Laclau and Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary

Radical democratic pluralist moments
Laclau and Mouffe acknowledge that much of their thinking about the value of
autonomy is derived from Gramsci. Gramsci argued that because power had been
dispersed across many different institutions and social sites in modern Western
societies, counter-hegemonic forces should not concentrate their attack in a single
front against a single seat of power, but should engage in a wide variety of struggles
(Laclau and Mouffe 1985:178). In this sense, the autonomy principle has a
pragmatic aspect. A “top-down” leadership that imposes disciplinary normalization
upon a variety of progressive struggles according to its own abstract program would
not benefit from the contextually-specific wisdom that the locally-situated groups
have developed. (I am using the concept of a “local struggle” here and elsewhere
not to refer to geographic limitations of a given movement, but to emphasize its
particular focus on a contextually-specific antagonism. A transnational women’s
organization for peace in Bosnia would be a “local struggle” in this sense.)
Negotiation between the leaders and the led would ensure that this wisdom would
be put to work. Further, the preservation of plurality and autonomy among the
elements within the counter-hegemonic bloc would create the space for the sort
of innovation in tactics and organizational structures—a kind of decentralization
and “flexible specialization”—that every movement needs in order to respond
effectively to the specificity of hybrid antagonisms.
Support for Laclau and Mouffe’s position can also be found in classic liberal
texts. Mill, for example, contends that democracy ought to preserve the space for
individual liberty against the tyranny of the majority (Mill 1972:68). Contemporary
democratic socialist theorists, such as Cunningham, similarly insist that a truly
democratic society would both foster communal forms of solidarity across
differences and protect “the autonomy of people to pursue a variety of goals”
(Cunningham 1987:194).
Laclau and Mouffe’s promotion of autonomy also brings to mind the radical
critiques of assimilation and co-optation that can be found in the works of Fanon
(1968, 1986), Baldwin (1985), Malcolm X (1965) and the later Martin Luther
King, Jr (1968, 1991). These writers argue that when well-intentioned “liberal
supporters” only offer their support for anti-colonial or anti-racist groups insofar
as the latter conform to white Western values and traditional political standards,
their actions can be just as reactionary as that of the colonial powers and the
segregationists. Laclau and Mouffe’s autonomy argument is especially reminiscent
of Baker’s work with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
Under Baker’s direction, SNCC developed a system of decentralized grass-roots

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empowerment rather than a charismatic leadership. Since the mid-1960s, SNCC’s
philosophy has been influential for many strands of the civil rights, student,
feminist, environmentalist, lesbian and gay, anti-AIDS and anti-breast cancer
movements, thereby circulating Baker’s radical ideas to more and more activist
communities (Payne 1989).
It should be noted, however, that Laclau and Mouffe intend their work to be
read not only as a theoretical argument, but also as an accurate description and
diagnosis of contemporary leftist politics. Many of their remarks about leftist
political practice are highly critical, especially with respect to the autonomy
principle. Referring to the new social movements, for example, they state that
“The Left, of course, is ill prepared to take into account these struggles, which
even today it tends to dismiss as ‘liberal’” (1985:164). They refer to the “traditional
dogmatism” of the Left that has led to the dismissal of liberal democratic struggles
as superstructural epiphenomena (1985:174). They conclude that if the Left “wishes
to succeed in founding a political practice fully located in the field of the democratic
revolution and conscious of the depth and variety of hegemonic articulations
which the present conjuncture requires,” then it will have to undergo a radical
transformation in its political imaginary, namely a complete shift away from
foundationalist thought (1985:177).
Although this description and diagnosis may be appropriate for the socialist
thinkers whose work is examined in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, some critics
would disagree with their analysis of contemporary leftist activism in Britain. (I
am focusing here on the British Left, for the latter was one of the most important
political points of reference for Laclau and Mouffe during the early 1980s, when
they were writing Hegemony and Socialist Strategy.) Segal, for example, cites the
new political struggles of the 1970s as important departures from the closures that
characterized the traditional Left. Further, she asserts that many of these movements
nevertheless saw themselves as elements united in a broadly defined socialist
struggle (Segal 1989; 1991).
The historical record of the contemporary British Left is ambiguous on these
points. On the one hand, Segal’s interpretation usefully directs our attention
towards a whole range of significant leftist projects that flourished in the 1970s.
This period saw the continuing activism of the peace movement, shop stewards
and local union action committees, and black community groups, as well as the
emergence of militant tenants’ and squatters’ groups; welfare rights groups;
ecological struggles; mental patients’ groups; feminist groups; gay liberationists;
artists’ projects; anti-apartheid and Third World solidarity groups; student activists
and anti-racist/anti-fascist coalitions.
18
Leftist intellectuals also participated in the
enormous expansion of progressive cultural projects involving theater productions,
alternative newspapers, specialist journals and film and television productions
(Barnett 1986).
Many of these projects formed alliances with the traditional Left—the trade
union movement and the Labour Party—while developing a non-class-reductionist
approach and maintaining their autonomy.
19
Some of these alliances between

