Cha ntal M o uffe

2 The concept of alienation. ,n mov1ng from Marx1st th1nk,ng 1n10 culture. has lost much of its Hegemony and New Political Subjects:
1ntegmy and force. For example. young women have come to me to say they do not w¥C
any children because ch11dren represent self·alienat,on I suggest that 1f you have_ a chid ard a New Concept of Democracy
aga1nst your w 111. that const1tutes alienation. But 11 1s d1fferentlf you want the ch1ld.
1s determ1ned not by the condmon of women but by the act1on of w1ll and des~re Translated by Stanley Gray
3 The protect described here beg1ns with the quest10n of how people hve the" everyday
It leaves unanswered those cons1derat1ons that m1ght result from look1ng espec1ally at
whose 1ncomes are well below the soc1al average How do the Northeastern
peasants of Upper Volta. the 1nhabnants of the Mexican campam•entos surv1ve?
note: Th1s is an untranslatable play on words The verb used. sov-v.vre. does not
exist 1n French. The verb for survive is survivre and Lefebvre IS play1ng w1th t~e prefixes
(over) and sov-(under. as in underdevelopment) ] Do they manage1 But how Is there not
parallel and underground economy be1ng constructed 1n relation to ultramodern 1nd_usuyl
1s not only a matter of turn1ng one's attenuon to the way 1n wh1ch hundreds of m1lhons
people manage 10 surviVe. but to know 1f th1s modern society-from the capnahst
not 1n the process of break1ng up. A theoretical. pract1cal. and poht1cal problem.
one does not accept that the growth of produc!lon as well as of ,nformat,on 1s
conserve the un1ty of soc1ety

~ ~-

~~ ~
~' ~
~ It is incomprehensible that equality should
not ultimately penetrate the political world as
it has elsewhere. That men should be eter-

~ ~ ~
<:::)
nally unequal among themselves in one sin-
gle respect and equal in others is inconceiva-
ble; they will therefore one day attain

~
~ i ~
~
equality in all respects.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Democracy in America

~ ~
~
Despite T ocqueville's remarkable insight into the po-
~ implications of the "democratic revolution," it is unlikely that he
~
~ ~
have imagined its leading, today, to our questioning the totality of

s
relationships. He believed, in fact, as his reflections on women's equal-

~ ~ ' , that the ineluctable drive toward equality must take into account
real differences grounded in nature. It is precisely the permanent
~ ....__
based on such a conception of natural essences that is contested
an important segment of the feminist movement. It is not merely
lli ~
~ ~
democratic revolution has proven to be mo re radical than T oe-
foresaw; the revolution has taken forms that no one could have
~ A
,lnticii>ate~d because it attacks forms of inequality that did not previously
Qearly, ecological, antinuclear, and antibureaucratic struggles, along
':::>- ~ 'all the other commonly labeled "new social movements"-! would
~ ~ ~ to call them "new democratic struggles"-should be understood as
~ ~ 't:
,rcststa.na~s to new types of oppression emerging in advanced capitalist so-
is the thesis my essay will develop, and I shall try to answer
~
a.::,
~
"-)
<" J ()-
questions: (I) What kind of antagonism do the new social
:mc1veJne:ots express? (2) What is their link with the development of capi-

~
<;:Q ~
(3) How should they be positioned in a socialist strategy? (4) What
X. ~ the implications of these struggles for our conception of democracy?
2:>
~ aaor.nt,~at Positions
I. Within every society, each social agent is inscribed
multiplicity of social relations-not only social relations of production
89
88

