In this hugely influential book, Laclau and Mouffe examine the workings of hegemony and contemporary social struggles, and their significance for democratic theory. With the emergence of new social and political identities, and the frequent attacks on Left theory for its essentialist underpinnings, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy remains as relevant as ever, positing a much-needed antidote against ‘Third Way’ attempts to overcome the antagonism between Left and Right.

I undertake three tasks in this exploratory essay. First, I examine some of the lessons of recent history concerning the relation between socialism, markets, and liberal democracy. Second, I lay out the basic theoretical building-blocks of an alternative to both socialism and laissez-faire that I call “mutualism.” Finally, I draw some conclusions for public policy and practice, in the form of what I call a “progressive market strategy.” A brief conclusion ponders the question, What's left of socialism?

Socialism is a large and diverse political tradition, unified by opposition to capitalism. Economically, socialists also typically support common ownership or some form of social, democratic control over the bulk of the means of production. There are various views on whether this requires central planning or is compatible with some form of market economy. Others understand socialism as a set of values, and either way, those who understand socialism in economic terms are often motivated by what they see as the (...) ills of capitalism and the values that can be realized in a socialist society in their pursuit of these economic changes. Socialist values include ending exploitation and alienation and replacing them with human flourishing and self-realization, community, distributive justice, equality, and freedom. Some also see socialism as the way to environmental sustainability, gender equality, and racial justice. The question of socialist strategy—how to achieve socialism—has often been posed as a dichotomy between reform and revolution. This inadequately captures the content of fundamental disagreements among socialists. Instead, the disagreement can be understood as varying views on the use of parliamentary democracy in a capitalist state, the pace of social change, and the nature of the envisioned changes. (shrink)

This chapter explores the ideological dimension of dehumanization in the context of National Socialism, focusing on the connection between concepts of humanity and dehumanizing images. NS regarded itself as a political revolution, realizing a new concept of humanity. Nazi ideologues undergirded the self-understanding of NS by developing racist anthropologies. I examine two major strands of Nazi ideology, focusing on their diverging strategies of dehumanization, and arguing that they were dependent on different anthropological frameworks. Richard Walther Darré held a naturalistic concept (...) of humanity and advanced biologistic forms of dehumanization. Alfred Rosenberg developed a dualistic anthropology that combined metaphysical and natural features. He dehumanized certain groups of people by reducing them to being human in a natural sense only. Moreover, I aim to show that the key motifs of these racist worldviews were prevalent in the scientific and philosophical debates on anthropology in early-twentieth-century Germany. I thus explore the general orientation of both the naturalistic and the anti-naturalistic strand in anthropological thought, unfold the animalizing tendencies of these views, and emphasize their conformity with the key motifs of Nazi ideology. The case of NS should thus exemplify the dehumanizing potential of anthropological theories. (shrink)

Exhibitions dedicated to the theme of "Red China" occupy an important place in the dissemination of "red" culture, the continuity of the "red" gene and the intensification of "red" education. They reflect the political agenda, have a distinct content and the uniqueness of the text material. Being an important element of the spread of "red" culture, exhibitions on the theme of "Red China" integrate elements of this culture into people's daily lives and play an active role in preserving and multiplying (...) the "red" gene. In this article, the systematization and generalization of knowledge in the field of narrative strategy of exhibitions on the theme of "Red China" is carried out from the point of view of ontology, structure and narrative carrier, which at the present stage is important for building a strong socialist ideology. Exhibitions on the theme of "Red China" are an important way of materialization, visualization and dissemination of "red" culture, as well as an effective means of its popularization. The study found that the "Red" exhibitions should have a "revolutionary content", have a "political character", be "mutually recognized by the authorities and the people", take on the main responsibility for providing people with common access to material and spiritual culture. From the point of view of the communication function of the "red" exhibitions, they are an important means of organizing ideological and political education by the Communist Party of China, strengthening social harmony and promoting basic values. (shrink)

The first three sections of this lecture address the need for better historical-materialist theorisations of capitalist competition, capitalist classes and capitalist states, and in particular the institutional dimensions of these – which is fundamental for understanding why and how capitalism has survived into the twenty-first century. The fourth section addresses historical materialism’s under-theorisation of the institutional dimensions of working-class formation, and how this figures in explaining why, despite the expectations of the founders of historical materialism, the working classes have not, (...) at least yet, become capitalism’s gravediggers. While recognising that a better historical materialism along these lines will not necessarily provide us with a gps route to a socialist world beyond capitalism, it does suggest a number of guidelines for socialist strategy, with which the lecture concludes. This includes the need for building new institutions capable of defining, mobilising and representing the working class broadly, as well as recognising that the types of parties that can transform working classes into leading agents of social transformation have yet to be invented. A strategic priority must be to start anew at creating the kinds of working-class political institutions which can rekindle the socialist imagination, and develop the socialist capacities to get there. (shrink)

The rapidly expanding degrowth literature has focused predominantly on the case for degrowth and its goals and much less attention has been given to how it might be achieved. The following discussion is not concerned to review the current state of the discussion and refers to it only in order to develop a case for a particular approach to degrowth strategy, that is, one deriving from the simpler way perspective on the global predicament. This focuses on the alarming and (...) poorly recognised extent to which global sustainability limits have been exceeded. When this is understood it is clear that extremely radical solutions must be sought. There has to be transition to far simpler lifestyles and systems. This requires abandoning various fundamental structures and taken-for-granted assumptions and ways. Thus it will be argued that numerous degrowth strategies are inappropriate, including attempting to reform existing governmental policies and adopting eco-socialist goals and means. This perspective on the situation has coercive implications for viable strategy. One major implication of the simpler way perspective is that ends and means must be anarchist. (shrink)

