Anonymous Comrade submits:

"On the Future of Radical Politics"

Saul Newman

In my undergraduate days at Sydney University, during
my brief flirtation with Trotskyism, I was always
struck by the sectarianism of its politics. The
Trotskyists, or the Socialist Workers Party as they
called themselves, consisted of all of about three
hardcore members (probably even fewer these days).
They routinely split, formed opposing factions and, in
the most vitriolic terms, accused each other of
revisionism, betraying the party line, perverting the
true message of Marxism, and other heinous offences.

The irony of all this was, of course, that Trotskyism
itself was one in a long series of deviations from the
original Marxist line, along with Marxist-Leninism and
a number of other theoretical revisions which sought
to adapt Marxism to existing social and economic
conditions. Yet each of these interventions imposed
their own rigid theoretical limits which they were
unable to transcend. Perhaps this explained the
fanatical zeal with which my comrades clung to
hopelessly outdated notions like the centrality of
class struggle, the vanguardism of the Party, and the
mantra that the Soviet Union which for a while had
been falling apart at the seams was a deformed
workers state that needed to be preserved.

Disillusionment with the authoritarianism, dogmatism,
and blinkeredness of Marxist politics led me to a
critique of Marxism itself, through anarchism and
poststructuralist theory. Anarchism rejected the state
centralism, as well as the economic determinism, of
Marxism, and advocated including other groups in
socialist struggles. Poststructuralist thinkers such
as Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, and Lacan questioned
the universal assumptions, essential identities, and
dialectical structures that informed much of Marxism.

The problem with Marxism was its fundamental
misunderstanding of politics. The political domain
could no longer be seen as determined by economic
forces, rather it was a largely autonomous sphere
with its own contingent logic. Nor could political
struggles any longer be understood simply as class
conflict. The political field had fragmented into a
number of different struggles over identity, gender,
sexuality, ethnicity, and so on. New forms of
subordination, like those in the prison system and
psychiatric institutions that could not be explained
in terms of capitalist economics, were being unmasked.

These developments led many on the Left to question
the central categories of Marxism, in particular:
class essentialism the notion that the industrial
proletariat represents the whole of society under
capitalism, and is therefore the only class that can
fulfil society's revolutionary destiny; economic
determinism, the notion that the capitalist economy
determines all social and political phenomena; and
rational and dialectical certainty, the belief that
history is a rational process with a culminating point
in communism, wherein all social contradictions will
be resolved.

Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's Hegemony and
Socialist Strategy, first published in 1985 and in a
second edition recently, was a key intervention in the
development of a post-Marxist political theory. Laclau
and Mouffe tried to rethink radical politics in
non-essentialist, non-authoritarian, and democratic
ways, by interrogating Marxisms central concepts. A
gap yawned between empirical reality the shrinking
of the working class in post-industrial societies, the
transformations in capitalism, the abject failure of
Marxist-Leninist projects, the fragmentation of the
political domain, and the rise of new social movements
and Marxs predictions about the polarisation of
society into two opposed classes and the inevitable
collapse of capitalism. This posed a political problem
is failure of Marxism as a political project due to
its general neglect of politics itself, its insistence
that the political is subordinated to the economy?
The problem with Marxism was its fundamental
misunderstanding of politics.

The inability to account for the political realities
of the time had led to interventions within Marxism
itself that attempted to bridge this ever widening gap
between theory and reality. Indeed, Laclau and Mouffe
show that there is no original unity in Marxist
thought, from virtually the beginning of the history
of Marxism there were a number of syntheses and
compromises that have been obscured and patched over
in the now crumbling theoretical edifice.

Deconstruction is a much misunderstood term, but it
simply describes the uncovering of the disunities,
ruptures, and antagonisms that inevitably underlie our
accounts of the social world, yet which have been
concealed and repressed. Laclau and Mouffe, in a
similar manner, exposed the compromises, shifts,
silences, gaps in logic, deviations, and hidden
voices, to see where they might lead, to see how they
allow us to reflect on the limits of Marxism.

This original synthesis pointed to a political moment
in Marxism with the potential to go beyond the narrow
confines of economic determinism and class
essentialism, and to recognise that politics has its
own logic and dynamics. This was the moment of
hegemony. Hegemony refers to a distinctly political
logic of articulation, in which a particular social
force, a particular class, group, or political party,
for instance represents or stands in for the
whole. For Marx, the social force representing the
universality of struggles against capitalism was, of
course, the proletariat, whose position in industrial
capitalism embodied the notorious crime of the whole
of society.

However, Marxists after Marx pointed to a widening gap
between the class (economic) position of the
proletariat and their political demands. Throughout
the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, for instance,
workers have generally aspired to amelioration of the
conditions of industrial capitalism, rather than its
overthrow demands for better pay and conditions,
etc. This showed that there was no necessary relation
between class position and political outlook. In other
words, it was increasingly clear that this
relationship would be hegemonic -- that is, dependent
on a synthetic articulation between different
political demands and social groups, and the way these
groups come to understand and represent themselves.
This relationship, in other words, was not determined
in advance, but rather developed out of political
expediency and was entirely contingent.