but also the social relations, among others, of sex, race, nationality, and
vicinity. All these social relations determine positionalities or subject po-
sitions, and every social agent is therefore the locus of many subject positions
and cannot be reduced to only one. T hus, someone inscribed in th e relations
of production as a worker is also a man or a woman, white or black, Catholic
or Protestant, French or German, and so on. A person's subjectivity is not
constructed only on the basis of his or her position in the relatio ns of
production. Furthermore, each social position, each subject position, is itself
the locus of multiple possible constructions, according to the different dis·
courses that can construct that position. Thus, the subjectivity of a given
social agent is always precariously and provisionally fixed or, to use the
Lacanian term, sutured at the intersection of various discourses.
I am consequently opposed to the class reductio nism of classical
Marxism, in which all social subjects are necessarily class subjects (each
social class having its own ideological paradigm, and every antagonism
ultimately reducible to a class antagonism ). I affirm, instead, the existence
in each individual of multiple subject positions corresponding both to the
different social relations in which the individual is inserted and to the dis-
courses that constitute these relations. There is no reason to privilege, a
priori, a "class" position as the origin of the articulation of subjectivity.
Furthermore, it is incorrect to attribute necessary paradigmatic forms to
this class position. Consequently, a critique of the notion of "fundamental
interests" is required, because this notion entails fixing necessary political '
and ideological forms within determined positions in the production pro-
cess. But interests never exist prior to the discourses in which they are
articulated and constituted; they cannot be the expression of already existing
positions on the economic level.
2. I am opposed to the economic view of social evolution as
governed by a single economic logic, the view that conceives th e unity of
a social formation as the result of"necessary effects" produced in ideological
and political superstructures by the economic infrastructures. The distinc-
tion between infra- and superstructure needs to be questioned because it
implies a conception of economy as a world of objects and relations that
exist prior to any ideological and political conditions of existence. This view
assumes that the economy is able to function on its own and follow its own
logic, a logic absolutely independent of the relations it would allegedly de-
termine. Instead, I shall defend a conception of society as a complex en-
semble of heterogeneous social relations possessing their own dynamism.
Not all such relations are reducible to social relations of produ ction or to
their ideological and political conditions of reproduction. The unity of a
social formation is the product of political articulations, which are, in turn,
the result of the social practices that produce a hegemonic formation.
3. By "hegemonic formation" I mean an ensemble of relatively
stable social forms, the materialization of a social articulation in which
different social relations react reciprocally either to provide each other with
mutual conditions of existence, or at least to neutralize the poten tially de-
structive effects of certain social relations on the reproduction of other such
relations. A hegemonic formation is always centered around certain types
of social relations. In capitalism, these are the relations of production, but
this fact should not be explained as an effect of structure; it is, rather, that
the centrality of production relations has been conferred by a hegemonic
90
Chantal Mouffe
policy. However, hegemon y is never established conclusively. A constant
struggle must create the conditions necessary to validate capi tal and its
accumulation. This implies a set of practices that are not merely economic
but political and cu ltural as well. T h us, the development of capitalism is
subject to an incessant political struggle, periodically modifying those social
forms through which social relations of production are assured their cen-
trality. In the history of capi talism we can see the rhythm of successive
hegemonic fo rmations.
4. All social re lations can become the locus of antagonism inso far
as they are constructed as relations of subordination. Man y different forms
ofsubordi nation can become the origin of conflic t and struggle. T here exists,
therefore, in society a multiplicity of potential antagonisms, and class an-
tagonism is only one amo ng many. It is not possible to reduce all those
forms of subordination and stru ggle to the expression of a single logic located
in the economy. Nor can this reduction be avoided by positing a complex
mediation between social antagonisms and the econo my. T here are multiple
forms of power in society that cannot be reduced to o r deduced from one
origin or source.
New Antagonisms and Hegemonic Formations
My thesis is that the new social movements express antagonis m s
that have emerged in response to the hegem onic formation that was fully
installed in Western co untries after World War II , a formation in crisis
today. I say fully installed because the process did no t begin at that ti me ;
these hegemonic forms were evolving, were being put into place since the
beginning of this century. Thus, we also had social movements before the
Second World War, but they really fully developed only after the war in
response to a new social hegemonic formation.
T he antagonis m s that emerged after the war, however, have not
derived from the impositi on of forms of subordination that did not exist
before. For instance, the struggles against racism and sexism resist forms
of domination that existed not only before the new hegemonic fo rm ation
but also before ca pitalism. We can see the emergence of those antagonisms
in the context of the dissolution of all the social relations based on hierarchy,
and that, of course, is li nked to the development of capitalism, which de-
stroys all those social relations and replaces the m with commodity relatio ns.
So, it is with the development of ca pitalism tha t those forms of subordi-
nation can emerge as an tagon isms. The rela tions may have existed previ-
ously, but they could not emerge as antagonisms before capitalism. Thus,
we must be concerned with the structural transformations that have pro-
vided some of the objective conditions for the emergence of these new
antagon isms. But you cannot automatically derive antagonism and struggle
from the existence of these objective conditions-they are necessary but not
sufficient- unless you assume people will necessarily struggle agai nst sub-
ordination. Obviously I am against any such essen tialist postulate. We need
to ask under what conditions those relations of subordination could give
birth to antagonisms, and what other condi tions are needed for the emer-
gence of struggles against these subordinations.
It is the hegemo nic formation installed after the Second World
War tha t, in fact, provides these conditions. We ma y characterize this for-
mation as articulating: (a) a certain type of labor process based on the
91