Research in school success in contemporary China has argued that market reforms have reproduced the advantages for children from the cadre and the professional families while simultaneously creating new opportunities for children of the new arising economic elites. However, it has performed less for traditional peasant families. This book places a special emphasis on how rural parents from different social backgrounds use _guanxi_ to maintain the interconnectedness between their families and schools to create advantages for their children in school success. (...) It investigates, by an ethnographic study in a rural county in middle China, how families from different social backgrounds within rural society get involved in the schooling of their children and how this contributes to different patterns of school success. The book argues that schools provide few formal and routine channels for rural parents to become involved in their children’s schooling. This raises the importance of family strategic initiatives to employ _guanxi_ in the creation of advantages for their children’s school success. It concludes with discussions about _guanxi_ as an important mechanism for social exclusion in post-socialist China. Chapters include: Family Strategies, Parental Involvement, and School Success The Roles of Parents: Voices of Parents in Zong Regarding School Involvement Policy Discourses: Missing the Link between Family and School Peasants: Family and Kinship The Blurring Division between Home and School This concise and comprehensive book is a qualitative study that will appeal to researchers and advance students in Chinese education and society. (shrink)

This book provides an overview of two hundred years of German economic thought, from the Staatswissenschaften of the eighteenth century to National Socialism and the Social Market. Whereas classical economics, from Smith through Ricardo to Marx and Mill, emphasised value, distribution and production, German economic thought had a long-running tradition of human need and the varying conditions for order. These ideas are brought together by a conception of rational action and, therefore, a rationalistic appraisal of welfare and order. By taking (...) this perspective, the usual contrast of market and planning approaches to economic organisation is subsumed by an approach which focuses on the construction of order in economic processes. This book highlights the continuity of this practical approach of German economists through the two centuries under consideration - from the Cameralists to the Ordoliberals. (shrink)

Socialism from a feminist perspective is not an all or nothing blueprint, but rather a vision of degrees of power/freedom that people in a particular society have in economic, political, social and personal relations. Examples are discussed of societies which are more or less socialist in their class, racial/ethnic, and gender equality, power and freedom. Historical changes in affective economic relations of care, love and affection inform such class, race/ethnic, gender and sexual differences. Three types of transitional strategies are (...) relevant for social movements working toward socialism. (shrink)

The literature on antecedents of corporate social responsibility strategies of firms has been predominately content driven. Informed by the managerial sense-making process perspective, we develop a contingency theoretical framework explaining how political ideology of managers affects the choice of CSR strategy for their firms through their CSR mindset. We also explain to what extent the outcome of this process is shaped by the firm’s internal institutional arrangements and external factors impacting on the firm. We develop and test several hypotheses (...) using data collected from 129 Chinese managers. The results show that managers with a stronger socialist ideology are likely to develop a mindset favouring CSR, which induces the adoption of a proactive CSR strategy. The CSR mindset mediates the link between socialist ideology and CSR strategy. The strength of the relationship between the CSR mindset and the choice of CSR strategy is moderated by customer response to CSR, industry competition, the role of government, and CSR-related managerial incentives. (shrink)

The problem this article is concerned with is the failure ofmany large organizations in formerly socialist countries and inpublic sectors of market economies to make effective, peaceful,and ethical transformation from command to market responsiveorganization and privatization. There are at least threeimportant behavioral causes of this problem. First, organizationtransformation is blocked because the organization tries tochange "all at once" before the organization has learned how toact successfully in a new for the organization environment as amarket responsive instead of a command (...) organization (Churchman,1971; Quinn, 1980; Nystrom and Starbuck, 1984; Mintzberg andWaters, 1985; Mintzberg, 1994; Goldman, 1994). Second,organization transformation is blocked because "all at oncechange" stimulates so much fear and political opposition thatchange is politically not possible (Argyris and Schon, 1974;Argyris, 1990; Goldman, 1994; Sachs, 1992). Third, organizationtransformation is blocked because the "guardian" ethics syndromeof command organization is less appropriate for market responsiveorganization than a "commercial" ethics syndrome (Jacobs, 1992;Harris, 1995). Gradual intrapreneurship (Burgelman, 1983; Nielsenet al., 1985) can serve as a peaceful and ethical transitionstrategy. Intrapreneurship can help bridge some of thecontradictions between "commercial" vs. "guardian" ethicssyndromes (Jacobs, 1992; Nielsen, 1996). (shrink)

The aim of this chapter is to clarify the meaning and the use of the concept of relativism in the context of National Socialism (NS). This chapter analyzes three aspects of the connection between relativism and NS: The first part examines the critical reproach that NS is a form of relativism. I analyze and criticize the common core of this widespread argument, which is developed in varying contexts, was held in different times, and is still shared by several authors. The (...) second part investigates the ideological debate among Nazi philosophers themselves concerning whether NS is indeed a form of relativism. I focus on the epistemological consequences of Nazi anthropology and analyze both its relativistic tendencies and the strategies used to reject relativism. In contrast to the received view, I argue that Nazi philosophers attempted to overcome both absolutism and relativism. The third part investigates the academic debate on relativism during NS, using the example of the prize question on relativism that was announced by the Prussian Academy of Science in 1936. By examining the academic approaches to the problem of relativism, I also address the question of how broader philosophical debates were related to the core of Nazi ideology. Academic philosophers took the self-understanding of Nazi philosophers seriously. They saw the shared aim of overcoming relativism as an opportunity to collaborate with NS. The brief conclusion summarizes the findings of the chapter. I conclude that, in the context of NS, critics, ideologists, and academics understand and use the concept of relativism in the same way. (shrink)

