meaning and identity, not it's culmination:For LM, an antagonism is the point where the 'limit of social meaning is shown'.In anantagonisitc situation,we do not see the culmination of a rational process between two or more fixed or predictably moving social identities.Rather, in an antagonism , social meaning DISSOLVES,leaving the social identities to be articulated by a variety of discourses-some progressive, some reactionary.In this respect, LM draw the distinction between progressive and reactionary discourses by whether or not they live in ignorance,or 'forgetfulness',of their own discursive constitution.

Finally, LM put there theory to the test by proposing a project for a radical and plural democracy, in which a plural 'collective will' is developed by a process of mutual negotiation between political subjects which are always-and will always be- potential antagonists.This is what Chantal Mouffe has subsequently called an 'agonistic pluralism'.

This book is all these things and much more besides, and a short review like this cannot begin to do justice to a work whose reputation will grow and grow amongst all thinking progressives.Certainly, all students who take a serious interest in socialism, Marxism, feminism , the future of the planet should make sure they read this monumental ,watershed work.It may take you a long time to come to terms with all it's assertions (it took me 5 years), but it will be well worth it.
If you are of a philosophical bent, this book changes lives.

The book is divided into two sections: a critical genealogy of Marxism and a setting-out of a new theoretical "logic", nominally attributed to the concept of "hegemony". The word is taken from Gramsci, but the rest of their project is taken mainly from poststructuralism. The overwhelming influence (though rarely mentioned) is Jacques Lacan, and the basic idea of the authors' new theory - the idea that antagonism should be conceived as constitutive of social and political relations (which also means that the fragile articulations of competing political agendas in the sphere of elite politics are seen as primary in social life).

This general analytical perspective is an application to politics of the key psychoanalytic idea of constitutive lack, and the motivation for its displacement into politics is unclear. Indeed, it sometimes seems that the authors are trying to avoid justifying the specificity of their project by conflating it with the whole of poststructuralist anti-essentialism (which also includes variants incommensurable with a theory of constitutive lack).

Alongside the general analysis - which could be applied to anything from New Age travellers to Nazis as an explanation of political action - there is a specific normative agenda, termed "radical democracy". This isn't clearly stated, but seems to come down to the view that the problems of history can be blamed on the pursuit of social fullness, i.e. the denial of antagonism. Democracy is supposed to overcome this pursuit by inscribing it within institutions which recognise contestation. The argument doesn't really work, because there's too much harmony at the core of democratic politics for it really to function the way Laclau and Mouffe want. This leaves them open to the critique they are later to receive from the likes of Slavoj Zizek, that the antagonism they recognise is not really the constitutive antagonism they claim but something far more superficial and which covers deeper antagonisms. In addition, the politics involved in "radical democracy" is extremely vaguely defined; it is not clear how it differs from common-or-garden liberal democracy and/or to the Eurocommunism which both authors had previously espoused.