Laclau and Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary

The critique of economism
To return to Laclau and Mouffe’s critique of economism, they insist that the logic

---

T H E S U B V E R S I O N O F E S S E N T I A L I S M
110
of contingency is incompatible with the logic of necessity. A theory such as
Althusser’s that is supposed to combine “relative contingency” with an “ultimate
necessity” simply reproduces the logic of necessity in a new guise.
If the economy is an object which can determine any type of society in
the last instance, this means that, at least with reference to that instance,
we are faced with a simple determination and not overdetermination. If
society has a last instance which determines its laws of motion, then the
relations between the overdetermined instances and the last instance must be
conceived in terms of simple, one-directional determination by the latter.
(Laclau and Mouffe 1985:99, original emphasis)
Laclau and Mouffe conclude that the economic can only determine the rest of the
social if it satisfies three conditions. First, there can be no political subject which
is not defined in terms of its location in the class struggle, and each class must be
constructed exclusively at the level of the economic structure. Classes may appear
to be superficially differentiated due to the effects of political relations, but these
effects must remain secondary and accidental. Second, each class must possess
“objective interests” that follow directly from that class’s structural position in
the relations of production. Third, the economic must be a sphere that is prior to
the political. The political may affect the economic, but only after the economic
has determined the political.
The authors demonstrate that these first two conditions are theoretically
and politically impossible. With the development of contemporary forms of
capitalist accumulation and the proliferation of multiple political antagonisms,
the social will never become polarized into two great, all-encompassing classes.
The condensation of all political interests into class interests will never take
place. As we noted in Chapter 1, Marx and Engels proposed that capitalist
development would cancel out the differences between different workers (Marx
and Engels 1969:109–19,121). Marx himself abandoned the polarization thesis;
he stated in his Theories of Surplus Value that the bifurcation of the social into
two great classes was not going to unfold (Harrington 1993:21). Capitalist
development through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has actually
exacerbated and even invented intra-class differences based on skill, employment
sector, union status, employment status, race, gender, nationality and citizenship
(Laclau and Mouffe 1985:81–2).
Given the complex segmentation, fragmentation and—in some cases—
disintegration of the working class, the assignment of a single set of objective
interests to all workers has become an increasingly abstract exercise. Again, every
social structure is overdetermined, and there is no necessary linkage between an
individual’s structural position in the relations of production and the subject
position through which she lives in and reacts to her structural positioning. Cross-
class solidarities based on nationally-, racially-, ethnically-, gender- and sexually-
constructed subject positions are so common, and make so much sense in light of

---

T H E S U B V E R S I O N O F E S S E N T I A L I S M
111
the complex nature of contemporary politics, that very few contemporary theorists
continue to dismiss them as exceptions and distortions. Laclau and Mouffe state
that “in order to advance in the determination of social antagonisms, it is necessary
to analyze the plurality of diverse and frequently contradictory positions, and to
discard the idea of a perfectly unified and homogeneous agent, such as the ‘working
class’ of classical discourse” (Laclau and Mouffe 1985:84).
The third condition that must be satisfied if the economic is to have a
determining effect on the social involves the primary character of this sphere. In
the originary moment of the formation of the economic, the effects of political
relations must be wholly absent. Citing Hume, Clegg states,
A genuinely causal relation will only hold between things or events which
are entirely discrete or separate from one another in space and time but
which share a contingent or contiguous relationship. Effects must be
distinct from causes: they cannot be at all implicated as the same
phenomenon but must be rigorously separate in actuality, in conceptual
distinction and in logical relation.
(1989:41)
The theory of economic determination therefore cannot be valid unless that which
is determined—the political—is entirely distinct from the determining sphere—
the economic—in its originary moments.
When we study actual historical formations, however, we are confronted with
complex formations in which political and economic relations have always been
inextricable. Laclau quotes Balibar’s argument that the imposition of universal
categories such as “the economic,” “the legal” and “the political” onto historical
research about different modes of production is highly problematic. Abstract
theoretical categories such as “the economic,” “the juridical” or “the political” do
not correspond neatly to the actual spaces that are meaningful for us within social
formations (Laclau 1977:78). A theory of determination must illegitimately
suppress the complexity, specificity and interdependence that obtains in actual
political-economic relations. In Laclau and Mouffe’s terms, economic determinist
theory holds that “[the] laws of motion [of the economic] must be strictly
endogenous and exclude all indeterminacy resulting from political or other external
interventions—otherwise, the constitutive function could not refer exclusively
to the economy” (Laclau and Mouffe 1985:76). The authors contend that any
theory that attempts merely to minimize the relative influence of the economic
on the political cannot avoid the problem of economic reductionism—the
reduction of extra-economic phenomena to mere effects of economic relations.
Paggi, quoting de Felice, asserts that “the starting point of Gramsci’s thought is
the rediscovery of the economic sphere ‘not only as the production of goods, but also
of social relations’” (1979:123). How exactly should this relation of interdependence
between the economic and the “superstructural” social, political and cultural
relations—an interdependence that obtains in the economic’s originary moment—