Full of drama, dedication, and humor, this book narrates the author's often frustrating experiences working as an experimental physicist in Cuba after the disintegration of the so-called socialist block. Lacking finance and infrastructure, faced with makeshift equipment, unpredictable supplies, and unreliable IT, Altshuler tells how he and his students overcame numerous challenges to make novel and interesting contributions to several fields of science. Along the way, he explains the science - from studies of ant colonies to superconductivity - either (...) qualitatively or quantitatively, but always at a level fully understandable to an undergraduate student of natural sciences or engineering. An even wider audience, however, may skip the technical sections without missing the essence. With numerous anecdotes, photographs and the author's own delightful cartoons, the book tells a remarkable, and often amusing story of how successful science can be performed against all odds. (shrink)

Steering a middle course between the strong neoliberalization thesis and arguments that deny that neoliberalization has occurred, this article accounts for the complex and hybridic shift in Sweden from pension reform through share ownership as a socialist strategy to an as-of-yet incomplete and contradictory neoliberal process. Noting the broader significance of Sweden for the international debate over pension reform, the article unpacks the concept of “mass investment culture” to discern the significant headway toward neoliberalization in Swedish pension savings (...) and provision while still noting profound sources of crisis tendencies. (shrink)

This paper evaluates Mill’s arguments favoring a society with an economy dominated by “a principle of individual property” over alternatives dominated by the common ownership of the conditions of life and wealth. Mill’s strategy for addressing the problem of property consists in conducting a comparison of competing systems of ownership (capitalism, socialism or communism) on the criterion of which best distributes wealth to the individual. Mill applies this criterion in the evaluation of these systems in light of three considerations: (...) (1) their feasibility in a highly developed society, (2) their efficiency and likelihood of continuing improvement in comparison to competing systems, and (3) their consistency with and conduciveness to individual liberty. This paper investigates Mill’s arguments regarding the application of these and related considerations to the arguments of socialist and communist theorists with whose views he was familiar and, in varying degrees, sympathetic. As argued here, the arguments Mill employs are not, on his own terms and especially with respect to liberty, adequate to justify his general contention that given the inadequate moral and intellectual development of citizens, it is better to gamble on a private property economy than a socialist alternative. (shrink)

This study examines the enduring influence of Confucian ethics on Vietnam’s new morality, shaped by revolutionary and socialist ideals. Confucianism, with its emphasis on moral values, social harmony, and hierarchical relationships, provided the foundation for Vietnam’s traditional morality during the feudal era. However, its remnants, including patriarchal structures and rigid hierarchies, present challenges to modern democratic and socialist aspirations. Employing a qualitative research design, this study analyzes primary texts, including Confucian classics and Hồ Chí Minh’s writings, alongside secondary (...) academic sources. Through thematic content analysis, the research explores the interplay between traditional Confucian values and modern ethical constructs, highlighting their dual role as both a moral cornerstone and a potential barrier to progress. The findings underscore that while Confucian ethics offer valuable guidance for governance, education, and societal cohesion, their feudal origins must be critically reevaluated to align with contemporary goals of equality and social justice. The study concludes by proposing strategies to retain the strengths of Confucian ethics while addressing their limitations, demonstrating how Vietnam can integrate its cultural heritage with revolutionary and modern principles to build a harmonious and progressive society. (shrink)

In A Darwinian left Peter Singer aims to reconcile Darwinian theory with left wing politics, using evolutionary game theory and in particular a model proposed by Robert Axelrod, which shows that cooperation can be an evolutionarily successful strategy. In this paper I will show that whilst Axelrod’s model can give support to a kind of left wing politics, it is not the kind that Singer himself envisages. In fact, it is shown that there are insurmountable problems for the idea (...) of increasing Axelrodian cooperation within a welfare state. My surprising conclusion will be that a Darwinian left worthy of the name would be anarchistic. Ó 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Les archives municipales de Berlin ont conservé tous les documents produits par la Maison berlinoise du travail culturel, Berliner Haus für Kulturarbeit, qui a été fondée en 1953 sous le nom de Berliner Volkskunstkabinett et dissoute en 1991. Ces archives permettent de suivre en filigrane les réflexions conduites en RDA sur le thème de l’action culturelle publique, dont les deux interrogations principales peuvent se résumer ainsi : comment peut-on encourager différentes formes de participation des travailleurs et ainsi favoriser le développement (...) d’un art censé être authentiquement populaire et acquis à la cause de la révolution socialiste? Et comment l’art peut-il être le vecteur d’une identification « nationale » avec l’État de RDA? Nous proposons d’étudier ces archives sous l’angle du combat mené par le SED, le parti communiste au pouvoir en RDA, pour créer une société révolutionnaire, pour rendre possible l’utopie d’une société parfaitement égalitaire par le moyen de l’art. En effet, si les choix économiques, politiques, sociaux du SED sont bien connus aujourd’hui, les chercheurs se sont pour l’instant moins intéressés au langage du politique dans le domaine artistique, et notamment à la question centrale de savoir comment ce régime concevait son rôle et sa responsabilité à l’égard des pratiques artistiques des ouvriers. (shrink)

It hardly needs saying that the Left in the advanced capitalist economies is in a state of severe disarray. Inspired, or perhaps more accurately, dis-inspired, by the dull conflation of globalisation and welfare retrenchment that marks the neoliberal orthodoxy of the times, the former social-democratic Left has abandoned all socialist advocacy. It marches instead towards a ‘Centre’ that itself continues to drift rightwards. Meanwhile, at least in the industrially developed world, serious movements and parties to the left of social (...) democracy have become harder and harder to find. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article critically examines Axel Honneth’s account of social freedom by paying particular attention to the conceptual apparatus of normative reconstruction that is supposed to lend social freedom its explanatory force. More specifically, the article demonstrates, through an immanent critique, that Honneth is unable to follow through with his ambitious view of the capitalist market as an institutional expression of social freedom. Furthermore, Honneth’s inability to derive robust relations of cooperative solidarity from the actuality of contemporary liberal democratic ethical (...) life leads him to posit socialism as a regulative idea. Honneth’s idea of socialism risks succumbing to the very pitfalls that he continues to associate with neo-Kantian proceduralism. Such an aporia poses a particular challenge for Honneth’s attempt at advancing a persuasive neo-Hegelian alternative to neo-Kantian proceduralism. As a means of addressing this aporia, I suggest a possible strategy that Honneth could adopt to retrieve his historically informed and radically reformist conception of justice without unwittingly rendering socialism a purely regulative idea. Such a strategy involves re-Hegelianizing Honneth’s socialism and the idea of social freedom that it seeks to actualize. (shrink)

