Date: Wed, 20 Jul 1994 09:37:02 -0400 (EDT)
From: Philip Goldstein <pgold-AT-strauss.udel.edu>
Subject: LaClau and Mouffe



I sent this message several days ago, but no one got it -- my apologies
if you did. Hope that it is still germane.
Philip Goldstein

Many thanks to Wes Cecil for explaining what is wrong with Laclau and
Mouffe. I agree and disagree with his reasons. Are they, as he says,
apologists for liberal democracy? They say that one can make liberal
democracy radical. That is apology because that argument says that
liberal democracy has great potential. Still, since we are talking about
radical and not liberal democracy, the argument is not really apology.
Besides, what is the alternative to liberal /radical democracy? In the
Marxist tradition, the alternative is the dictatorship of the
proletariot. Laclau and Mouffe are good critics of this position, whose
potential has been exploded by the fall of Soviet communism. I know that
people argue that the communist parties of the former USSR, etc., were
never really true to Marx, but I don't really believe that the problems
posed by Soviet communism amount to a failure to get Marx right.
       Does Laclau and Mouffe's position amount, as Cecil says, to an
end-of history position. They do say that the success of the capitalist
system is not reversible. In that sense they state an end of history
position. Still, they argue that the indeterminacies of the system, its
failure to constitute identity fully, makes opposition possible. Of
course, this opposition is internal and postmodern, not utopian or
totalizing. A Hegelian view would dismiss such opposition, but what
alternative does a Hegelian position provide? nostalgia for a lost and
irretrievable communal past? fantasies of an unattainable utopian future?
Laclau and Mouffe may be anti-Hegelian but that does not make their view
the equivalent of an end-of-history position.
Philip Goldstein
Associate Professor of English and Philosophy
University of Delaware (Parallel)


+++=D7=C3)
On Sat, 16 Jul 1994 WCECIL-AT-ucs.indiana.edu wrote:

> Two comments on intro notes.  First, Alex T.  you mentioned that you leaned
> more towards anarchism than Marxism.  I am not that familiar with
> anarchist thought other than Bakhunin, but particularly the early works
> of Marx are wildly radical and might be of interest to you. 
> =09Someone asked what was "wrong" with Laclau and Moufe.  In a
> reading group here at I.U. we loosely agreed that if you think liberal
> democracy is a good idea, then nothing, otherwise, they really end up
> sounding like apologists for liberal democracy.  In some ways, they are
> frighteningly in line with Francis Fukeyama's "End of History" argument.
> wes
>