Hegemony, therefore, was a response to the crisis of
Marxism. As the gap between economics and politics,
between class position and political outlook became
evident, there were various attempts to patch up this
gap through synthetic political constructions. Laclau
and Mouffe trace the interventions of Kautsky,
Plekhanov, Bernstein, and others to show the way in
which they invoke momentarily the autonomy of the
political and the contingency of the social, only to
return to the narrow confines of economic determinism
and class reductionism, thus foreclosing the radical
potential of their ideas.
Laclau and Mouffe show that there is no original unity
in Marxist thought

Only with the introduction of the concept of hegemony
derived from Russian Social Democracy and of Gramsci's
notion of collective will did the political domain
really start to be considered in its own right. The
Russian Social Democrats, including Trotsky, proposed
a hegemonic solution to the specific problems in
Russia during the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries: because of the situation of combined and
uneven development, the proletariat would have to
take upon itself the political tasks of the
bourgeoisie. Lenin extended this logic with his notion
of the class alliance, in which the bourgeoisie and
the proletariat would unite to achieve common
democratic political ends. In both these positions
there is a conscious construction of a political
unity, which involves one class standing in in an
entirely synthetic way for the demands of other
classes. However, these potentially radical
innovations were still restricted by the insistence on
the specificity of class interests in the last
instance.

These interventions, however, gradually weakened the
link between class position and political
identification, and fostered the emergence of a
hegemonic logic in which a political position is
deliberately constructed beyond class identities
through what Laclau and Mouffe call chains of
equivalence. Imagine a situation in which there is an
authoritarian government antagonising different groups
in society, for instance, a government that denies
workers their rights and also denies students their
rights, and so on. This would be similar to the
situation in Tsarist Russia. Despite their different
specific aims and identities, a certain relation of
equivalence would be formed between workers and
students as they united against a common foe. In this
situation, a certain identity will stand in for or
embody the universality of this political struggle.

However, the crucial thing about this hegemonic
relation is that it is entirely contingent the
identity that stands in for the others is not
determined in advance, but rather is decided in an
open field of contestation. In other words, there
would be no essential link here, so that potentially
any identity -- rather than necessarily the
proletariat, as Marx insisted -- can fill this role, as
long as it manages to articulate a common position.
Moreover, it does so only temporarily. This hegemonic
relationship also changes the identity of the
participants once caught in the chain of
equivalence different groups cannot maintain a sense
of themselves as absolutely different, because they
are engaged in a common political struggle. Politics
hegemonic politics is always an irreducible tension
between particularity (difference) and universality
(commonality). Indeed, any kind of political identity
is a mutual contamination of these two opposed logics.

But if politics is so open and indeterminate that any
number of different identities and demands can
temporarily hegemonise the political domain, then
what defines radical politics today? For Laclau and
Mouffe, contemporary radical and socialist political
struggles must be, first and foremost, democratic
struggles. The authoritarianism and centralism of
Marxism increased the gap between socialism and
democracy. So, they argue, contemporary socialist
struggles should expand democratic rights, hitherto
confined by liberalism to the political sphere, to
other social and economic spheres, thus aiming at a
general transformation of society. Democracy allows a
mobilisation of rights and a questioning of relations
of social subordination. The democratic revolution has
given rise, for instance, to all sorts of new social
movements feminism, environmentalism, black and gay
rights struggles, struggles against new forms of state
authority, and against the increasing commodification
of life. New movements can no longer be confined by
the Marxist category of class struggle rather, the
struggles of workers must be seen as one in a long
series of different democratic struggles.
If politics is open and indeterminate then what
defines radical politics today?

Laclau and Mouffe openly embrace liberal democracy, a
bold move for socialists. They show that liberal
democracy is based on a certain necessary tension
between liberty and equality, thus allowing for a
plurality of social perspectives, as well as equal
rights and social justice. The problem with liberal
democracy is not its content, but rather the power
relations of capitalism in which it is articulated. I
entirely agree with them here despite the rhetoric
of most of todays liberal democrats (who are
actually neo-liberals) liberal democracy has no
necessary connection with capitalism. Indeed, history
shows that most liberal democratic rights, such as
freedom of speech and the right of assembly, were
gained through workers socialist and democratic
struggles. Moreover, one could point to Germany under
the Nazis, and Chile under Pinochet, where capitalist
economies operated alongside oppressive and brutal
political regimes. So why cant we separate liberal
democracy from capitalism, and see it precisely as
posing a problem for capitalism? Why cant liberal
democratic rights be expanded into the economic and
social domains, on the basis that it is simply
undemocratic to grant political rights without
economic rights, and so on? Perhaps the most radical
position would be, rather than to dismiss liberal
democracy, as Marxist-Leninism did, to actually take
its message seriously and extend its logic to other
domains. Those on the Left today must fight for the
liberal democratic legacy against neo-liberals who
seek to separate liberalism from democracy, leaving
political decisions in the hands of technocrats.

