The Return of the Political (Radical Thinkers) Paperback – January 17, 2006

Mouffe eloquently discusses the tension, especially on the Left, between consensus and conflict social theories. There is no better voice for espousing with gusto a never-ending, principled contestation between rivals for hegemony in political life.

This book is a collection of nine essays published by Mouffe between 1988 and 1992. The aim of Mouffe's work seems to be establishing a plan for deepening the modern democratic state. The overarching sentiment that informs these essays is that modern pluralistic democracy is something which not only deserves saving (and expanding), but urgently needs saving (a previous reviewer was spot-on in contrasting Mouffe's stance with Fukuyama's optimism regarding democracy as the "end of history"). While she builds a strong foundation for her theses by drawing on quotes from authors as varied as Carl Schmitt and Carole Pateman, I found her reasoning to be in dire need of further elaboration.

Mouffe makes her position clearly enough. Central to these essays is the role of antagonism as ineradicable and constitutive to politics. She expresses alarm (rightly so, I think) at the low levels of political participation in modern Western democracies, attributing this to the lack of an effective political outlet for conflicts. She goes on to assert that in order to deepen democracy, antagonisms (of race, class, gender, religion, etc.) must be embraced as central to the political process. But after asserting this claim and backing it up extremely well, she fails to provide any sort of a blueprint for how this is to be achieved.

Mouffe takes as the foundation for her critique the articulation between John Rawls's work (primarily in his Theory of Justice) and his 'communitarian' critics. Rawls's brand of deontological liberalism, asserts Mouffe, is flawed due to its ahistorical and asocial conception of the individual as existing before and outside society. Mouffe counters by arguing that the individual cannot exist in such a vacuum and can only emerge through his/her interplay within a larger social fabric. Rawls's communitarian critics, however, argue for a politics of the common good, rather than a politics of individual rights. Mouffe dismisses this angle as dangerously premodern, leaving her own opinion somewhere in the middle. However, after expertly elucidating the current intellectual context for her work, she stops short of advancing a real solution. For example, she stresses the importance of disentangling political liberalism (with its emphasis on individual liberties) from economic liberalism (with its championing of private industry), but never explains how this is to be done.

There are some shining theoretical gems here, though. In one essay, "Feminism, Citizenship, and Radical Democratic Politics," Mouffe advances some particularly astute points. She writes throughout her work about the public/private division that has long informed politics and morality (for example, the modern democratic state has effectively made religion into a private concern, not one to be addressed in the public sphere). In this essay, she expertly ties this public/private dichotomy into the division which informs gender roles - man as public agent, woman as private (read: domestic) agent. She also expertly critiques the position of feminists like Sara Ruddick and Jean Bethke Elshtain, who argue for a "maternal politics" of sorts, hoping to give women political clout by virtue of their ability to mother children, paralleling perhaps the clout reserved for men who are able to fight and die for their country. This approach is an essentialist one (because it champions woman qua woman), Mouffe argues, and therefore does not recognize the variety of subject positions that make up each individual. Worse still, it draws on gender roles established by the very patriarchal structure that it tries to undermine.

While these essays are impeccably researched and supported, the problem is that Mouffe simply fails to provide even the slightest germ of a plan for implementing her ideas. Perhaps this is the downfall of pure theoretical work, but I guess I expect a book about modern politics to contain a plan for improving those politics. Worth a read though, especially if you are a fan of Norberto Bobbio or Ernesto Laclau, or are just a leftist political theory junkie (like myself).

Great

This is a tightly argued little book about politics, philosophy and the life of societies -- the unadorned variety of each. It is a broad critique of democratic pluralism (or liberal democracy, take your pick) -- one that sits somewhere comfortably near the opposite end of the pole of the optimism of Francis Fukuyama, in his "ode to democracy," called the "End of History."

This author and the contributors to this volume, come to no such facile, arrogant, (or in this reviewer's view, erroneous) conclusion that because it is the best available to date (i.e., the last standing), democracy is somehow the end of history. Although this book only implies it, Fukuyama's thesis is built up on the shaky ground that because democracy is rational, universal, and individualistic it is also free, and of course this usually implies, that it is also free of conflict.