The article examines the phenomenon of conformism in the context of socialist realism, which for a long time was the main direction for the Soviet art sphere. Conformism is interpreted as an effective way for the artist to optimize relations with the authorities and society, giving the opportunity for social self-preservation. Conformism is a kind of strategy for artists, thanks to which they manage to achieve their creative goals and successfully exist within the established cultural framework. The author (...) of the article argues that conformism helped artists who put their creativity at the service of socialist realism to find some basis for their activities, because socialist realism did not initially have such a basis. The author comes to the conclusion that in the conditions of constant transformation of cultural requirements and the need to fully comply with them, conformism becomes for the artist not just a tactic in achieving creative goals, but also a kind of self-defense mechanism that allows to preserve mental and physical health. The most successful Soviet artists were able to realize their talent by creating many bright works of art due to the fact that they created precisely in the mainstream of socialist realism, and if it were not for it, perhaps the world would never have known about some outstanding Soviet artists, as well as not seen their works of art, since the realization of Soviet artists in another cultural environment might well not have taken place. (shrink)

During the British socialist revival of the 1880s competing theories of evolution were central to disagreements about strategy for social change. In News from Nowhere (1891), William Morris had portrayed socialism as the result of Lamarckian processes, and imagined a non-Malthusian future. H.G. Wells, an enthusiastic admirer of Morris in the early days of the movement, became disillusioned as a result of the Malthusianism he learnt from Huxley and his subsequent rejection of Lamarckism in light of Weismann's experiments (...) on mice. This brought him into conflict with his fellow Fabian, George Bernard Shaw, who rejected neo-Darwinism in favour of a Lamarckian conception of change he called "creative evolution.". (shrink)

[Note by Editors of Voprosy filosofii. A plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was held on June 23, 1980. The plenum adopted a resolution to convene the next regular Twenty-sixth Congress of the CPSU on February 23, 1981. The congresses have always opened new horizons for our Party and our country. The congresses of the CPSU, embodying the collective intelligence of the Party, draw conclusions, on the basis of thoroughgoing Marxist- Leninist analysis, respect (...) what has been accomplished, creatively interpret problems of social development ripe for solution, and illuminate with the bright light of their decisions the perspectives of further movement along the road of communist creativity. The preparations for the forthcoming Twenty-sixth Congress, which is called upon to define the strategy and tactics of struggle during the next stage of the building of communism, have from their first days embraced the people as a whole, and are marked by a growth in the creative initiative and energy of the masses. (shrink)

Political philosophers tend to notice their differences more than their similarities. I suggest that contemporary analytic political philosophy in fact exhibits a 'dominant paradigm', the main features of which are a commitment to liberal capitalism and a preference for the designing of 'just institutions.' To subscribe to this paradigm involves making a decision about how to manage the philosophical 'agenda.' In order to focus on certain issues within this paradigm, alternatives, most notably socialism, have to be excluded from prolonged consideration. (...) A popular way of supporting this policy is by reference to the perceived failure of 'real existing socialism.' Taking the late political philosopher Brian Barry, among others, as an example, I argue that this argumentative strategy is unconvincing, and furthermore that its deployment tells a worrying story about the practice of political philosophy. (shrink)

This paper offers a reinterpretation of Eduard Bernstein’s theory of evolutionary socialism. It does so by examining the leading role that he envisioned for unions of skilled workers in the socialist movement. During his time in London in the 1890s, Bernstein’s engagement with English Fabianism led him to emphasize the proletariat’s differentiated nature. He claimed skilled workers most readily organized and became the first proletarians to develop class consciousness. Unskilled workers, on the other hand, remained largely unorganized and estranged (...) from the socialist movement. Bernstein opposed the socialist political strategy of nationalization because it would subordinate unskilled workers to party revolutionaries rather than realize cooperative self-government in industry. This focus on promoting industrial self-government made Bernstein stress the importance of workers’ further unionization and adoption of skilled unionists’ method of collective bargaining. This would produce socialist cooperation because it facilitated cooperative wage determination. In Bernstein’s view, skilled unionists influenced the socialist party to take political action to organize and elevate more proletarians to class consciousness. In contrast to those who claim Bernstein prioritized the party’s autonomous ethical appeals and legislation, I emphasize his focus on union-party interactions and defense of unions as central for the advance into socialism’s cooperative society. (shrink)

On reflecting about the prospects of advancing the egalitarian cause in the United States, John Roemer makes the case for more traditional strategies than the coupon socialism model he advocated in earlier work. First of all, he suggests, an ethos of solidarity must be developed and the super-rich be subjected to higher taxation. This comment assesses this proposal. On the one hand it is discussed whether the ethos of solidarity Roemer calls for in order to counteract the culture of greed (...) among American elites requires nurturing an undesirable culture of envy among the rest of the population. On the other hand it is considered whether the neoclassical principal-agent model—that Roemer believes must be contested in order to popularize a steep progressive income tax—might be one of the more promising tools to restructure the incentives of economic elites and curb casino capitalism. (shrink)

