Laclau and Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary

Gramsci versus Lenin: philosophy and common sense
Gramsci’s response to the fragmentation of the working class and the rise of trade
union reformism differed sharply from that of Lenin. Inspired by the example of
the Turin workers’ council movement of 1918–20, Gramsci favored the type of
unification for working-class organizations that empowered the grassroots and
preserved each group’s specific character and autonomy (Wright 1986:87). He
argued that a counter-hegemonic leadership should be constructed out of “organic”
popular traditions and value systems that are specific to a given historical formation,
rather than imposed from above in the form of abstract scientific theory. The
targets of counter-hegemonic struggle should include not only the state apparatus
and the economic structures, but socio-cultural institutions as well, for cultural
struggle is integral to socialism (Bobbio 1979:39).
For Gramsci, democracy is not merely a mechanism, but a “force to be released”
through the mobilization of “the people” (Wright 1986:74). The task of organic
socialist activism is to achieve this mobilization by harnessing the most promising
fragments of popular traditions. Radical democratic hegemony aims to construct
a new collective will that is capable of institutionalizing its alternative conception
of the world in the form of new state apparatuses, economic relations, social
structures and cultural practices (Bobbio 1979:39, 40).
Gramsci argued that counter-hegemonic leadership should be democratic in
both its aim and its actual practice. Kautsky accepted a “stagist” Marxism in which
democratic demands were regarded as inherently bourgeois. For Mouffe, Gramsci’s
position is closer to that of the “young Marx” for whom democracy is a “terrain of
permanent revolution begun by the bourgeoisie [and] concluded by the proletariat”
(1979b:174). Gramsci insisted on the “unfixed” political meaning of democratic
demands: the socialist struggle had to take democratic demands back from the
bourgeoisie, radicalize them, and fuse them into the socialist project.
In Laclau and Mouffe’s post-structuralist terms, Gramsci treats each ideological
element or political demand like a “floating signifier” (1985:113). A demand for
civil liberties, for example, does not have an intrinsic meaning outside of a concrete
historical situation. It could be shaped in a pro-capitalist (“free speech for corporate
lobbyists”) or an anti-capitalist (“freedom of assembly for striking workers”) manner;
its actual value will depend on its precise definition in a specific historical context.
Even where a given political demand has been so thoroughly claimed by one
political group such that that group’s definition of the demand appears to be the
only possible definition, alternative definitions are always logically possible. If the
hegemonic bloc has to some extent incorporated the democratic demands of
popular sectors into its collective will, the counter-hegemonic intellectuals must
enter into a direct ideological struggle to represent themselves as the only leaders
that can respond to these demands (Mouffe 1979b: 197). Political struggle therefore
entails not only the incorporation of a wide range of demands into a new historical
bloc, but also the deployment of strategic attacks against the dominant bloc’s
discourse. The principle of unity that holds the dominant bloc together must be

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attacked, such that the defining grip of the dominant bloc over its constitutive
elements—movements, campaigns, values and symbols—can be loosened. As these
elements become more open to redefinition, they can be re-articulated with the
counter-hegemonic struggle.
In a Gramscian sense, the actual probability of the successful institutionalization
of an alternative definition depends on the configuration of power relations in a
given historical context. The prevailing meaning of the demand for racial equality,
for example, is not derived from anything intrinsic to the concept itself. It reflects,
first, the contemporary balance of power between the political forces in question—
such as the conservatives who strive to normalize an anti-affirmative action
“equality of opportunity” definition versus the radicals who support a conception
of substantial equality; second, the prevailing meanings of contiguous and analogous
terms—gender equality, class equality, the equality of citizens, and so on; third,
the trace-effects of meanings that have prevailed in the past; and, in some cases,
the extent to which the term in question has been overtly or covertly articulated
with popular demonizations. Clearly we are at a great distance from scientific
Marxism, for whom the success of a strategy is supposed to depend on its
correspondence with “correct” theory.
Gramsci rejects Lenin’s conception of a distinction between “scientific” theory
and the everyday discourse of workers at the grassroots level. For Gramsci, a
historical formation has an overarching epistemological effect—like the horizon
in phenomenology or Foucault’s “episteme” (1970)—such that every discourse
within that formation shares the same basic “conception of the world” (Mouffe
1979a:8). An apparently abstract philosophy will have much in common with an
everyday discourse if both are located within the same formation. Philosophy,
then, should not be treated as an absolutely separate level of thought that obtains
a superior rationality to that which is found in everyday discourse. Given his
Hegelian influences, Gramsci insists that philosophical discourse cannot exist
outside a historical context (Gramsci 1971:326; Hegel 1957). “The philosophy of
an historical epoch is, therefore, nothing other than the ‘history’ of that epoch
itself” (Gramsci 1971:345). Every world view is a “response to certain problems
posed by reality, which are quite specific and ‘original’ in their immediate relevance”
(1971:324). Even when a philosophical discourse pretends to exist apart from
history, it actually draws the set of problems that it addresses from its specific
historical conditions.
Gramsci claimed that “all men are philosophers” (1971:323) in the sense that
everyone participates in the formation of a more or less coherent worldview that
in turn shapes practical activity (1971:344). Gramsci explicitly criticized, for
example, Croce’s argument that religious faith was appropriate for the masses
since only an elite group of superior intellectuals could develop a truly rational
conception of the world (1971:132). Gramsci did admit that popular religious
mobilizations tended to leave the masses immersed in a “primitive” form of common
sense discourse. He envisioned, however, socialist mobilizations that would educate
the masses and raise them to a “higher conception of life” (1971:332–3). The