semiautomatic assembly line; (b) a certain type of state (the Keynesian
interventionist state); and (c) new cultural forms that can be described as
"mediating culture." The investiture of such a hegemonic formation in-
volved a complex process, articulating a set of transformations, each of
which derived from a different logic. It is impossible to derive any one of
these from another in some automatic fashion, as in an economistic logic.
In fact, the transformations of the labor process that led to Taylorization
and finally to Fordism were governed by the need to destroy the autonomy
that workers continued to exercise in the labor process and to end worker
resistance to the valorization of capital. But the Fordist semiautomatic as-
sembly line made possible a mass production for which , given the low salary
level, there were insufficient outlets. Thus, the working class's mode of life
had to change significantly in order to create the conditions necessary for
accumulation to regain its ascendancy. However, the fact that certain con-
ditions were necessary for the accumulation and reproduction of capitalist
social relations to function in no way guaranteed that these conditions would
come about. The solution was to use worker struggles, which were multi-
plying in response to the intensification of labor, to establish a connection
between increased productivity and increased wages. But this required a
state intervention with a double purpose: it was just as urgent to counter
the capitalist's inclination to lower wages as it was to set up a political
framework in which worker's demands could be 111ade compatible with the
reproduction of capitalism. This provides significant evidence that this new
hegemonic formation resulted from a political intervention.
These changes in the labor process can also be defined as a trans- .
formation of an extensive regime of accumulation into an intensive regime
of accumulation. The latter is characterized by the expansion of capitalist
relations of production to the whole set of social activities, which are thereby
subordinated to the logic of production for profit. A new mode of con-
sumption has been created that expresses the domination of commodity
relations over noncommodity relations. As a consequence, a profound trans-
formation of the existing way of life has taken place. Western society has
been transformed into a big marketplace where all the products of h uman
labor have become commodities, where more and more needs must go
through the market to be satisfied. Such a "commodifica tion of social life"
has destroyed a series of previous social relations and re placed them with
commodity relations. This is what we know as the consumer society.
Today, it is not only through the sale of their labor power that
individuals are submitted to the domination of capital but also through
their participation in many other social relations. So many spheres of social
life are now penetrated by capitalist relations that it is almost impossible
to escape them. Culture, leisure, dea th, sex, everything is now a field of
profit for capital. The destruction of the environment, the transformation
of people into mere consumers-these are the results of tha t subordination
of social life to the accumulation of capital. T hose new forms o f domination,
of course, have been studied by many a u tho rs, but there has bee n a tendency,
especially at the beginning of th e sixties-you will remember Marcuse's One
Dimensional Man-to believe that the powe r of capital was so overwhelm-
ing that no struggle, no resistance, cou ld take place. Yet a few years later it
became clear that those new forms of domination would not go unchal-
lenged; they have given rise to many n ew antagonisms, whic h explains the
92
Chantal Mouffe
wid~ni.ng of all forms of social conflict smce the middle of the sixties. My
tbeSlS IS that many of the new social movements are expressions of resist-
ances against that com modification of social life and the new forms of
subordination it has created .
But that is o nl y one aspec t of the p roblem; there is a seco nd
aspect that is extre mely importan t. You remember that we have defined the
new hegemonic fo rmati on not only in terms of Fordism but also in terms
of the Keynesian welfare state. The new hegemonic formation has been
characterized by growing state intervention in all aspects of social life, which
is a key characteristic. of the Keynesian state. The intervention of the state
has led to a phenomenon of bureaucratization, which is also at the origin
of new forms of sub?rdination and resistance. It must be said that in many
cases commod1ficauon and bu reauc rat iza tio n are articulated together, as
when the state acts 1n favor of capital. Thus, while it might be difficult to
distinguish between them, I think it is extremely importa nt to do so and
·· to analyze them as differe nt systems of domination. There may be cases in
which the state acts aga inst the interests of capital to produce what Claus
Offe has called "decommodification." At the same time, such interventions,
because of their bureaucrati c c haracter, may produce new forms of subor-
dination. This is the case, for example, when the sta te provides services in
the fields of health, transportation, housing, and education.
A third aspect of the prob lem is that some new types of struggle
must be seen as res1stances to the growing un i formity of social life a uni-
formity that is the res ult of the kind of mass culture imposed by the,media.
"_This _imposition of a ho':logen ized way of life, of a uniform cultural pattern,
IS bemg challenged by different groups that reaffirm t hei r right to their dif-
feren~, their. sp~ci~city, be it t hrough the exaltation of their regional identity
or theu specJficJty m the realm of fashion, music, or language.
The profound changes brought about by this construction of a
new hegemonic formati on gave rise to the resistances expressed in the new
social movements. However, as I have said, one should not blame new
.. ~orms of inequality for all the antagonisms that emerged in the sixties. Some,
like the women's m ovement, concerned long-standing types of oppression
that had not yet become antagonistic because they were located in a hier-
archical society accepting certain inequalities as "natural."
Whether antagonism is produced by the co mmodification of all
' soci~ needs, or by the interve nti o n of sta te bureaucracy, or by cultural
leveling and the destruction of tradit ional values (whether or not the latter
are themselves oppressive)-what all these antagonisms have in com mon
is that the problem is not caused by the ind ividual's defined position in the
pr?<fuction system ; they are, therefore, not "class antagonis ms." Obvio usl y
this does not mean that class antagonism has bee n eliminated. In fact,
insofar as more a nd more areas of social life are converted into "services"
provided by capital ism , the number of individuals subordinated to capitalist
production relations increases. If you take the term "proletarian" in its strict
sense, as a worker who sells his or her labor, it is quite legitimate to speak
of a process of proletarianization. The fact that there are an Increasing
number of individuals who may suffer capitalist dom ination as a class does
not signify a new form of subordination but rather the extension of an
already existing one. What is new is the spread o f social co nflict to o ther
areas and the politicization of all these social relations. When we recognize
93

