Laclau and Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary

Towards a definition of radical democratic pluralism
As I have noted above, political economy themes have not been given a prominent
place in Laclau and Mouffe’s texts. On the basis of their specific remarks and their
theoretical horizon, we can nevertheless construct the radical democratic pluralist
approach to these issues. In a radical democratic society, there would be equal

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access not only to the material resources necessary for self-development, but also
to meaningful participation in social, cultural, political and economic decision-
making. The radical democratization of existing state structures and social
formations would require a profound redistribution of power and a complete
dismantling of the structures that institutionalize inequality, including capitalist
exploitation, sexism, homophobia and racism. Today we are also confronted with
the rise of transnational corporations and the global restructuration of investment,
production and marketing (Barnet and Cavanaugh 1994; Bennis and Moushabeck
1993). This is not to say that there is anything inherently progressive in familiar,
“local” or small-scale institutions, but that radical democratization would ultimately
require economic transformations and progressive forms of political solidarity on
a transnational level.
Radical democratic theory must retrieve the most progressive aspects of the
liberal democratic and socialist traditions while moving beyond their limitations.
In addition to liberal democracy’s basic values of freedom and equality, radical
democracy must retrieve from this tradition the concepts of civil liberties and
individual self-determination and self-development. For all of Marx’s own attempts
to achieve a Hegelian reconciliation between the most positive aspects of
individuality and community in a post-capitalist communist society (Avineri
1970:33, 34–7; Elster 1989:151; Marx 1975a:350), many critics argue that he
failed to value non-class-based forms of solidarity, human rights, plural conceptions
of the good and the permanence of democratic contestation (Femia 1993:65;
Bowles and Gintis 1986:18–20; C.Gould 1981:49; Sypnowich 1990:167; Schwartz
1995:21–4, 104–45). While it is true that liberal democracy has often been
intertwined with capitalist development, these historical precedents are contingent.
For Laclau and Mouffe, the radicalization of the most promising moments of the
liberal democratic tradition is entirely possible. Indeed, once the liberal democratic
principles of freedom, equality and democracy are radicalized, they can be used to
weaken capitalism itself (Cunningham 1987:158–9).
These liberal democratic principles therefore have to be both retrieved and
radicalized. Eisenstein contends, for example, that we need to transform the liberal
feminist conception of the right to privacy. A radicalized approach to privacy
would, first, dismantle the interventionist machinery of the state where it pursues
authoritarian moralistic and domestic security agendas. But it would also reverse
the trend towards state privatization by expanding individual rights to include
social rights and by reinvigorating the conception of public responsibility. Eisenstein
rejects the shrinkage of the right to privacy to its current status as the right for
wealthy women to obtain an abortion through privately insured or financed health
care. A meaningful right to privacy would entail universal access to abortion,
contraception and childbearing for all women, poor and wealthy alike. It would
also embrace the rights of lesbians and gays to organize their personal lives according
to their own values without interference or the discriminatory subsidization of
heterosexuality on the part of the state. A genuine right to privacy would not just
shelter the individual from state interference in the “private” sphere; it would also

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entail the right to live in conditions in which everyone has equal access to the
basic resources necessary to make meaningful choices in that protected sphere
(Eisenstein 1994:174–5).
Laclau and Mouffe’s original contribution to democratic theory—and the
specificity of what they call “radical democratic pluralism”—consists in the way
in which they combine two apparently contradictory goals together: unity and
autonomy. The authors’ fundamental concern is that the imposition of the wrong
kinds of unity can limit the democratic potential of the social movements in
question
15
. Laclau and Mouffe call for the kind of political strategy that can achieve
unity and preserve autonomy at the same time—that is, a radical democratic
pluralist hegemonic strategy. They argue that it is only by conceptualizing unity
in terms of hegemonic articulation that the goal of unifying different movements
becomes compatible with the goal of preserving their autonomy (Laclau and Mouffe
1985:166–7, 178, 181–3, 191). I will discuss the concepts of articulation and
hegemony with greater precision in the following chapters. At this point, however,
the following outline of their argument can be offered.
Laclau and Mouffe want to promote the type of unification of democratic
movements that would allow for effective solidarity without asking any individual
movement to pay the price of tokenism, co-optation and assimilation. No single
struggle should be allowed to impose its agenda over all of the others. While each
struggle should learn from the others—it should share political values and tools,
engage in collaborative strategies, and reform its identity as it takes on board the
democratic demands of the other progressive struggles—it should also continue
to develop its own distinctive worldview and pursue its own projects. A leading
struggle may emerge; as we will see, Laclau and Mouffe call this the “nodal point”
in the radical democratic “hegemonic bloc.” Even where this occurs, however,
the leading struggle will be so deeply affected by its negotiations with other
progressive struggles that its philosophy, program and tactics—its very identity—
would be reshaped in the process.
In this sense, each of the democratic struggles would constantly reconstruct
their identities through a democratic process of mutual education with the others.
This process could not, therefore, be characterized as the formation of a coalition
between pre-constituted interest groups. It would take the form instead of
continuous negotiations that give rise to new hybrid identities and temporary
blocs. Insofar as these negotiations were successful, democratic values would take
hold within movements, circulate among different movements and radiate out
into new areas of the social. We would witness the further promotion of democracy
within each of these struggles and within their corresponding communities, as
democratic wisdom would be transmitted across multiple sites. The difficult lessons
that are learned in the course of actual political struggles—such as the dangers of
charismatic and vanguardist leaderships, the importance of ensuring equal
representation to women in decision-making, the value of examining racial
privilege and racial exclusion, the continuing relevance of class analysis, the
discriminatory character of heterosexism, and so on—would be traded back and