---

T H E S U B V E R S I O N O F E S S E N T I A L I S M
112
be specified? Even the most reductionist Marxist theory already acknowledges that
the political affects the economic, for political ideologies contribute to the
reproduction and legitimation of economic relations (Mepham 1979).
If we can find a necessary interdependence between the economic and the
political in the very originary moment of economic formation, then it is no longer
possible to describe the relation between these moments as one of determination.
Further, the entire image of a clear boundary between the economic and the
political will have to be rejected as a problematic metaphor. Our attention, then,
should be drawn towards the temporal and spatial aspects of the determination
claim: can economic relations be established in a purely non-political space in the
first instance, and does the interpenetration of the economic and the political
across the boundary that is supposed to divide the two spheres really take place
only after the moment of determination? If so, then the essentialist theory of
economism would be valid. If, on the other hand, political relations are necessarily
intertwined with economic relations in the latter’s origin, then the relation of
determination becomes impossible. In this case, the political would operate like a
Derridean supplement (Derrida 1973:88–104; 1976:141–64; Gasché 1986:205–
12; Staten 1984:111–60); the political would be constitutive of the economic.
At the heart of this problem lies the nature of the “productive forces”: the
means of production and labor power. Again, Marxist theory holds that a class is
supposed to be defined exclusively in terms of its relationship to the means of
production. In a capitalist formation, the capitalist owns the means of production,
while the worker merely owns her own labor power. Although the worker is a
“free” participant in the labor contract, she is obliged to sell her labor power to a
capitalist, according to the capitalist’s exploitative terms, in order to survive. The
economic property relations that establish who owns the means of production
and who does not own capital and is therefore obliged to sell her labor power are
called the relations of production.
From a Marxist perspective, the prevailing form of the relations of production
is never accidental; it “corresponds” to the development of the productive forces.
As Marx writes in his Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy,
In the social production of their life men enter into definite relations
that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of
production which correspond to a definite state of development of their
material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production
constitutes the economic structure, the real basis on which rises a legal
and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of
social consciousness.
(Marx 1969a:503)
For Marx, the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of
production is so central to the development of the social formation as a whole
that it operates as the “motor of history.”

---

T H E S U B V E R S I O N O F E S S E N T I A L I S M
113
At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces
of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production….
From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn
into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the
change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is
more or less rapidly transformed.
(Marx 1969a:503–4)
This passage in Marx’s Preface has been interpreted in many different ways by
Marxist scholars. Harris outlines what he describes as the “most straightforward”
interpretation. Within a given mode of production, such as feudalism or
capitalism, there is a correspondence between the forces of production and the
relations of production, and, in turn, a correspondence between the relations of
production and the legal, socio-political and ideological superstructure. This
correspondence is guaranteed by the primary status of the productive forces.
The development of the productive forces—innovations in the production
process, the utilization of new technologies and energy sources, the education
of the workers, and so on—is supposed to be the absolute origin of change for
the entire social formation. This development of the productive forces is supposed
to be purely non-political in nature; as I will point out below, this is a crucial
aspect of Marx’s argument. “The development of the forces of production leads