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popular movements and the traditional Left became especially effective at the
local government level and the Greater London Council in the 1980s, giving rise
to municipal socialist experiments with innovative policies that often democratized
social service delivery. Where these reforms were successful, municipal socialism
earned a great deal of popular support. With its new principles for political action—
recognition of autonomous groups, operation at multiple sites of oppression, and
rejection of vanguardism—the independent Left did in fact make some progress
towards the realization of radical democratic pluralist ideals (Massey et al. 1984;
Segal 1991; Osborne 1991; Weir and Wilson 1984; Gilroy 1987).
The lively and often irreverent pages of the feminist magazine, Red Rag (1973),
document the birth of a new wave of anti-reductionist socialist feminist thought
and activism that took place during the 1970s. The journal’s writers called for the
expansion of feminist and socialist solidarity through strike support for women
workers; the organization of women workers such as night cleaners and nursery
school staff; collective bargaining tactics that aim to lift working women out of
poverty and to establish maternity rights and affirmative action programs; and
trade union support for childcare, abortion rights, and campaigns against domestic
violence. These feminists certainly did not envision solidarity as the absorption of
their struggle into the traditional Left. Red Rag’s contributors preserved a critical
distance as they took the traditional Left to task for its masculinism and anti-
feminism. New advances in feminist theory were also made; Rowbotham’s writing,
for example, juxtaposed socialist and feminist values with a critique of economism,
class reductionism, and vanguardism. Her work remains exemplary for its emphasis
on historical specificity and the irreducibly multiple character of social forces
(1981).
This same period saw the launch of Gay Left: A Gay Socialist Journal. The
journal’s gay male editorial collective aimed to advance the Marxist analysis of
homosexual oppression and to promote an understanding in the gay male
community of the links between sexual liberation and socialism. Where feminists
were affirming that the “personal is political,” radical lesbians and gay men were
also embracing the slogan, “Out of the closets and into the streets.” The Gay Left
collective, however, believed that gay politics had to extend far beyond counter-
cultural resistance and personal affirmation to address institutionalized forms of
inequality. Unlike the feminists and gay women who participated in the sexual
liberation movement, leftist gay men were directly confronted with the
contradictions of the gay male subculture. In their more anarchistic moments, gay
male sexual liberationists had “dropped out”: that is, they had turned away from
an engagement with mainstream institutions to found their own alternative
communes and to experiment with non-monogamy, cross-dressing and soft drugs.
Meanwhile, the expanding commercial gay male scene (pubs, bars, clubs, large
discos, saunas and bath-houses) and the gay male popular press were creating a
vital space for the consolidation of a vibrant and increasingly autonomous
community, but those same enterprises largely preserved capitalist values and posed
little challenge to sexism both inside and outside the community.

