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Hegemony & Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics

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I studied this text as a graduate student at York University. I must admit that I did not understand the terse theoretical language for a long time. However, I had the good fortune of finding a fellow graduate student in Political Thought who was so well versed in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy that he could extol the hidden meanings of the text for hours on end! I called his ranting, "bible thumping"! But in all seriousness, once you understand the conceptual relationships presented in the book, you find a whole new way of conceptualizing the social, not as an accomplished fact, but as an ongoing practice of articulation. The problem with orthodox forms of Marxism? The fixing of the meaning of the "working class" at the point of production. During the whole development of Marxism up to the theoretical work of Gramsci, we have witnessed the "undoing" of the essentialist meaning/construction of the working class as determined by pure economistic forces. The problem? The larger mediating role of politics and culture. Working class identity is not fixed at the point of production, but is fragmented across other discursive spaces, e.g. nationalism, sports fan, father, mother, reader, lover, etc. There is no neccessary articulation between any of these. The moral lesson behind all this is thus: The Right has been very successful in practicing articulation, providing a broad-based appeal in relation to identities; on the other hand, the left has been "left" with a worn-out, 19th century, industrial model of "working class" identity. The second half of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy takes the reader into a post-Gramscian theoretical muse on the subject of emerging social movements and the discursive (poststructuralist) construction of subject positions, which are always open to new articulations, (both to the left and right), and are never finally fixed. From this theoretical standpoint, the social is open to ongoing struggles over meanings. For the Left to revitalize itself and become a viable force in the new century, it must become more sophisticated in the area of cultural politics and begin to strategically articulate discursive equivalents across social movements--to find common ground in what seems to be a multiple and fragemented emergence of movements. My only criticism is that, by reifying social movements, we lose site of the very complexity and pluralism found within such movements. Does this mean that by its macro perspective it loses sight of the mirco, everyday? On the contrary, no! The model given by Laclau and Mouffe has an applicability well beyond the study of social movement discourses. I utilized the notion of articulation found in the text and the notion of the openness of the social in my critical ethnography of a non-federally recognized Native American group and their struggles over the meaning of their contested identity, (Book Title: Native Americans in the Carolina Borderlands: A Critical Ethnography, Carolinas Press, 2000). The model can be applied in ethnographic works concerned with the social effectivity of larger articulated, social movement discourses. It is the type of contingent theorizing that is itself unfinished and open to new articulations! A must for students, academics, and cultural workers interested in the politics of culture, cultural studies, critical theory, social movements, and social theory in general.

Hegemony and Socialist Strategy is an excelent book. It will become a classic for not only those involved in politics, but to understand the very process of political formations. For Laclau and Mouffe, the Left is in a `crossroads', where new social fragmentation questions the core of leftist paradigms. The task, then, becomes how to renovate a theoretical paradigm that can open the possibility for the Left to articulate the various fragmented social struggles into its political project. It with such aim, that the authors remodel a notion of hegemony to fit in with the present social circumstance and leftist paradigm impediments. The authors see themselves as post-Marxists, where the post fits in with the theoretical tools coming from the work situated at the post-structuralist thought such as Derrida, Foucault, etc; and Marxists where Gramsci' notion of hegemony becomes a important point of departure. There are at least two main intervention in this book: the author question the supposedly `leading role' of the working class given traditionally by the Left, and the link of socialism with democracy (or as they see it, radical democracy).

The first two chapters reconstruct the emergence of the concept of hegemony going back all the way to the Second and Third Internationals. They look at the work of Rosa Luxemburg, Kautsky, among other to demonstrate how the social fragmentation was continually repressed by the classist paradigm of the orthodox Marxism. For the authors, the problem was the belief that economic relations are somehow more `real' than other political conditions. They aim at essentialist reasoning behind such belief, and how subjective identities are overdetermined by various relations that partly overlap one another.

In the last two chapters, Laclau and Mouffe re-work a notion of hegemony though the concept of articulation. Here, actors are brought together in a way that their differences makes them equivalent in a negative dimension, against a system of oppressive relation of power. In this way, their identity is split between their positive difference and the wider articulation that they become engaged with it. What one see here is a way to do politics that does not oppress the particular differences and at the same time does not loose the very ability to create a wider structural change. The author finally links such possibility with a radical democratic way of doing politics. One on the problems with the book, however is the language in which many of the argument makes necessary for one to be familiar with the post-structuralism jargons. Also, it is a bit odd that a book on the Marxism discourse does not a have a single reference to the work of Marx himself. At any case, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy is a brilliant tour de force of argument. It shows the wide variety of excellent books that the Amazon has on its `shelf'.

Laclau and Mouffe have developed a theory of hegemony, after Antonio Gramsci, that is more fluid and less determined by the ascendancy of one social or economic class; it is, in short, a postmodern reflection on Gramsci.

