Hegemony and Socialist Strategy  

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Hegemony and Socialist Strategy is a 1985 work of political theory in the post-Marxist tradition by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Developing several sharp divergences from the tenets of canonical Marxist thought, the authors begin by tracing historically varied discursive constitutions of class, political identity, and social self-understanding, and then tie these to the contemporary importance of hegemony as a destabilized analytic which avoids the traps of various procedures Mouffe and Laclau feel constitute a foundational flaw in Marxist thought: essentializations of class identity, the use of a priori interpretative paradigms with respect to history and contextualization, the privileging of the base/superstructure binary above other explicative models.

Overview

The position outlined in this book is usually described as post-Marxist because it rejects (a) Marxist economic determinism and (b) the view that class struggle is the most important antagonism in society. In their 2001 introduction to the second edition Laclau and Mouffe commented on this label, stating that whilst 'post-Marxist' they were also 'post-Marxist': their work, though a departure from traditional Western Marxism, retained similar concerns and ideas. A key innovation in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy was Laclau and Mouffe's argument that left-wing movements need to build alliances with a wide variety of different groups if they are to be successful and establish a left-wing 'hegemony'. In the final chapter of the book, the project of "radical and plural democracy" was advocated: a democracy in which subjects accept the importance of the values of liberty and equality, but fight over what the terms mean.

In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy Laclau and Mouffe also offered a constructivist account of 'discourse'. By drawing on the work of the later Wittgenstein, they argued that social entities only become meaningful through discursive articulation. As such, the meaning of something is never pre-given but is, instead, constructed through social practices. Laclau subsequently used this account of discourse to re-consider the nature of identity, arguing that all political identities are discursive - even if they are experienced by individuals as 'natural' (even to the point where one's identity is not recognised as an identity). For example, though an individual may think that they are just 'born male' this is, for Laclau, not the case: 'maleness' is a socially constructed category that has no innate meaning.

Criticism by Geras

Norman Geras, in a New Left Article titled 'Post-Marxism?', lambasted Lacau and Mouffe for what he regarded as shallow obscurantism grounded on basic misunderstandings of both Marx and Marxism. After Laclau's and Mouffe's response to Geras' paper (in 'Post-Marxism Without Apologies'), Geras doubled down with 'Ex-Marxism Without Substance: Being A Real Reply to Laclau and Mouffe' in which he further criticised the post-Marxist turn.

Bibliography

• Smith, Anna Marie. Laclau and Mouffe: The Radical Democratic Imaginary. — London: Routledge, 1998.
• Howarth, David. Discourse. — Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 2000.
• Philips, Louise, Jorgensen, Marianne. Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. — London: Sage, 2002.
• Howarth, David, Aletta Norval and Yannis Stavrakakis (eds). Discourse Theory and Political Analysis. — Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002.
• Critchley, Simon and Oliver Marchart (eds). Laclau: A Critical Reader. — London: Routledge, 2004.
• Breckman, Warren. Adventures of the Symbolic: Postmarxism and Radical Democracy. — New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.
• Howarth, David and Jacob Torfing (eds). Discourse Theory in European Politics. — Houndmills: Palgrave, 2005.
• Torfing, Jacob. New Theories of Discourse: Laclau, Mouffe, Žižek. — Oxford: Blackwell, 1999.