that we are dealing with resistances to forms of oppression developed by
the postwar hegemonic formation, we begin to understand the Importance
of these struggles for a socialist program.
It is wrong, then, to affirm, as some do, that these moveme_n~s
emerged because of the crisis of the welfare state. No doubt that c':s1s
exacerbated antagonisms, but it did not cause them; they are the expressiOn
of a triumphant hegemonic formation. It is, on the contra:Y, reas_onable to
suppose that the crisis was in part provoked by the growmg resistance to
the domination of society by capital and the state. Neoconservative theo-
reticians are, therefore, not wrong to insist on the problem of the ung?v·
emability of Western countries, a problem they would solve by slowmg
down what they call the "democratic assault." To propose the cns1s as the
origin of the new social movements is, in addition, politically dangerous:
it leads to thinking of them as irrational manifestations, as phenomena of
social pathology. Thus, it obscures the important lessons these struggles
provide for a reformulation of socialism.
New Antagonisms and Democratic Struggle . no possibility, no play, in those subject positions for women to call that
I have thus far limited my analysis to the transformatiOnS that ·
have taken place in Western societies after World Wa: II and to the resulti~g
creation of new forms of subordination and inequality, wh1ch produced l.ll
tum the new social movements. But there is an entirely different aspect of
the question that must now be developed. Pointing to the_ existence of in·
equalities is not sufficient to explain why they produce soc1al unrest. I_f yo_u
reject, as I obviously do, the assumption that the ~ssence of humankind IS
to struggle for equality and democracy, then there IS an Important probl~rn
to resolve. One must determine what conditions are necessary for specific
forms of subordination to produce struggles that seek their abolishment. _As
I have said the subordination of women is a very old phenomenon, wh1ch
became th~ target of feminist struggles only when the social model based
on hierarchy had collapsed. It is here that my opening re_ference to de Toe- .
queville is pertinent, for he was the first to grasp the 1mport~nce of the
democratic revolution on the symbolic level. As long as equality has not
yet acquired (with the democratic revolution) _its place of central s~gnificance
in the social imagination of Western societies, struggles for th1s equal~ty
cannot exist. As soon as the principle of equality is admitted in one doma1n,
however the eventual questioning of all possible forms of inequality is an
ineluctable consequence. Once begun, the democratic revol~tion has had,
necessarily, to undermine all forms of power and dommat10n, whatever
they might be. . . . ·.
I would like to elaborate on the relat10nsh1p between antagomsrn
and struggle and to begin with the following thesis:. An antag?nism ~
emerge when a collective subject-of course, here I am mterested m political
antagonism at the level of the collective subject-th~t has ~ee~ c_onstructed
in a specific way, to certain existing discourses, finds Its subJect:vJty negate_d
by other discourses or practices. That ne~ation can h~ppen m two bas1c
ways. First, subjects constructed on the bas1s of ce0am nghts can find_ them·
selves in a position in which those rights are den_1ed. by some pra_cuce~ or
discourses. At that point there is a negation of subJeCtiVItY. or Jdentlfi~at!On,
which can be the basis for an antagonism. I am not saymg that th1s nee·
essarily leads to an antagonism; it is a necessary but not sufficient condition.
94
Chantal Mouffe
The second form in which antagonism emerges corresponds to that ex-
pressed by feminism and the black movement. It is a situation in which
subjects constructed in subordination by a set of discourses are, at the same
time, interpellated as equal by other discourses. Here we have a co ntradic-
tory interpellation. Like the first form, it is a negation of a particular subject
position, but, unlike the first, it is the subjectivity-in-subordination that is
negated, which opens the possibility for its deconstruction and challenging.
For example, consider the case of the suffragist movement, or,
more generally, the question of why it is that, although women's subordi-
nation has existed for so long, only at the end of the nineteenth century
and the beginning of the twentieth century did subordination give rise to a
femi nist movement. That has lead so me Marxi st feminists to say that there
was no real women's subordination before; women's subordination is a
consequence of capitalism and that is why feminism emerged under capi-
talism. I think this is wrong. Imagine the way women were constructed, as
women, in the Middle Ages. All the possible discourses-the church, the
family-constructed women as subordinate subjects. There was absolutely
subordination into question. But with the democratic revolutions of the
nineteenth century the assertion that "all men are equal" appears for the
first time. Obviously "men" is ambiguous because it refers to both men and
women, so women found themselves contradictorily interpellated. As citi-
zens women are equal, or at leas t interpellated as equal, but that equality
is negated by their being women. (It is no coincidence that Mary Woll -
stonecraft, one of the important English feminists, was living with William
Godwin, who was an important radical; this demonstrates the influence of
radicalism on the emergence of the suffragist movement.) So that is what I
understand by contradictory interpellation-the emergence of a section of
equality at a point of new subjectivity, which contradicts the subordination
in all other subject positions. That is what allows wo men to extend the
democratic revolution, to question all their subordinate subject positions.
The same analysis could be given for the emergence of the black libera tion
movement.
I should emphasize here the im portance of actually existing dis-
course in the emergence and construction of antagonisms. Antagonisms are
always discursively constructed; the forms they take depend on existing
discourses and their hegemonic role at a given moment. Thus, different
positions in sexual relations do not necessarily construct the concept of
woman or femininity in different ways. It depends on the way the antag-
onism is constructed, and the enemy is defined by the existing discourses.
We must also take into account the role of the democratic discourse that
became predominant in the Western world wi th the "democratic revolu-
tion." I refer to the transformation, at the level of the symbolic, that de-
constructed the theological-political-cosmological vision of the Middle Ages,
a vision in which people were born into a specific place in a structured and
hierarchical society for which the idea of equality did not exist.
People struggle for equality not because of some ontological pos-
tulate but because they have been constructed as subjects in a democratic
tradition that puts those values at the center of social life. We can see the
widening of social conflict as the extension of the democratic revolution
into more and more spheres of social life, into more social relations. All
95

