Laclau and Mouffe

our master Lau and Chantal move wrote their book hegemony and socialist strategy in 1985 this is a time when class compromised after World War two had resulted in the construction of welfare states in Western democracies living conditions for many people had vastly improved and following the counterculture hippie movement of the 1960's numerous so-called new social movements had arisen addressing issues of inequality in realm's other than class such as the civil rights feminist and environmental movements the early 1980s marks the moment when this unprecedented economic growth and expansion of welfare states in Western democracies begins to slow down in right wing neoliberal politics begins to regain instruct so in this historical context LeClair move set out to evaluate where Marxism went wrong and what the left can do to remobilize their work is one of the first imposed Marxist political theory and it's significant for two reasons first it critically re-examines marxist theory and it points out a number of foundational flaws in marxist reasoning secondly it develops positive alternatives for the left and other social movements to remobilize and generate change so writing over a hundred years after marx Leclaire move ask why Marxism has failed to achieve its goals and proposed a way ahead for the left's Marxism predicted that capitalism would over time inevitably result in a working-class revolution yet a hundred years after Marx this did not occur in most capitalist countries why the cloud moves build on graham cheese theory of cultural hegemony to explain how elites can maintain power not only through coercion or economic force but also through ideology when the values and norms propagated by elites become accepted by citizens as common sense ideology provides legitimacy for those in power and so it helps to maintain the status quo LeClair move expand on Graham she's theorizing to suggest ways in which the Left can construct and propagate their own hegemonic discourse in order to achieve social change their work has been and still is very influential in post Marxist and post-colonial theory and in research on social movements hegemony and radical democracy provides three core see erratic allure conceptual contributions to the study of politics and international relations the first is that social change is not deterministic the second is that social change can involve a plurality of actors and the third is that social change requires a discourse that enables activists to frame power inequality as oppression so to start with the first social change is not deterministic contrary to Marxism Locke Lao and move argue that social change or revolution is not inevitable it does not necessarily happen at privileged points in time and it does not necessarily go in the right direction so whereas Marx presented as an inevitable historical outcome of capitalism its demise in the form of popular revolution that Lau and moves posit that there's nothing inevitable in struggles against power as they say 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 the different modulations they may adopt so that the outcomes of power struggles are indeterminate therefore means we need to explain when why and how social change is successful and when why and how it is not so for example we need to understand why feminist civil rights and environmental movements are successful at some points in time but not in others and we also need to understand reversals of social change and non change the second is that social change can involve a plurality of social actors so again contrary to Marxism Locke law and move argue that there is not a single privileged actor such as the working class that will bring that will bring about social change they argue that with increasing social complexity and antagonism based purely on class will not be sufficient to mobilize enough citizens to generate so to change and hence they propose a more pluralist approach to politics which brings me to their third contribution which is that social change requires a discourse that enables activists to frame power inequality as oppression this really is like law in moves core contribution and it consists of two steps the first step is that Leclaire move argued at creating antagonism helps to achieve social change because it helps to mobilize people but increasing social complexity during and after the Industrial Revolution means that it is the construction of such an antagonism that becomes the crucial problem of politics because there is now such diversity of social groups they can no longer be easily divided in two opposing camps such as the bourgeoisie and the proletariat and hence the challenge for those seeking to achieve social change becomes to find a story that constructs a new antagonism that is capable of mobilizing multiple social groups under one umbrella secondly Locke Lau and move argue that in order for such a story to have the capacity to actually mobilize people it needs to also construct the antagonism as constituting an inequality of power subordination as they call it and as constituting an unjust inequality of power which is then oppression so in order to argue for the antagonism to be unjust so as to frame subordination as oppression the story needs to connect to a broader already existing hegemony discourse for example inequality of power between men and women has for the most part of history not been considered unjust it is only when the idea emerges that all humans are equal that a struggle for gender equality and for that matter struggles for a race age sexual etcetera equality becomes possible so you need the larger story in order to frame your own story as a struggle this is where what MacLeod move called the democratic revolution reveals its importance in order to be mobilized in this way the Democratic principle of Liberty and equality first pose itself as the new matrix of the social imaginary and when it did it unleashed a dazzling variety of new claims to equality by a multitude of social groups ranging from the civil rights movement to feminism to more recently occupy and the indignados therefore the central problem that LeClair will move analyzed in this last chapter of their book is to identify the discursive conditions for the emergence of a collective action directed towards struggling against inequalities and challenging relations of subordination and to identify the conditions in which a relation of subordination becomes a relation of oppression and thereby constitutes itself into the side of an antagonism so hegemony and radical democracy provide at least four hypotheses about the conditions under which social movements can be successful in achieving