In fact, using as her backdrop, the breakout of the ethnic and nationalistic strife that has occurred since the fall of Communism, Ms. Mouffe and her contributors, make the opposite argument, that not only are these things in the main untrue (or even irrelevant when they are true) about democracy, but also that the politics of conflict should be returned to the very center of both pluralism and democracy. These authors argue quite persuasively that it is a" return of the political" that is needed rather than a further reliance on rationality, universalism and (especially) individualism -- all of which are designed primarily, at best to manage; or at worse, to stifle conflict, rather than to promote its more constructive forms and elements. When democracy fails, conflict just assumes other guises and then is much more difficult to deal with. The illusion of consensus is more fatal to democracy than a direct challenge from a competing ideology.

The collectively cogent arguments of these authors rest on the fact that in the end, everything is about identity. For not only is identity destiny, it is also existential and thus is seen as our primary reason for existing. One of the "take away messages" from the articles in the book is that "democratic pluralism," (or "liberal democracy") is but a euphemism for "European identity. " All identity then must thus be conceived of and seen for what it is: a dimension that is inherent to the human condition.

Once this central point is understood, then it follows that conflict is also inherent in the affirmation of competing identities, especially collective identities. For the differences between "we" and "them," the very basis upon which identities are built, are interpreted in their negation of us by the proverbial "other," as a threat to our very existence. The misguided thesis by today's erstwhile "democrats:" that the world is orderly primarily because of Fukuyama's thesis that it is rational, universal and individualistic, and that democracy will hold under all conditions, in the end leaves little or no maneuver room for the "mother's milk" of politics: conflict.

Contemporary democratic approaches are designed mostly as a conflict palliative, that is to ameliorate conflict: a management tool as much as a conflict avoidance mechanism. And this avoidance through false consensuses belies both ancient and recent history of democracies as well as democratic institutions. And thus through avoidance, democracies get exactly backwards the most important lessons about man's existence on earth. For if identity is destiny and if identity also relies on differences, then it is just a short inferential leap to conclude that wherever there are identities there also inevitably will be differences. And whenever there are differences, you can be sure that political conflict will soon follow. This is not to imply that "democrats" like "Fascists," over the past century have not tried mightily to drive political conflict out of existence (especially that based on identity politics), rather than embrace the central and "constitutive" role of conflict, including in identity politics. What it seems that Europeans desire is continued hegemony of, and superior claims to, "their" own identity, to the exclusion of all others. This is an inherently unstable position and cannot stand even in a democracy. The absence of a political horizon, or suitable political competition, far from being a sign of political maturity, is the symptom of a void that can endanger democracy, because that void provides a terrain that can be occupied by one of the extremes, each preaching anti-politics and with it anti-democracy.

But even more to the authors point, to think that the viability and stability of freedom can rest on "outlawing" all identity conflict for eternity, when conflict can come in so many disguises, is a fool's paradise that can end in the exact same cul de sac of tyranny -- no matter from which end of the political spectrum it originates. Fascists try to eliminate conflict by "outlawing" it and "thought" altogether; democrats on the other hand, do so by creating "uber-or collective identities:" Or, alternatively, (and paradoxically) by endlessly partitioning of identities into so-called "equal" but Balkanized ethnicities. Thus from the democratic side we get either the tyranny of racism, or the tyranny of anarchy; and from the Fascist side we get the tyranny of totalitarianism.

From either direction, we get tyranny - but always in the same name of democracy.

What is missing from the equation of contemporary democracy, and what these authors have emphasized, is recognizing that conflict is "constitutive" and thus is indispensable to all healthy functioning, viable, stable and sustainable political systems. By this way of thinking, if we are to call ourselves true democrat (as oppose to "true European ethnics"), we must make a distinction between adversaries and enemies. Adversaries have a right to exist and thus to defend their identities by engaging in the political process the same as Europeans do, even if they happen to threaten European identity; while on the other hand, enemies do not. Enemies seek to end not just European identity but also European existence and its way of life.

Fifty Stars