positions that have been constructed as relations of domination/subordi-
nation will be deconstructed because of the subversive character of dem-
ocratic discourse. Democratic discourse extends its field of influence from
a starting point, the equality of citizens in a political democracy, to socialism,
which extends equality to the level of the economy and then into other
social relations, such as sexual, racial, generational, and regional. Demo-
cratic discourse questions all forms of inequality and subordination. That
is why I propose to call those new social movements "new democratic
struggles," because they are extensions of the democratic revolution to new
forms of subordination. Democracy is our most subversive idea because it
interrupts all existing discourses and practices of subordination.
Now I want to make a distinction between democratic antago-
nism and democratic struggle. Democratic antagonisms do not necessarily ·
lead to democratic struggles. Democratic antagonism refers to resistance to
subordination and inequality; democratic struggle is directed toward a wide
democratization of social life. I am hinting here at the possibility that dem-
ocratic antagonism can be articulated into different kinds of discourse, even
into right-wing discourse, because antagonisms are polysemic. There is no
one paradigmatic form in which resistance against domination is expressed.
Its articulation depends on the discourses and relations of forces in the
present struggle for hegemony.
Stuart Hall's analysis of Thatcherism enables us to understand
the way popular consciousness can be articulated to the Right. Indeed, any
democratic antagonism can be articulated in many different ways. Consider
the case of unemployment. A worker who loses his or her job is in a situ-
ation- the first one described above-in which, having been defined on the
basis of the right to have a job, he or she now finds that right denied. This
can be the locus of an antagonism, although there are ways of reacting to
unemployment that do not lead to any kind of struggle. The worker can
commit suicide, drink enormously, or batter his or her spouse; there are
many ways people react against that negation of their subjectivity. But con- ·
sider now the more political forms that reaction can take. There is no reason
to believe the unemployed person is going to construct an antagonism in
which Thatcherism or capitalism is the enemy. In England, for example,
the discourse of Thatcherism says, "You have lost your job because women
are taking men's jobs." It constructs an antagonism in which feminism is
the enemy. Or it can say, "You have lost your job because all those im-
migrants are taking the jobs of good English workers." Or it can say, "You
have lost your job because the trade unions maintain such high wages that ,
there are not enough jobs for the working class." In all these cases, dem-
ocratic antagonism is articulated to the Right rather than giving birth to
democratic struggle.
Only if the struggle of the unemployed is articulated with the
struggle of blacks, of women, of all the oppressed, can we speak of the
creation of a democratic struggle. As I have said, the ground for new struggles ·
has been the production of new inequalities attributable to the postwar
hegemonic formation. That the objective of these struggles is autonomy and
not power has often been remarked. It would, in fact, be wrong to oppose
radically the struggles of workers to the struggles of the new social move-
ments; both are efforts to obtain new rights or to defend endangered ones.
Their common element is thus a fundamental one.
96
Ch antal Mouffe
Once we have abandoned the idea of a paradigmatic form, which
the worker's struggles would be obliged to express, we cannot affirm that
the essential aim of these struggles is the conquest of political power. What
is needed is an examination of the different forms that democratic struggles
for equality may take, according to the type of adversary they oppose and
the strategy they imply. In the case of resistances that seek to defend existing
rights against growing state intervention, it is obvious that the matter of
autonomy will be more important than for those resistances that seek to
obtain state action in order to redress inequalities originating in civil society.
This does not change the fact that they are of the same nature by virtue of
their common aim: the reduction of inequalities and of various forms of
subordination. That the vast extension of social conflict we arc living through
is the work of the democratic revolution is better understood by the New
Right than by the Left. This is why the Right strives to halt the progress of
equality. Starting from different viewpoints, both neoliberal theoreticians
of the market economy and those who are called, in the United States,
"neoconservatives" are variously seeking to transform dom inant ideological
parameters so as to reduce the central role played in these by the idea of
democracy, or else to redefine democracy in a restrictive wa y to reduce its
subversive power.
For neoliberals like Hayek, the idea of democracy is subordinated
to the idea of individual liberty, so that a defense of economic liberty and
private property replaces a defense of equality as the privileged value in a
liberal society. Naturally, Hayek does not attack democratic values frontally,
but he does make them into an arm for the defense of individual liberty.
It is clear that, in his thinking, should a conflict arise between the two,
democracy should be sacrificed.
Another way to stop the democratic revolution is offered by the
neoconservatives, whose objective is to redefine the notion of democracy
itself so that it no longer centrally implies the pursuit of equality and the
importance of political participation. Democracy is thus emptied of all of
its substance, on the pretext that it is being defended against its excesses,
which have led it to the edge of the egalitarian abyss.
To this purpose, Brzezinski, when he was director of the Trilateral
Commission, proposed a plan to "increasingly separate the political systems
from society and to begin to conceive of the two as separate entities." The
idea was to remove as many decisions as possible from political control
and to give their responsibility exclusively to experts. Such a measure seeks
to depoliticize the most fundamental decisions, not only in the economic
but also in the social and political spheres, in order to achieve, in the words
of Huntington, "a greater degree of moderation in democracy."
The attempt is to transform the predominant shared meanings
in contemporary democratic liberal societies in order to rearticulate them
in a conservative direction, justifying inequality. If it succeeds, if the New
Right's project manages to prevail, a great step backward will have been
taken in the movement of the democratic revolution. We shall witness the
establishment of a dualistic society, deeply divided between a sector of the
privileged, those in a strong position to defend their rights, and a sector of
all those who are excluded from the dominant system, whose demands
cannot be recognized as legitimate because they will be inadmissible by
definition.
97