The Left today is faced with many challenges the
neo-liberalism of the 1980s has given birth to both
the Third Way and its perverse underside the Far
Right. The Third Way sought to de-radicalise politics
through the notion of the Radical Centre -- a happy
medium between the Left and Right. In the words of
Tony Blair, there are no longer left wing and right
wing policies, but only good or bad policies. In
other words, the decisions of government should be
de-politicised; left to rational technocrats who
supposedly know whats best for us. Third Way
theorists even talk about the end of ideologies, as
though ideology is irrational, a thing of the past,
and we should simply get on with the business of good
government. Of course this should make us all the
more suspicious -- those who claim to be beyond
ideology are, almost by definition, ideologists par
excellence.

The Third Way, moreover, has a number of important
effects. It pushes any kind of radical or emancipative
politics to the margins, branding it as irrational,
anachronistic and extremist. It applies an ideological
sugar-coating to untrammelled capitalist globalisation
Third Way governments talk about social justice
and, at the same time, conduct neo-liberal programs of
unprecedented privatisation and welfare cuts, which
are sold to us in the name of reform. Perhaps most
seriously, the Third Way is effectively a
de-politicisation of politics itself, replacing the
antagonism vital to democratic politics with the
technocratic administrative of social life.
The Third Way brands radical politics as irrational,
anachronistic, and extremist.

The alarming rise of the Far Right across Europe is a
reaction to this rationalisation of the political. It
would be a fatal mistake to see the Right as simply a
throwback to the old Fascist politics. This is a
slick, new form of pseudo-radical politics, which, on
the one hand, presents itself as rational and
reasonable (which of course makes it even more
pernicious) and, on the other hand, is accompanied by
an irrational violence, borne of the frustration with
mainstream politics and a reaction against
globalisation, but targeted at immigrants and other
minority groups.

The radical Left has lost too much political ground to
the Right, and has been largely unable to form an
adequate response, beyond a liberal hand-wringing over
racism. The political terrain at stake here is
capitalist globalisation itself globalisation would
be, in Laclau and Mouffes terms, a kind of floating
signifier which can be articulated in different ways
by either the Left or Right. The challenge of the Left
must be to reclaim the ground of resistance to
globalisation, which has been taken over by the Far
Right, by articulating its own response to capitalist
globalisation.

Globalisation presents politics with an open hegemonic
terrain in which new chains of equivalence between
different subordinated groups can be constructed. The
current anti-globalisation movement would be a good
example of hegemonic politics in action. Here
capitalism is back on the radical agenda, but in a new
way. Rather than being constrained by the old Marxist
categories of class struggle and hierarchical Party
structures, the anti-globalisation movement is a
de-centralised coalition of different groups, and is
about exposing new forms of domination and
exploitation environmental degradation, genetically
modified crops, racism, workplace subordination and
surveillance, corporate greed, and so on.

Laclau and Mouffe's category of hegemony -- as a
specific form of universality based on a tension
between difference and equivalence -- provides an
innovative way to interpret contemporary political
struggles. Notions such as chains of equivalence,
antagonism, and articulation are powerful
analytical tools for activists and political theorists
alike. Hegemony is effectively a new, non-essentialist
theory of politics, asserting the radical contingency
and the openness of the social field. Much, of course,
has changed since Hegemony and Socialist Strategy
first came out, changes Laclau and Mouffe discuss in
the new Preface: the end of the Cold War and the
Soviet system, new paradigms such as postmodernity and
multiculturalism, and new trends in global capitalism.
Despite, or rather because of, these developments,
however, the work is perhaps more relevant now than
ever. With the fragmentation of social, economic, and
political fields, new challenges present themselves to
radical politics new forms of domination become
evident and new struggles emerge. While there are many
dimensions to the argument here, the message is
relatively clear radical politics can no longer be
seen as an enterprise determined by rationalist
logics, economic prerogatives, and essential
identities; rather it must be seen as an open-ended
field of contestation and antagonism, whose effects
are contingent and unpredictable.

While some on the Marxist Left condemned Hegemony and
Socialist Strategy for throwing out hallowed notions
of economic determinism, the dialectic, and the
centrality of class, it is precisely by interrogating
these ideas that Laclau and Mouffe have radicalised
socialist politics, making it more relevant to
contemporary struggles. Those who might, on the other
hand, be overly sanguine about this critique of
Marxism, however, should take note: the works
relationship to Marxism is a paradoxical one while
it is a critique and interrogation of central Marxist
concepts, it is precisely through this deconstruction
that it remains faithful to Marxism's emancipatory and
democratic spirit.

Saul Newman is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department
of Political Science at the University of Western
Australia. He is researching contemporary and
poststructuralist political theory.

http://www.econ.usyd.edu.au/drawingboard/digest/02 07/newman.html