The paper addresses the scarcity of research on the new rich in urban anthropology. It argues that sumptuary spending is meant to establish and display an honourable ascendancy, and stems from a need for public recognition. This is particularly visible in the palaces of the nouveau riche in Eastern Europe. Too often, these buildings are unduly ethnicized; the paper claims that this ideological approach aims at denying Easter European Roma the possibility of taking part in the urban competition of the (...) new rich and at excluding them from the wider urban context of the new rich in the post-Socialist territories, from Bucharest to Batumi and Astana. From Roma businessmen to a parvenu doctor in Cluj, the identity strategies of the new rich resemble each other. They draw on universal artistic heritage to create an image of ancient virtue for their owners. (shrink)

Paul Lafargue, the disciple and son-in-law of Karl Marx, helped to found the first French Marxist party in 1882. Over the next three decades, he served as the chief theoretician and propagandist for Marxism in France. During these years - which ended with the dramatic suicides of Lafargue and his wife - French socialism, and the Marxist party within it, became a significant political force. Leslie Derfler explores Lafargue's political strategies, specifically his break with party co-founder Jules Guesde in the (...) Boulanger and Dreyfus episodes and over the question of socialist syndicalist relations. Derfler shows Lafargue's importance as both political activist and theorist. He describes Lafargue's role in the formulation of such strategies as the promotion of a Second Workingmen's International, the pursuit of reform within the framework of the existent state but opposition to any socialist participation in nonsocialist governments, and the subordination of trade unionism to political action. He emphasizes Lafargue's pioneering efforts to apply Marxist methods of analysis to questions of anthropology, aesthetics, and literary criticism. (shrink)

On reflecting about the prospects of advancing the egalitarian cause in the United States, John Roemer makes the case for more traditional strategies than the coupon socialism model he advocated in earlier work. First of all, he suggests, an ethos of solidarity must be developed and the super-rich be subjected to higher taxation. This comment assesses this proposal. On the one hand it is discussed whether the ethos of solidarity Roemer calls for in order to counteract the culture of greed (...) among American elites requires nurturing an undesirable culture of envy among the rest of the population. On the other hand it is considered whether the neoclassical principal-agent model - that Roemer believes must be contested in order to popularize a steep progressive income tax - might be one of the more promising tools to restructure the incentives of economic elites and curb casino capitalism. (shrink)

Herbert Marcuse’s political-philosophical vision, cultural critique, and social activism continue to offer an intelligent strategic perspective on current concerns – especially issues of ecological destruction, neofascist white supremacy, hate speech, hate crimes, and racist police violence. These can be countered through a recognition of the intersectionality of radical needs of diverse constituencies and radical collaboration, giving rise to system negation as a new general interest, and an ecosocialist strategy of revolutionary activism within a global alliance of transformational forces.

The present article aims to offer a synoptic picture of communist Romania’s relations with Third World countries during the Ceaușescu regime. Within these relations, economic and geopolitical motivations coexisted along with ideological ones, thus making the topic one of the most interesting and relevant key for understanding RSR’s complex and cunning international strategy. However, I intend to prove that mere pragmatism is not enough to comprehend the drive behind Ceaușescu’s diplomatic efforts in post-colonial Africa; ideological factors need also to (...) be taken into account. (shrink)

Two decades ago, East European state socialism met with a paradoxical fate. Between 1989 and 1991, communist party hegemony was abolished, leaving the very idea of socialism permanently discredited—or so it seemed. Yet in the decade that followed, “socialistic” principles and practices would retain—or perhaps acquire—a surprising degree of popular appeal. Was this a cultural legacy of systematic indoctrination? A strategic response to material insecurities? Perhaps a combination of both? In this article, it is argued that many previous efforts to (...) unravel the paradox are inadequate because they ignore both the “strategic” dimensions of culture and the cultural dimensions of instrumental reason. Using life-history data on the former East Germany, it is shown that apparently discredited ideologies can acquire renewed salience in the wake of regime change if they (1) remain culturally available as strategies of action that (2) provided material opportunities or symbolic privileges in the past, and (3) promise to ameliorate new problems engendered by alternative strategies. (shrink)

L’article analyse les raisons historiques et stratégiques qui ont contribué à construire la catégorie de « socialisme utopique » et à réserver le qualificatif d’utopique à un ensemble d’auteurs qui se réclamaient pourtant moins de l’utopie que de la science pour fonder leurs représentations normatives du social, alors que des stratégies rhétoriques similaires ont été localisées dans plusieurs courants de la « science économique ». En mobilisant certains concepts de la sociologie durkheimienne et certaines lectures critiques du libéralisme d’une part, (...) et en suivant le travail de Pierre Rosanvallon d’autre part, il devient possible de construire le concept de « capitalisme utopique » pour questionner la relation entre des approches scientifiques et normatives de la société, renvoyant dos à dos libéralisme et socialisme comme deux programmes de construction de la société. (shrink)