It is extremely important to recognize that, in their antiegalitarian
crusade, the various formations of the New Right are trying to take advan-
tage of the new antagonisms born of commodification, bureaucratization,
and the uniformization of society. Margaret Thatcher's success in Great
Britain and Ronald Reagan's in the United States are unmistakable signs:
the populist Right has been able to articulate a whole set of resistances
countering the increase in state intervention and the destruction of tradi-
tional values and to express them in the language of neoliberalism. It is thus
possible for the Right to exploit struggles that express resistance to the new
forms of subordination stemming from the hegemonic formation of the
Keynesian welfare state.
This is why it is both dangerous and mistaken to see a "privileged
revolutionary subject" constituted in the new social movements, a subject
who would take the place formerly occupied by the now fallen worker class.
I think this is the current thinking represented by Alain Tourraine in France
and by some of the people linked with the peace movement in Germany.
They tend to see new social movements in a much too simplistic way. Like
those of the workers, these struggles are not necessarily socialist or even
progressive. Their articulation depends on discourses existing at a given
moment and on the type of subject the resistances construct. They can,
therefore, be as easily assimilated by the discourses of the anti-status quo
Right as by those of the Left, or be simply absorbed into the dominant
system, which thereby neutralizes them or even utilizes them for its own
modernization.
It is, in fact, evident that we must give up the whole problematic
of the privileged revolutionary subject, which, thanks to this or that char-
acteristic, granted a priori by virtue of its position in social relations, was
presumed to have some universal status and the historical mission of lib-
erating society. On the contrary, if every antagonism is necessarily specific
and limited, and there is no single source for all social antagonisms, then
the transition to socialism will come about only through political construe.
tion articulating all the struggles against different forms of inequality. If, in
certain cases, a particular group plays a central role in this transition, it is
for reasons that have to do with its political capacity to effect this articulation
in specific historical conditions, not for a priori ontological reasons. We
must move beyond the sterile dichotomy opposing the working class to the
social movements, a dichotomy that cannot in any case correspond to so-
ciological separation, since the workers cannot be reduced to their class
position and are inserted into other types of social relations that form other
subject positions. We must recognize that the development of capitalism
and of increasing state intervention has enlarged the scope of the political
struggle and extended the effect of the democratic revolution to the whole
of social relations. This opens the possibility of a war for position at all
levels of society, which may, therefore, open up the way for a radical trans-
formation .
The New Antagonisms and Socialism
This war for position is already underway, and it has hitherto
been waged more effectively by the Right than by the Left. Yet the success
of the New Right's current offensive is not definitive. Everything depends
on the Left's ability to set up a true hegemonic counteroffensive to integrate
current struggles into an overall socialist transformation. It must create what
98
Chantal Mouffe
Gramsci called an "expansive hegemony," a chain of equivalences between
all the democratic demands to produce the collective will of all those people
struggling against subordination. It must create an "organic ideology" that
articulates all those movements together. Clearly, this project cannot limit
itself to questioning the structural rela tions of capitalist production. It must
also question the mode of development of those forces endemic to the
rationale of capitalist production. Capitalism as a way of life is, in fact,
responsible for the numerous forms of subordination and inequality at-
tacked by new social movements.
The traditional socialist model, insofar as it accepts an assembly-
line productivity of the Fordist type, cannot provide an alternative within
the current social crisis and must be profoundly modified. We need an
alternative to the logic that promotes the maximum production of material
goods and the consequent incessant creation of new material needs, leading
in turn to the progressive destruction of natural resources and the environ-
ment. A socialist progra m that does not include the ecological and anti-
nuclear movements cannot hope to solve current problems. The same ob-
jection applies to a socialism tolerant of the disproportionate role given to
the state. State intervention has, in fact, been proposed as a remedy for the
capitalist anarchy. But with the triumph of the Keynesian state, the
bourgeoisie has in large part realized this objective. Yet it is just this increase
in state intervention that has given rise to the new struggles against the
bureaucratization of social life. A program wishing to utilize this potential
cannot, therefore, propose increased state intervention but must encourage
increased self-determination and self-government for both individuals and
citizens. T his does not mean accepting the arguments of the New Right, or
falling back into the trap of renewed privatization. The state ought to have
charge of key sectors of the economy, including control of welfare services.
But all these domains should be organized and controlled by workers and
consumers rather than the bureaucratic apparatus. Otherwise, the potential
of this antistate resistance will simpl y be used by the Right for its own ends.
As for the women's movement, it is apparent that it needs an
even more thoroughgoing transformation. Such a transformation is not uto-
pian. We are beginning to see how a society in which the development of
science and technology is directed toward the liberation of the individual
rather than toward his or her servitude could also bring about a true equality
ofthe sexes. The consequences of automation-the reduction of the workday
and the change in the very notion of work that implies-make possible a
far-reaching transformation of everyday life and of the sexual division of
labor that plays such an important role in women's subordination. But for
this to occur, the Left would have to abandon its conservative attitude
toward technological development and make an effort to bring these im-
portant changes under its control. . .
We hear, all too often, as a reaction to the apologists of postin-
dustrial society, that we are still in a capitalist society and that nothing has
changed. Though it is quite true that capitalism still prevails, man y things
have changed since Marx. We are, today, in the midst of an important
restructuring. Whether the outcome will strengthen capitalism or move us
ahead in the constru ction of a more democratic society depends on the
ability of existing forces to articulate the struggles taking place for the cre-
ation of a new hegemonic formation .
99
 Chantal Mouffe
What is specific to the present situation is the proliferation of· To combine equality and liberty successfully in a new vision of
democratic struggles. The struggle for equality is no longer limited to the democracy, one that recognizes the multiplicity of social relations and their
political and economic arenas. Many new rights are being defined and de- corresponding subject positions, requires that we achieve a task conceived
manded: those of women, of homosexuals, of various regional and ethnic at the beginning of the democratic revolution, one that defines the kind of
minorities. All inequalities existing in our society are now at issue. To politics required for the advent of modernity. If to speak of socialism still
understand this profound transformation of the political field we must re- means anything, it should be to designate an extension of the democratic
think and reformulate the notion of democracy itself for the view we have revolution to the entirety of social relations and the attainment of a radical,
inherited does not enable us to grasp the amplitude ~f the democratic rev- libertarian, and plural democracy. Our objective, in other words, is none
olution. To this end, it is not enough to improve upon the liberal parlia- other than the goal Tocqueville perceived as that of democratic peoples,
mentary conception of democracy by creating a number of basic democratic that ultimate point where freedom and equality meet and fuse, where people
forms through which citizens could participate in the management of public "will be perfectly free because they are entirely equal, and where they will
affairs, or workers in the management of industries. In addition to these all be perfectly equal because they are entirely free."
traditional social subjects we must recognize the existence of others and
their political characters: women and the various minorities also have a
right to equality and to self-determination. If we wish to articulate all these
de':loc:atic struggles, we must respect their specificity and their autonomy,
wh1ch lS to say that we must institutionalize a true pluralism, a pluralism
of subJects.
A new conception of democracy also requires that we transcend
a certain individualistic conception of rights and that we elaborate a central
notion of solidarity. This can only be achieved if the rights of certain subjects
are not defended to the detriment of the rights of other subjects. Now it is
obvious that, in many cases, the rights of some entail the subordination of
the rights of others. The defense of acquired rights is therefore a serious
obstacle to the establishment of true equality for all. It is precisely here that
one sees the line of demarcation separating the Left's articulation of the
resistances of the new social movements from the utilization of these same
by the New Right. Whereas the Left's program seeks to set up a system of
equivalences among the greatest possible number of democratic demands
and thus strives to reduce all inequalities, the Right's solution as a form
of populism, satisfies the needs of certain groups by creating n~w inequal-
ities. Th~s is ':"hY the politics of the latter, instead of extending democracy,
necessanly wtdens an already deep social split between the privileged and
the nonprivileged.
The progressive character of a struggle does not depend on its
p_lace of origin-we_ ha-:-re said that all workers' struggles are not progres-
Sive-but rather on 1ts hnk to other struggles. The longer the chain of equiv-
alences set up between the defense of the rights of one group and those of
other groups, the deeper will be the democratization process and the more
difficult it will be to neutralize certain struggles or make them serve the
ends of the Right. The concept of solidarity can be used to form such a
chain of democratic equivalences. It is urgent that we establish this new
democratic theory, with the concept of solidarity playing the central role,
to counter the New Right's offensive in the field of political philosophy.
Faced with an effort like Hayek's to redefine freedom individu-
alistically, what the Left needs is a postindividualist concept of freedom
for it is still over questions of freedom and equality that the decisive ide:
ological battles are being waged. What is at stake is the redefinition of those
fundamental notions; and it is the nature of these relations that will deter-
mine the kinds of political subjects who will emerge and the new hegemonic
block that will take shape.
101
100