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intellectuals should even strive to produce a new intellectual cadre by training
individuals who were themselves part of the masses (1971:340). This pedagogical
relation, however, should flow in both directions, for the intellectuals must learn
valuable lessons about the specificity of historical conditions from the masses’
local traditions. If the intellectuals’ philosophy can teach the masses to achieve a
higher form of rationality in their worldview, the masses’ everyday discourse can
make the intellectuals’ philosophy historically relevant (1971:350, 352). Gramsci
was able to insist on the reciprocal pedagogical exchange between the intellectuals
and the masses precisely because he grasped the rational character of the masses’
everyday discourse.
No individual participates in a common-sense discourse that is so narrowly
solipsistic, particularistic and ahistorical that it cannot become the basis for dialogue
across differences. Through the development of her worldview, every individual
expresses her identity as a social being. “In acquiring one’s conception of the
world one always belongs to a particular grouping which is that of all the social
elements which share the same mode of thinking and acting” (Gramsci 1971:324).
Although Gramsci is sharply critical of what he calls “irrational superstitions” and
narrowly-defined “provincial” perspectives, he maintains that common-sense
discourse has a “healthy nucleus” or “good sense” (1971:328).
Gramsci’s expansion of the concept of rationality laid the groundwork for a
theory of political practice that is based on a fundamental respect for commonsense
discourse. Intellectuals and activist leaders should look for the wisdom that has
been accumulated through traditions of local resistance against domination in
even the most eccentric everyday discourses. If a folklore tale, for example, is
understandable for at least one other person in one other place and time in the
sense that she knows “what to do with it”—if, for example, she knows how to read
the tale’s constellation of animals and spirits as an analogy for social structures
and historical phenomena—then that tale is a coherent philosophical discourse.
African-American resistance, for example, has often drawn on folklore tales as a
political resource in this manner (Hurston 1978).
The recuperation of local wisdom for radical democratic pluralism is not,
however, a straightforward operation. There is nothing inherently progressive in
a popular tradition simply because it is popular; to paraphrase a famous marketing
slogan, the fact that “billions have been served” is not in itself a sufficient political
guarantee. Indeed, many popular traditions are profoundly anti-egalitarian and
anti-democratic. One of the principles that radical democratic pluralism borrows
from liberal democracy is the concept that democratic minorities must be protected
against the tyranny of anti-democratic majorities. At the very least, however, a
dialogical engagement with popular traditions will force an intellectual leadership
to reassess its theoretical framework with respect to the specificity and hybridity
of the structures of oppression and exploitation that prevail in a given historical
formation.
Gramsci was not purely “spontaneist,” for he did not accept the validity of the
people’s everyday discourse simply because it was popular. He held that the

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intellectuals had to subject the masses’ common sense to a democratic and socialist
critique, to bridge the particularities between disparate groups, and to raise the
masses’ worldview to a higher, more universal form of rationality (1971:198–9).
While the intellectuals test the discourse of the masses, the intellectuals are tested
in turn by the masses and by the historical situation (1971:346). The best theory
is not just popular; it must resonate with the masses and provide them with
compelling solutions to their everyday problems, but it must also move them to
engage in democratic and socialist struggles (1971:326, 341). The new worldview
that the intellectuals construct through their negotiations with the masses acts as
the ideological “cement” (1971:328) that unifies the dispersed democratic
fragments into a single collective will or historical bloc (Hall et al. 1977:51).
Intellectuals should not see themselves as the privileged agent that discovers
the truth outside popular struggles and then carries it to the people. They should
instead see themselves as strategists who “organize consent” (1971:125–35, 259)
by raising to a more coherent level the fragments of good sense that are already
implicit in local everyday discourse. Where theory does not fit the actual material
conditions, it is theory that should give way: “it is not reality which should be
expected to conform to the abstract schema” (1971:200). In a particularly
suggestive metaphor, Gramsci states that the intellectuals’ relation to the masses
is analogous to the “whalebone in the corset” (1971:340). Here the masses are
compared to passionate feminine bodily excess, the surplus voluptuous flesh that
fills out the potential of otherwise abstract forms, but ultimately needs the addition
of a cyborg apparatus—the Party—to achieve a practical shape. It is true that
Gramsci often positions the “masses” as an unruly otherness that is so dependent
upon the intellectual elite for discipline and rational thought that if it were left to
its own devices, it would remain trapped in spontaneist, “primitive,” fragmentary
and above all particularist discourse (1971:152–3, 155, 328). When measured
against Leninism, Gramsci’s respect for the historical rationality of common’ sense
discourse nevertheless comes to the fore. I will return to the problem of Gramsci’s
residual elitism and to the theme of universalism and particularism in the
Conclusion.