Abstract

One reason why the recently influential “realist” turn in political theory rejects mainstream theoretical approaches is that it views their moralistic orientation as a source of ideological credulity. Like Karl Marx before them, realists complain that “moralizing” social criticism is bound to be imprisoned in the illusions of the epoch. This essay suggests that contemporary political realism may itself invite comparable accusations of ideological complicity insofar as it equates politics and agonistic contestation, as many realists in fact do. The assumption that political interaction is essentially contestatory strikes many as plain common sense, undeniable in the face of any sober and realistic observation of actual politics. This essay suggests, to the contrary, that the seeming self-evidence of this assumption may precisely be a symptom of ideological illusion. To develop this suggestion, this essay contends that contemporary realism is vulnerable to charges of “contest-fetishism” that parallel Marx’s argument that the classical political economists he criticizes in Capital were blind to the “commodity-fetishism” of modern capitalism.