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Following the lead of socialist theorists such as Engels and Kollantai, the earlier
Gay Liberation Front (1970–73), and contemporary socialist feminists, the Gay
Left collective emphasized a Marxist analysis of the patriarchal family’s role in the
economic and ideological reproduction of capitalist relations. Journal articles also
constructed analogies between the treatment of gay, women and black workers.
Strategically, the journal attacked the assimilationist politics of the Campaign for
Homosexual Equality. It also criticized the labor movement for its anti-democratic
tendencies, its reformist orientation and its failure to embrace women’s and gay
issues. Collective members called for the radicalization of gay politics and the
formation of gay caucuses in trade unions and shopfloor movements. The journal
documented the formation of lesbian and gay workers’ groups among teachers,
social workers, journalists, printworkers and others, and the participation of lesbians
and gay men in strike pickets and anti-fascist rallies (Gay left 1975–80; Weeks
1977:185–237).
One of the more innovative leftist political projects that attempted to combine
the goals of unity and autonomy was Big Flame, a revolutionary socialist party
founded in the late 1970s. It aimed to work with existing progressive struggles and
to create mass organizations among the working class without reproducing the
dogmatism and authoritarianism of the sectarian Left. Big Flame specifically pledged
to preserve the independence of its allies within the women’s movement, black
organizations, gay groups, youth groups, and the trade union rank and file, and to
learn from their struggles. One of their pamphlets states, “Only the oppressed
groups themselves can adequately analyze and understand their own oppression.
For this reason, we accept both the organizational and the political autonomy of
oppressed groups” (1981b). Its approach stood in sharp contrast to that of the
sectarian Left, for the latter used every available opportunity to take over progressive
groups and to redefine the groups’ agendas according to their particular programs.
Big Flame developed a detailed critique of the co-optation of the trade union
leadership and concrete proposals for trade union democratization. While other
socialist organizations merely aimed to replace trade union leaders with their own
leaders, Big Flame emphasized the importance of direct education and the
empowerment of the rank and file membership. Because it recognized that racism
and sexism could not be defeated solely through workplace-based struggles, Big
Flame called for the creation of linkages between the trade union rank and file
and progressive social struggles. Its attention to gender and race was so well
sustained throughout its socialist analysis of Callaghan’s and Thatcher’s assault
on the working class that its program integrated commentary on issues as diverse
as childcare, domestic violence, maternity rights, race- and gender-based job
segregation, immigration controls, fascism and homophobia into its positions on
unemployment and de-industrialization (1981a; 1979).
Perhaps the difference between Segal and Laclau and Mouffe is one of emphasis.
If we look at the remarkable achievements of these important political projects,
they certainly do stand out as important experiments in radical democratic pluralist
practice. On the other hand, however, the alliances between the grassroots

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independent Left and the traditional Left were never successfully transformed
into articulations. Although significant democratizing gains were made at the
local government level, in grassroots Labour Party activism, and in the structures
of the progressive trade unions, the mainstream Labour Party kept its patriarchal,
paternalistic, bureaucratic, monocultural and anti-grassroots tradition largely intact.
Much of the traditional Left, in other words, never fully renegotiated its identity
in the light of the independent Left’s demands (Massey et al. 1984; Weir and
Wilson 1984). Segal further notes that when orthodox Marxist members of the
Communist Party and conservative members of the Labour Party did champion
the movements of women and racial minorities during the later 1980s, they did so
only to bolster their attack on their enemies within the labor movement and the
militant Left (1989:26–7).
Laclau and Mouffe are therefore at least partially correct in their assessment;
the leftist leadership did ultimately remain stubbornly opposed to the new
movements’ innovative political approaches. Segal’s critique nevertheless reminds
us that the failure of the independent Left to transform socialist politics in Britain
was due not only to the theoretical orientation of the traditional Left, but also to
factors that lay beyond the control of both the emerging movements and the
entrenched leftist leadership. Economic recession, combined with the Conservative
government’s abolition of the Greater London Council, its overall assault on local
government autonomy, and its victories against organized labor also contributed
to the decline of the independent leftist movements in the 1980s.