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forth across heretofore uncrossable boundaries. It should also be noted that this
“politicization of identities” presupposes a vibrant civil society that is relatively
free from total regulation by the state. In a totalitarian context, democratic forces
would have to “de-politicize” identities—in the sense of freeing them from the
grip of state apparatuses—before this deeper politicization could take place (The
Chicago Cultural Studies Group 1994).
The authors summarize their conception of radical democratic pluralism in the
following terms:
Pluralism is radical only to the extent that each term of this plurality
finds within itself the principle of its own validity, without this having to
be sought in a transcendent or underlying positive ground for the hierarchy
of meaning of them all and the source and guarantee of their legitimacy.
And this radical pluralism is democratic to the extent that the
autoconstitutivity of each one of its terms is the result of displacements
of the egalitarian imaginary.
(Laclau and Mouffe 1985:167)
For Laclau and Mouffe, the irreducibly plural character of the social must be
preserved, even as democratic struggles combine to fight authoritarianism. Plurality
and diversity are not problems to be overcome; the promotion of those differences
that do not contradict liberty and equality is the very condition for the expansion
of the democratic revolution (Laclau and Mouffe 1985:166).
This argument could be extended further. The diversity among democratic
differences must be affirmed as a good in itself; minority groups should never be
asked to pay the price of cultural self-destruction through assimilation and
disciplinary neutralization in exchange for inclusion, legitimacy and recognition.
Genuine “tolerance” must mean that minority groups are granted access to the
material resources that they need to preserve their rights and to promote their
distinct democratic differences. Genuine “multiculturalism” must mean not only
the addition of minority democratic values, but also the opening up of the values
held by the majority to the minorities’ democratic critique, and the construction
of a new set of shared community values through negotiation. Immigration
programs that rate the eligibility of an applicant on the basis of their conformity
with white Western middle-class standards; military policies that promise lesbians
and gays inclusion only insofar as we keep our sexual orientation a secret; university
structures that add women’s studies or black studies courses to the curriculum
without addressing sexism and racism on campus; electoral reforms that extend
suffrage to women and people of color while job segregation and “glass ceilings”
ensure their over-representation among the unemployed, the poor and the
homeless; health care “reforms” that ban abortion funding for women on welfare;
elections in a Bosnia that remains “ethnically cleansed”
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and elections in a Russia
that conducts brutal civil war against its own people, would all fail this basic
democratic pluralism test.

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Laclau and Mouffe do not, of course, endorse an unlimited promotion of
autonomy. They insist that progressive struggles must be united to the extent that
they reshape their identities with respect to the others’ demands (Mouffe 1996b:
247). They also impose strict conditions on the value of difference for radical
democracy. Difference should be celebrated as a positive good, but only insofar as
difference does not promote domination and inequality (Mouffe 1992a:13). This
qualification has several implications. Every social movement will have many
different political variants, for the political value of a movement is not naturally
determined by its structural location, but by the way in which it combines different
political values together (Laclau and Mouffe 1985:168–9). Laclau and Mouffe
would reject, for example, Gitlin’s and Hobsbawm’s argument that environmental
politics are inherently “universalist” in contrast to the inherent “particularism” of
race, gender and sexuality politics (Gitlin 1995:101; Hobsbawm 1996:45);
ecological demands can be phrased in either reactionary or progressive terms.
Protection for the environment can be defined, for example, in a racist manner.
Some environmentalists have failed to respect the land claims of the aboriginal
peoples, while others have embraced population control for the poor in developing
countries
17
and immigration control in the developed world as policies necessary
for the protection of the ecology from excessive pressure. Environmentalists can
also define their struggle in an anti-capitalist manner, such that it primarily targets
corporate profiteering. For radical democratic pluralism, only those fragments of
the social movements that uphold democratic principles should be valued as
progressive differences.
Furthermore, reactionary social elements commonly appropriate the discourse
of civil rights movements in their demands for the protection of their “special
ways of life.” Again, respect for autonomy should be extended only to those groups
and movements that value liberty and equality. Demands for multicultural programs
that would preserve the cultural symbols of the pro-slavery American south, and
demands for affirmative action for right-wing religious extremists, should be
dismissed as fraudulent claims. For Laclau and Mouffe, the political meaning of
environmentalism, civil rights and every other social struggle is open to
contestation; the task for the Left is to engage in a political battle to bend their
meaning in a radical democratic pluralist direction.
Radical democratic pluralism attacks all forms of domination and holds
disciplinary normalization in suspicion; it takes aim at anti-democratic economic
institutions, state apparatuses, social structures and cultural practices alike while
it works with the democratic elements that are scattered throughout the social; it
welcomes democratic forms of diversity, activism, innovation and dissent; and
above all, it seeks to deepen and to broaden the advance of freedom and equality.
The task for radical democratic pluralism is “to struggle against autocratic power
in all its forms in order to infiltrate the various spaces still occupied by non-
democratic centers of power” (Mouffe 1993b:94). The fact that we are now at a
great distance from genuine democracy is sobering but not devastating for radical
democratic theory and practice. The achievement of close approximations to

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radical democratic pluralism is both feasible and desirable. Imperfect democracy
should always be valued over an even more imperfect democracy, for the greater
the degree of democracy, the greater the degree of freedom, and an increase in
democracy always creates favorable conditions for greater democratization in the
future (Cunningham 1987:55, 60).