They begin by positing that there are countless groups within a society, each with a series of perspectives and views. Because of this plurality of groups, it is not possible to know which groups will coalesce into a bloc and be able, through their agreed upon ideas also coming together, to exercise hegemony. Different groups have many possible bloc allies. In the United States, there have been times when Jews and African-Americans have united and worked together, for example, with the Civil Rights Act of 1964; there have been other times when these groups have not been able to work together politically in an harmonious fashion, as with the anti-Jewish slogans of some members of the Nation of Islam (Louis Farrakhan, for instance).

What blocs form and produce a new hegemony depends upon a number of factors: the particular issues which become most salient and lead to groups "choosing up sides" on which position to take with respect to the emergent agenda, pre-existing interests and views characteristic of the group, and the extent to which segments of different groups' views can be articulated together in alliance with other groups to become a bloc.

To use the language of post-structuralism, each potential antagonism of one group with another is a "floating signifier,". . .a 'wild' antagonism which does not predetermine the form in which it can be articulated [linked up] to other elements in a social system." Furthermore, rapid change is possible in a current hegemony. The groups bound together as a bloc may find their articulation coming apart at the seams; latent antagonisms may come to the fore and lead to a rearticulation of interests into a new bloc. Thus, hegemonies are unstable for Laclau and Mouffe--whereas they tend to be much more stable from Gramsci's perspective. The end result is that dominant views can change swiftly, and the ideas that have led to one set of leaders may disintegrate, precipitating new leaders and new political agendas.

Most dramatically, consider the Soviet Union. Who can forget the rapid collapse of the old Bolshevik apparatus, after seventy years of hegemony. Seemingly, overnight the forces of openness put into motion by Mikhail Gorbachev tore apart the previous grand hegemony. However, there is plenty of potential for a new hegemony developing that will be much less supportive of democratic impulses. Witness events occurring in recent years under the presidency of Vladimir Putin.

This is a difficult work to plow through. Nonetheless, it is a fascinating book and worth the effort to make sense of it.

For those struggling with the book, or thinking about reading it:

The authors assume a great deal of knowledge on the part of the reader. You will find this book very difficult if you do not have prior knowledge of Marx (certainly), as well as Gramsci and Lenin (who are both very useful for their own writings on figures that appear in this text e.g. Kautsky, Plekhanov, Bernstein). That will help you get through the first half of the book (Althusser also appears but they deal with him in a pretty easy manner). With the second half, knowledge of Saussure and Derrida is most useful, such as the role of signifiers and the concept of differance (if you're saying "what?" at this, then the second half of the book won't make much sense). Laclau and Mouffe are basically taking Derrida's understanding of the "missing center" filled in by discourse and applying it to Gramsci's understanding of hegemony.

So, at the least, you should be comfortable with Marx (Capital), and have reading Lenin (get the excellent Dover text of "What is to Be Done? And Other Essays") and Gramsci (Prison Notebooks). Then, get familiar with Saussure (perhaps not necessary to read his original text on linguistics, I haven't anyway) and Derrida (in particular the essay "Structure, Sign and Play", find it online).

Once you've done this, Laclau and Mouffe will make much more sense and be much more rewarding.

This book is a great example of the problem with the contemporary left: a paralysis by analysis by academics too comfortable in their lofty ivory tower to actually take any political action. There was a time when left intellectuals were more concerned class struggle than making tenure or getting published in the most trendy post-modern theory journal. Try to imagine the look on the face of any working class Joe sipping beer at a sports bar when confronted with the language this book is couched in. Ivory tower Marxist serve as an "outlet" for revolutionary energy in a capitalist society. The ivory tower radicalism espoused by this book is nothing but another system of control.

In non-radical democracy, informed consent is viewed as somewhat desirable.

For better or worse, Marxism is no longer considered altogether intellectually respectable, even by Marxists. So they have retooled themselves as "Post-Marxists," and this is their new bible, espousing "radical democracy." Well, that certainly sounds like a good thing, doesn't it? Might there be a catch? Mais Oui. The catch in books like these, as with David Harvey, is usually buried somewhere in the middle. Consider the commandments provided on page 167:

This gives us a theoretical terrain on the basis of which the notion of <I>radical and plural democrcacy<i> -- which will be central to our argument from this point on -- finds the first conditions under which it can be apprehended. Only if it is accepted that the subject positions cannot be led back to a positive and unitary founding principle -- only then can pluralism be considered radical. Pluralism is <i> radical only to the extent that each term of this plurality of identities finds within itself the principle of its own validity, without this having to be sought in a transcendent or underlying positive ground for the hierarchy of meaning of them all and the source and guarantee of their legitimacy. And this radical pluralism is <i> democratic to the extent that the autoconstitutivity of each one of its terms is the result of displacements of the egalitarian imaginary.

The catch, in case you haven't caught on, is that what you have to pay to play is to say it just their way. Whatever the other merits of the 'project,' (and they may be very real,) if you cannot recite this catechism about the 'subject' more or less verbatim, (preferably verbatim,) you are obviously not radical enough to be worthy of democracy.

In other words, a shibboleth, in other words, an ideological poll tax. In other words, theoretical Marxists fully retain their totalitarian commitment to doing for the masses any heavy mental lifting that might be required.