For as long as there have been markets, there have been complaints about market motives. For much of this history, the two sides have talked past one another. Optimists about markets have mostly addressed other optimists, and failed to take seriously the kinds of relational values that might be at stake and the range of possible alternatives to market-based production. Pessimists about markets have mostly addressed other pessimists, and failed to take seriously the full range of market-involving economic structures and (...) the different kinds of psychologies compatible with market interactions. Recently, there has been a break-through, on behalf of the optimists. According to the model of exchange as mutual assistance, an exchange can be perceived as a joint activity for mutual benefit - and needn't involve self-directed motives at all. This essay pushes back, on behalf of the market pessimists. The essay develops a contrast between exchange as mutual assistance and an ideal of production as caring solidarity, in which production is a joint activity of caring about one another. This alternative ideal draws on Marxist, socialist, feminist, and Christian traditions, and, in particular, on recent work on care, solidarity, and alienation. These two models – exchange as mutual assistance and production as caring solidarity – share key features, including an emphasis on reasoning from a ‘we-perspective’, on trusting one another, and on resisting a familiar self/other motivational dichotomy. Key differences are developed in detail. The essay concludes by discussing the implications for an economics of caring solidarity, with discussion of the limitations of various market socialist strategies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 31.1 (2001) 73-90 [Access article in PDF] The Leader's Two BodiesSlavoj Zizek's Postmodern Political Theology Claudia Breger Over the course of the last decade, Slavoj Zizek and his "Slovenian Lacanian school" have gained renown in the Western theory market. Academics are fascinated not only by Zizek's performances as a speaker, his nondogmatic approach to issues of genre and (inter)mediality, 1 and the "literary" character of his theoretical texts (...) [Laclau, Preface xii], but also by the political turn given to psychoanalysis by the "Slovenian school." Already in his preface to Zizek's The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), Ernesto Laclau wrote that this school's work made Lacanian theory "one of the principal reference points of the so-called 'Slovenia spring'—that is to say the democratization campaigns that have taken place in recent years" [xi]. More than ten years later—after a decade of authoritarian rule, war, and genocide in former Yugoslavia—recent revolutionary events in Serbia once more allow one to hope for a thorough democratization of the region. In a newspaper article evaluating the uprising, however, Zizek warned that these hopes might be premature: while Milosevic could find his new role as "a Serbian Jesus Christ," taking upon him all the "sins" committed by his people, Kostunica and his "democratic" nationalism might represent "nothing but Milosevic in the 'normal' version, without the excess" [Zizek, "Gewalt"]. 2Zizek was not alone in warning that the new government in Yugoslavia might not bring an end to Serbian nationalist politics. The pessimistic scenario Zizek evoked on this occasion, however, was not simply the result of his evaluation of the current political constellation in Serbia. Rather, the fantasy of the necessary return of the leader is connected to his political theory—a theory that does not allow for more optimistic scenarios of democratization and the diminution of nationalism in society. My reading of Zizek's work thus argues for a reevaluation of his theory in terms of its implicit authoritarian politics. The need for such a reevaluation is also suggested by Laclau toward the end of his recent exchange with Judith Butler and Zizek when he admits that "the more our discussions progressed, the more I realized that my sympathy for Zizek's politics was largely the result of a mirage" [Laclau, "Constructing Universality" 292]. Laclau now criticizes Zizek's radical Marxist rhetoric by suggesting that he "wants to do away with liberal democratic regimes" without specifying a political alternative [289], and describes Zizek's discourse as "schizophrenically split between a highly sophisticated Lacanian analysis and an insufficiently deconstructed traditional Marxism" [205]. On [End Page 73] the other hand, he also problematizes Zizek's "psychoanalytic discourse" as "not truly political" [289]. My argument primarily starts from this latter point: the antidemocratic—and, as I will argue, both antifeminist and anti-Semitic—moment of Zizek's theory is to be located not only in the way he performs Marxism, but also in the way he performs Lacanian psychoanalysis. While, in other words, Zizek's skepticism vis-à-vis democracy is obviously informed by, and inseparable from, Marxist critiques of "liberal," "representative" democracy, his failure to elaborate alternative visions of political change towards egalitarian and/or plural scenarios of society cannot be explained solely by his Marxist perspective. Rather, it is Zizek's reading of Lacanian psychoanalysis that does not allow for revisions of the Marxist paradigm toward, for example, a "radical democracy" as suggested by Laclau and Chantal Mouffe in their Hegemony and Socialist Strategy.In a chapter entitled "Formal Democracy and Its Discontents" in Looking Awry (1992), Zizek notes that "Lacan predicted a new rise of racism for the coming decades" as early as the 1960s [162]. 3 Zizek interprets this statement in the context of a "fundamental impasse of democracy" [162] created by the fact that the abstraction proper to democracy can never dissolve the "substantial ties"—of ethnicity, nation, and so on—that it negates [164]. 4 According to Zizek, "this constitutive paradox" has to be assumed: "The democratic attitude is always based upon a certain fetishistic... (shrink)

This paper argues that the current scholarship of radical politics primarily bannered by Christopher Ryan Maboloc is a misappropriation of the postMarxist political project of Mouffe and Laclau. Drawing primarily both on Mouffe’s and Laclau’s work Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics and an interview with Chantal Mouffe herself, the paper argues how the post-Marxist radical political project of Mouffe and Laclau fails to theoretically fit to the style of governance and regime of Duterte. Fundamental (...) to the idea of radical democratic politics is the task of radicalizing liberal democracy. However, as discussed in the paper, liberal democracy is a project whose very institutions and processes Duterte and his regime have undermined and attacked. Under Duterte’s regime, radical democracy lost the conditions for its flourishing, rendering its own impossibility. (shrink)

Ovaj tekst ima za svoj cilj teoretski uvod u rad dvoje postmarksističkih teoretičara politike, Ernesta Laclaua i Chantal Mouffe. Fokus je na njihovu zajedničkom radu Hegemonija i socijalistička strategija, pomoću čije se teze o temeljnoj »nemogućnosti društva« stvaraju epistemološke mogućnosti za lakanovsko promišljanje pojmova ideologije, kao i samog pojma ‘Političkog’ ili pojma i definicije ‘Društva’. Autori pokušavaju kroz koncept hegemonije Antonia Gramscija definirati ključno polje za konstrukciju političke zajednice. Njihova se teorija tako stavlja u kontekst i psihoanalitičkog diskursa, no i (...) diskursa koji je u društvenim znanostima poznat pod nazivom »društveni konstruktivizam«.This paper has for it’s purpose theoretical introduction into the work of two postmarxist theoreticians of politics, Ernesto Lacalau and Chantal Mouffe. We will focus on their collaboratory work, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, whose theses about the basic “impossibility of society” creates the foundations for the possibility of Lacanian theorizing of ideology, as well the notion of ‘Politics’, or the very notion of ‘Society’. Using Antonio Gramsci’s notion of hegemony, authors try to define the key field for the construction of political community. Their theory is contextualized as a psychoanalitical discourse, as well as discourse known in social sciences by the name of “social constructionism”. (shrink)