Discussion ·. · What I've been defending is a view of hegemony as the articulation of demands
Question
Could you elaborate on what it is about liberal democracy
that needs to be redefined, and what a superseded or redefined liberal democracy of
the Left would be like?
Mouffe
Let me reiterate what I said in the paper while elaborating
a number of points. First, it is important to distinguish between democratic and
liberal theory. What we know today as a single ideology-liberal democracy-is in
fact the result of an articulation that took place during the nineteenth century. While
many Marxists have assumed that democracy is in essence libera l, that there is no
contradiction between the two, C. B. MacPherson has shown that the idea of de-
mocracy was articulated to t hat of liberalism only through struggle . That struggle
created the organic ideology that is still, in some sense, dominant today-liberal
democracy. The cost, of course, was that democracy was liberalized, though one can
also say liberalism was democratized. In this way democratic ideology became linked
with the defense of private property. Liberty came to mean the liberty to have your
own property. I think we have to fight this restriction of the idea of democracy by
rearticula ting democracy with other important concepts to elaborate what I call a
"radical, plural, and libertarian democracy."
Of course, we are also confron ted by the neoconservative
effort to sever the li nk between liberalism and democracy by redefining democracy
as individual freedom . This is clearly a defense of private property, one that severs
the li nk between democracy and political eq uality. If the idea of democracy as po-
litical eq uality has been incorporated a nd disarmed through its articulation with
liberalism , it nevertheless remains potentially subversive. That is w hy the New Right '
is attempting to break with liberal democratic ideology by rearticu lating liberalism
without democracy, thereby transforming liberal democracy into liberal conserva-
tism. I think the Left should also be trying to sever the link between liberalism and
democracy, but in order to radicalize the concept of democracy. To do that we need
to work a t the level of political philosophy, to rearticulate ideas of equality and
justice.
Finally, we need to consider what kind of institu tions we
would need in a radical democratic society. Left-wing Euro-communists have done
some reflection here, proposing to augment represen tative democratic institutions
with several forms of grass-roots democracy, both at the level of the workplace and
at the level of the community. This is necessary but not e nough, because it will not
guarantee the inclusion of the wide range of democratic demands that must be
represented in the expan sive hegemony I have called fo r. For example, grass-roots
democracy in a factory will not necessarily involve feminism or ecology. These
questions clearly call for a new type of autogestion, a type of self-management that
cannot be seen simply as laborers managing their own factory. We can perfectly well
imagine a situation in which workers manage their factory without really taking care
of the environment, without responding to the demands o f women. To do so would
involve rethinking what kinds of products we want to see produced by society. This
new model of self-managemen t would constitute a generalized, extended au togestion.
T his is the form of institution needed for a radical libertarian democracy to be
implemented. It must be a democracy with a plural ity of such institutions at d ifferent
levels of the social formation.
Question
Could you elaborate on the concept of expa nsive hegemony
and on how different demands would be related wi thin the collective wi ll?
Mouffe
F irst, as I read Gramsci , I don't think it is correct to see
hegem ony as the imposition of a class ideology on undergroups, as many have done.
102
Chantal Mouffe
coming from different groups to what Gramsci called a "hegemonic principle." But
he distinguished two ways in which such demands can be articulated. One is through
neutralization: you can take account of the demand of some group, not to transform
society so as to resolve the antagonism it expresses, but only so as to impede the
extension of that demand. That is what the New Right is doing when it takes account
of some of the resistances against the new hegemonic system. It tries to neutralize
demands by creating antagonisms that prevent the creation of a chain of equivalence
between various democratic demands. That is how I understand hegemony by neu-
tralization.
The opposite way demands are articulated is in what Gram-
sci called the "expansive hegemony." Rather than neutralize demands, an expansive
hegemony links them with all other democratic struggles to establish a chain of
equivalence. Of course, the wider the chain of equ ivalence, the wider the democ-
ratization of society, and the wider the collective will to be built on that basis. Then
it would be unthinkable for workers to fight for their rights only and not, at the
same time, for the rights of gays and women. It is important to reiterate that what
makes a struggle democratic is not where it comes from but the way it is articulated
with other democratic struggles. Yet such an expansive hegemon y must respect the
autonomy and specificity of the demands of different groups. It is not just a matter
of saying that all th ose demands are implicit in the demands of the working class;
that once the working class comes to power, racial , sexual, and gender contradictions
will disappear.
Once we accept that there is no one pnvilcged struggle, no
single origin to all forms of domination, we must then avoid creating a hierarchy
of struggles. Moreover, when we realize that most struggles are struggles to demand
rights, we can recognize that in many cases rights have been acquired by creating
inequalities with respect to other groups. The rights of some exist because others
are in a subordinate position. That is certainly the case for the demands of the
working class. The workers now have some rights by virtue of the oppression of
blacks and women; the demand to give these oppressed groups their rights must
mean that some of the rights of the workers must be abridged. Thus, any attempt
to reduce inequalities among the working class requires the transformation of the
subjectivity of the workers. And for that we need a new organic ideology that defines
equality in a different way, not just on the basis of rights. In a sense, we need the
elaboration of a postindividualist liberalism in which rights are defined not as a
personal possession but as a form of solidarity among al l oppressed groups. In calling
this a form of liberalism I am suggesting that it is dangerous to do away with
liberalism entirely, a danger reflected in the Soviet Union.
Q uest ion
G iven your e mphases on the need not to compromise the
autonomy of various movements and on the plurality of discourses, how can you
speak of a single collective will? Who could possibly interpret such a will ?
Mou ffe
I suppose you are right; " collective will" is a metaphor, and
it is not necessarily a very good one! It was obviously a reference to Gramsci. In
Gramsci the collective will is orga nized through the party on the basis of the he-
gemony of the proletariat. He believed that the working class necessarily provides
the articulating principle for an expa ns ive hegemony. To import that notion into
my discourse creates a series of problems. Although I don't want to argue tha t the
working class can never be th e articulating principle-of course, in some circum-
stances it might be-l do want to argue that it won't always be. While it may, under
certain historical conditions, develop the political capaci ty to represent the interests
of others, we can also imagi ne that in other circumsta nces another social movement
103