political change the first one is the power of hegemonic discourse LeClair move suggests that social movements that are successful in constructing an antagonism that highlights power inequality between social groups subsequently link it to a pre-existing and accepted discourse that argues why this power inequality is unjust and used that to mobilize support for social change are more likely to successfully achieve social change the second hypothesis is the need to be agile LeClair moves describe how the Democratic imaginary of equality shifted from socioeconomic classes to new areas of power inequality with the new social movements of the 1960's in the 1970s this is really a beautiful illustration that democracy is a moving target as social reality changes new power inequalities emerge and new activist movements will seek to achieve social change to address these inequalities therefore social movements that are agile and that are able to adapt to changing social realities are more likely to be successful the third hypothesis is the need to collaborate or to work with social diversity Locke law and most main critique visa the left is its excessive focus on socio-economic class as a strategy to mobilize citizens for social change which they argue is doomed to fail their argument that the plurality of the social is a basic fact in modern industrial societies implies that social movements that narrowly focus on a single target social group are much less likely to be successful in achieving social change then social movements that manage to bring together multiple diverse social groups construct a common story that unites these groups and sets goals for them to achieve collectively that does justice to their internal diversity finally the fourth hypothesis is to provide viable alternatives Leclaire moves also note if the demands of a subordinated group are presented purely as negative demands subversive of a certain order without being linked to any viable project for the reconstruction of specific areas of society their capacity to act hegemonic Lee will be excluded from the outset this implies very simply that social movements that are able to sketch a concrete imaginary of what an alternative society looks like are likely to be more successful in achieving social change apart from the ideas that we discussed before there are two ideas in the text that are interesting to consider when thinking about questions of power order and justice or at least that speak very much speak to me the first is that the center of democracy is empty this idea constitutes the core of radical democracy the idea is that if one takes seriously as a core principle of democracy that everyone is equal it also means that no one has a privilege claimed truth in other words the left does not have a privileged position or a right to claim that their discursive construction of social reality is more true than alternative discourses in other words the center of democracy is empty or as Lachlan would say the site of power becomes an empty space now Leclaire and move acknowledge the uneasiness this radical indeterminacy of democracy can create but they emphasize that recognizing plurality and equality in floor allottee is essential for democracy to function so they say for the defence of the interests of the workers not to be made at the expense of the rights of women immigrants or consumers it is necessary to establish an equivalence between these different struggles it is only on this condition that struggles against power become truly democratic and that the demanding of rights is not carried out on the basis of an individualistic problematic but in the context of respect for the rights to equality of others subordinated groups the second idea that speaks to me in radical democracy is who decides what is just an unjust or a legitimate and illegitimate inequality of power LeClair moves distinguished relationships of unequal power in which both participants don't question the power imbalance which is what they call subjugation from relationships on unequal power where participants question these relationships which is what they call oppression from a third distinction relationships of unequal power where external actors to the relationship question the relationship which they referred to as domination this threefold distinction is very helpful in distinguishing legitimate or just imbalances of power from illegitimate or unjust imbalances of power and in questioning who decides what oppression is so regarding the first the distinction between subjugation and oppression is important there are many areas in life in which we accept unequal power relationships such as your supervisor at work parents and children etc that doesn't mean that we are unequal as human beings but that in that particular social configuration we accept the unequal power relationship as having some degree of justification or legitimacy we also have norms about what is appropriate and inappropriate use of power in these relationships so for example we find it acceptable that parents forbid small children to be out on the street at ninth we don't find it acceptable that parents hit their children likewise we find it acceptable that our supervisor at work assigns us work tasks but we don't find it acceptable that our supervisor tells us who to vote for of course and here is the crucial point these norms change over time and they are different in different cultures again highlighting that what constitutes oppression is not fixed secondly these distinctions also help us question who gets to decide what constitutes just legitimate or unjust illegitimate imbalances of power returning to the example of the employer-employee relationship viewed from the outside external actors may still view this relationship as domination even if the actors involved may be alright with it if a social movement subsequently develops a discourse that frames this relationship as oppression this can lead the actors and supposed to start questioning the relationship and subsequently feel oppressed by it and seek to change it so a large part of the work of the new social movements has been to frame a story in which relationships of subjugation his/hers are perceived as legitimate became questioned so that the people involved also push for change the civil rights movement and feminist movements are a good example of this but it also poses an interesting moral question to what extent does one have the right to convince other people that they are in a relationship of oppression you

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Length: 15min 27sec (927 seconds)

Published: Thu May 17 2018

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