This paper outlines a theory of radical democratic education by addressing a key concept in Laclau and Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: articulation. Through their concept of articulation, Laclau and Mouffe attempt to liberate Gramsci’s theory of hegemony from Marxist economism, and adapt it to a political sphere inhabited by a plurality of struggles and agents none of which is predominant. However, while for Gramsci the political process of hegemony formation has an explicit educational dimension, Laclau and Mouffe (...) ignore this dimension altogether. My discussion starts with elaborating the concept of articulation and analysing it in terms of three dimensions: performance, connection and transformation. I then address the role of education in Gramsci’s politics, in which the figure of the intellectual is central, and argue that radical democratic education requires renouncing that figure. In the final section, I offer a theory of such education, in which both teacher and students articulate their political differences and identities. (shrink)

This is a study of the choices faced by socialist movements as they developed within capitalist societies. Professor Przeworski examines the three principal choices confronted by socialism: whether to work through elections; whether to rely exclusively on the working class; and whether to try to reform or abolish capitalism. He brings to his analysis a number of abstract models of political and economic structure, and illustrates the issues in the context of historical events, tracing the development of socialist (...) strategies since the mid-nineteenth century. Several of the conclusions are novel and provocative. Professor Przeworski argues that economic issues cannot justify a socialist programme, and that the workers had good reasons to struggle for the improvement of capitalism. Therefore, the project of a socialist transformation, and the fight for economic advancement, were separate historical phenomena. (shrink)

This is a study of the choices faced by socialist movements as they developed within capitalist societies. Professor Przeworski examines the three principal choices confronted by socialism: whether to work through elections; whether to rely exclusively on the working class; and whether to try to reform or abolish capitalism. He brings to his analysis a number of abstract models of political and economic structure, and illustrates the issues in the context of historical events, tracing the development of socialist (...) strategies since the mid-nineteenth century. Several of the conclusions are novel and provocative. Professor Przeworski argues that economic issues cannot justify a socialist programme, and that the workers had good reasons to struggle for the improvement of capitalism. Therefore, the project of a socialist transformation, and the fight for economic advancement, were separate historical phenomena. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Further Reflections on Conversations of Our TimeJudith Butler (bio)The exchange that Ernesto Laclau and I conducted through e-mail last year at this time begins a conversation that I expect will continue. And I suppose I would like to use this “supplementary” reflection to think about what makes such a conversation possible, and what possibilities might emerge from such a conversation.First of all, I think that I was drawn to (...) the work of Laclau and Mouffe when I began to read Hegemony and Socialist Strategy and realized that I had found a set of Marxist thinkers for whom discourse was not merely a representation of preexisting social and historical realities, but was also constitutive of the field of the social and of history. The second moment came when I realized that central to the notion of articulation, appropriated from Gramsci, was the notion of rearticulation. As a temporally dynamic and relatively unpredictable play of forces, hegemony had been cast by both Laclau and Mouffe as an alternative to forms of static structuralism that tend to construe contemporary social forms as timeless totalities. I read in Laclau and Mouffe the political transcription of Derrida’s “Structure, Sign, and Play”: a structure gains its status as a structure, its structurality, only through its repeated reinstatement. The dependency of that structure on its reinstatement means that the very possibility of structure depends on a reiteration that is in no sense determined fully in advance, that for structure, and social structure as a result, to become possible, there must first be a contingent repetition at its basis. Moreover, for some social formation to appear as structured is for it to have covered over in some way the contingency of its own installation.The theoretical rearticulation of structure as hegemony marked the work of Laclau and Mouffe as consequentially poststructuralist and offered perhaps the most important link between politics and poststructuralism in recent years (along with the work of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak). The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.It is, of course, impossible in this context to reconstruct the particular way in which Derrida’s work and Foucault’s work converge in the reconceptualization of hegemony that Laclau and Mouffe have offered. One of the points, however, that became most salient for me is the reintroduction of temporality and, indeed, of futurity into the thinking of social formations. Among many critical social theorists, the tendency has been to underscore how the systemic character of capital tends to incorporate any instance of opposition in the service of capital’s own self-augmentation. I would clearly agree that the incorporative and domesticating possibilities of capital are immense. But I would also [End Page 13] argue that any theory that fails to think the possibilities of transformation from within that “systemic” formation is itself complicit with the idea of the “eternal” character of capital that capital so readily produces. Hegemony also marks a limit to the totalizing terms within which social formations are to be thought. For what hegemony attends to are the moments of breakage, of rearticulation, convergence, and resistance that are not immediately coopted by social formations in their past and present forms. That no social formation can endure without becoming reinstated, and that every reinstatement puts the “structure” in question at risk, suggests that the possibility of its own undoing is at once the condition of possibility of structure itself.Before I knew the work of Laclau and Mouffe very well, I came close to this kind of insight in my work on gender. 1 There I argued that gender is not an inner core or static essence, but a reiterated enactment of... (shrink)