can be the center. We can also imagine that there might not be any cen ter; there is
no reason why there should necessarily be a center of an expansive hegemony.
As a consequence, contrary to Gramsci, I do not believe that
the party-and I am not thinking only of the Leninist party, but of any party-will
necessarily be the agent of change. A party can be too authoritarian and too rigid
to articulate all those different movements so as to maintain their autonomy. On
the other hand, some people argue that once you question the necessary hegemony
of the party and the working class, you are left with pure diversity; they go on to
argue that there need not be any articulation of those struggles. But if you believe
there must be an articulating principle, and it is not provided by the party, where
will it be found? I think it is a mistake to look for one organization, the "good"
organization. We need to think in terms of the articulations that must take place.
Those forms of articulation will differ according to the country. For instance, I do
not believe that trade unions can always play an important role. They can play an
important role in France and Italy, but it is very unlikely that they can in England
or Germany.
So there are no recipes. Intellectuals must abandon the idea
that they have to tell the people how to organize, to design a blueprint for the "good"
organization. All spontaneous revolutions-such as those in Hungary and Poland-
have shown that people find their own form of organization. Each society must find
its own way of articulating its different struggles together. And there will be different
forms of articulation. So we can only use the Gramscian notion of a national col-
lective will, or a popular national will, in a metaphoric way. Like Rousseau's concept
of a general will, it can imply too much homogeneity.
Question
It seems to me that we are witnessing two different theoret-
ical moves in Marxism today, with different political consequences. The first is a ,
more traditional materialism and looks at the economic impact of and on discourse.
But it apparently results in political pessimism. The second, which seems to be yours,
privileges discourse as a way of transforming consciousness and agency. It gives a
more optimistic political prognosis, but it fails to connect discourse to actual social
groups and institutions. In that sense, it seems to be a new form of idealism. Could
you comment on this?
Mouffe
I must say that I cannot accept the opposition between ide-
alism and materialism-it doesn't pertain to my semantic world- and in that I think
I follow Gramsci. One can show that materialism is idealist, because to think that
there is only one principle of explanation, be it matter or ideas, is in fact the same
problematic. In any case, I don't understand what you mean by describing me as
idealist, especially since by discourse I understand not only speech and writing but
also a series of social practices, so discourse is not just a question of ideas. That
doesn't mean that the elaboration of a level of ideas is not important, which is why
I made the point about political philosophy. Here, again , I follow Gramsci who said
that philosophy, as ideology, permeates all levels of consciousness. Even common
sense is informed by philosophy. Philosophy is where the categories of thought are
elaborated, allowing us to speak about our experience. For example, many people
who have never read anything about democratic theory nevertheless speak and act
as political subjects on the basis of ideas elaborated by ph ilosophers. That is why I
insist on that level of analysis. But I am not saying this is all we need. We won't
transform the world simply by writing the last word on equali ty. But it is important
in constructing new political subjects, so it is one dimension of the struggle.
104
Catharine A. MacKinnon
Desire and Power: A Feminist Perspective
This conference, however broad its inspirati?n, so-
phisticated its conception , competent its ~rganization, and elaboratem what
is called here "articulation," was not pnnc1pally set up to ~aximize con-
ferring. Conferring happens interstitially. Instead , those Identified as speak-
ers do what are called "talks" ; however, we read them. They are called
"works in progress"; however, many of them are quite "d?ne." The audience
responds with what are called "qu~stions," many of wh1ch are In the form
of statements. This event presents 1tself as a dialogue but operates through
a linear series of speeches. We are presented as being engaged 1n a process,
when in actuality we gather to produce a product. We are In a productiOn-
consumption cycle, the product being the boo~ that will com~ out of all of
this. The silence that comprises the audiences or. the reader .s half of the
dialogue makes my half sound like one hand clappmg. ~n ommous s~und,
I should think for anyone trained on the Left. In part1al, 1f enurely mad-
equate, respon~e to these thoughts, I have, in revising my paper, Interspersed
questions I received both at the time of the conference and smce, along With
some partial responses. I have also retained the rhetoncal style of an address
to an audience. These expository choices are an attempt to make this paper
more dialogic and open-textured, even if only margmally so.. .
One more thing about the politics of th1s proJ.ect and
my place in it. We purport to want to change things, but we talk m w~ys
that no one understands. We know that discourses have fashw.ns, that were
wii!
in the midst of a certai n fashio n now , and a few years later 1t be another,
and ten years ago it was different. We know bette~ ~han to think that. th1s
is the pure onward progress of knowledge. We partiCipate In these fashwns,
are swept along in them, but we don't set thef!l. I'm pa0icularl y con.cerned
that in talking thus fashionably about complicated realities-and I m not
saying that what we have said here is not central to real concerns-we often
have highly coded conversations. Not o nly one-sid ed but coded. What con-
ditions create access to the latest code book? . .
Sometimes I think to myself, MacKinnon, you wnte.
Do you remember that the majority of the world's illiterates are wo~en?
What are you doing? I feel that powerfully when I think ~bout what bnngs
us all here-which is to make the changes we are talking about. When
someone condemns someone else for th e use of j argo n , they tend to suppose
that they themselves speak plain p late-glass. I'm not exempting myself from
105