"Meszaros defines capital system as embracing private ownership, and Soviet type postcapitalism; both share the same hierarcical structure, the same destructive tendencies and the same exploitation of the labour force. Capitalism may appear to be triumphant world-wide but Beyond Capital is a devastating exposure of a system which can only renew itself at the cost of increasing its problems and can only delay but not avoid its eventual collapse. The theoretical scope and intellectual rigour of Beyond Capital is matched by (...) its practical importance; Beyond Capital is a major contribution to the development of socialist strategies in these times of despondency and crisis of the historical left." -- Back Cover. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 31.1 (2001) 73-90 [Access article in PDF] The Leader's Two BodiesSlavoj Zizek's Postmodern Political Theology Claudia Breger Over the course of the last decade, Slavoj Zizek and his "Slovenian Lacanian school" have gained renown in the Western theory market. Academics are fascinated not only by Zizek's performances as a speaker, his nondogmatic approach to issues of genre and (inter)mediality, 1 and the "literary" character of his theoretical texts (...) [Laclau, Preface xii], but also by the political turn given to psychoanalysis by the "Slovenian school." Already in his preface to Zizek's The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989), Ernesto Laclau wrote that this school's work made Lacanian theory "one of the principal reference points of the so-called 'Slovenia spring'—that is to say the democratization campaigns that have taken place in recent years" [xi]. More than ten years later—after a decade of authoritarian rule, war, and genocide in former Yugoslavia—recent revolutionary events in Serbia once more allow one to hope for a thorough democratization of the region. In a newspaper article evaluating the uprising, however, Zizek warned that these hopes might be premature: while Milosevic could find his new role as "a Serbian Jesus Christ," taking upon him all the "sins" committed by his people, Kostunica and his "democratic" nationalism might represent "nothing but Milosevic in the 'normal' version, without the excess" [Zizek, "Gewalt"]. 2Zizek was not alone in warning that the new government in Yugoslavia might not bring an end to Serbian nationalist politics. The pessimistic scenario Zizek evoked on this occasion, however, was not simply the result of his evaluation of the current political constellation in Serbia. Rather, the fantasy of the necessary return of the leader is connected to his political theory—a theory that does not allow for more optimistic scenarios of democratization and the diminution of nationalism in society. My reading of Zizek's work thus argues for a reevaluation of his theory in terms of its implicit authoritarian politics. The need for such a reevaluation is also suggested by Laclau toward the end of his recent exchange with Judith Butler and Zizek when he admits that "the more our discussions progressed, the more I realized that my sympathy for Zizek's politics was largely the result of a mirage" [Laclau, "Constructing Universality" 292]. Laclau now criticizes Zizek's radical Marxist rhetoric by suggesting that he "wants to do away with liberal democratic regimes" without specifying a political alternative [289], and describes Zizek's discourse as "schizophrenically split between a highly sophisticated Lacanian analysis and an insufficiently deconstructed traditional Marxism" [205]. On [End Page 73] the other hand, he also problematizes Zizek's "psychoanalytic discourse" as "not truly political" [289]. My argument primarily starts from this latter point: the antidemocratic—and, as I will argue, both antifeminist and anti-Semitic—moment of Zizek's theory is to be located not only in the way he performs Marxism, but also in the way he performs Lacanian psychoanalysis. While, in other words, Zizek's skepticism vis-à-vis democracy is obviously informed by, and inseparable from, Marxist critiques of "liberal," "representative" democracy, his failure to elaborate alternative visions of political change towards egalitarian and/or plural scenarios of society cannot be explained solely by his Marxist perspective. Rather, it is Zizek's reading of Lacanian psychoanalysis that does not allow for revisions of the Marxist paradigm toward, for example, a "radical democracy" as suggested by Laclau and Chantal Mouffe in their Hegemony and Socialist Strategy.In a chapter entitled "Formal Democracy and Its Discontents" in Looking Awry (1992), Zizek notes that "Lacan predicted a new rise of racism for the coming decades" as early as the 1960s [162]. 3 Zizek interprets this statement in the context of a "fundamental impasse of democracy" [162] created by the fact that the abstraction proper to democracy can never dissolve the "substantial ties"—of ethnicity, nation, and so on—that it negates [164]. 4 According to Zizek, "this constitutive paradox" has to be assumed: "The democratic attitude is always based upon a certain fetishistic... (shrink)

This article, originally delivered as a lecture at the University of Chicago, is a critical reading of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. Following Antonio Gramsci, their book reverses the meaning of the term hegemony. The traditional use of the term (for military or political leadership) shifts and gives birth to a new signification. Hegemony currently designates a privilege but a discursive one only. It is the privilege conferred to a (...) certain word or category serving as a unifying symbol for different and even heterogeneous forms of political resistance. Hegemony thus understood retains an idea of direction but without any dominating intention. It just orients multiple revolt movements without reducing their differences. Such a unifying symbol appears as a specific signifier devoid of any content or reference, thus ready to bear any contextual meaning. Does this new understanding of hegemony succeed in providing a nondogmatic and nonbinding process of unification, or does it secretely reinstall the logic of commandment? (shrink)

The majority of those who comment upon the theories of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe - both supporters and critics - treat the work of the two authors as a coherent unity. I see acute differences that demarcate the ideas of Laclau and Mouffe: differences that impede any straightforward delimitation of the authorial identity `Laclau and Mouffe'. The purpose of this paper is to bring to the fore the incommensurate political differences that separate the work of the two authors, and (...) to establish the superiority of Mouffe's position. At its most basic both authors view politics as described in their co-authored Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: i.e. `as a practice of creation, reproduction and transformation of social relations' (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985: 153). This agreement, however, conceals the fact that the authors describe the political articulation of social relations in distinct ways, and that those descriptions are implicated in, and reinforce, contrasting ethico-political commitments and prescriptions. These differences reflect the differences between the politics of the Marxist tradition retained by Laclau - albeit understood as a negative apparition of its former (ultimately) fully positive self - and Mouffe's radical democratic pluralism. This latter perspective - in its more recent formulations - represents a political compound of civic-republicanism with a defense of liberalism; this is a political imaginary that retains little if anything from the Marxist tradition. (shrink)