In 1985 Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe published their ground breaking work Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics. Coming at the beginning of the era of neoliberalism’s political and economic hegemony, the pair argued for a radical re-visioning of traditional left politics. This book attempted to integrate the politics of democratic socialism with insights derived from anti-colonial struggles, post-structuralism, and the new social movements addressing racism, sexism, gay rights and environmental issues. The key to this rethinking of left politics was the work of the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, in particular his concept of hegemony, analyzing the way in which a specific social group comes to hold and exercise political power because its interests are seen to coincide with the interests of the larger society. In particular Gramsci was concerned to explain how it was that a distinct minority-the capitalist ruling class-came to be supported by other classes rather than being overthrown by the numerically larger working class. 33 years later Chantal Mouffe restates and updates these ideas in her latest work For a Left Populism.

Mouffe’s For a Left Populism is a slim easy to read volume, a manifesto that presents the core ideas of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy without much of the academic language which can make that book a somewhat challenging read. Mouffe argues that the 2008 economic crisis and its aftermath have thrown the neoliberal hegemony of the last 40 years into question. This has resulted in a ‘populist moment’ in which forces on both the right and left have thrown the “post-political” consensus of neoliberalism into crisis. By “post-political” she refers to the way in which traditional political parties on both the right and left have accepted the neoliberal model, espousing free markets, free trade, deregulation, privatization and austerity. A challenge to this consensus having been ruled out politics has been reduced to the technocratic management of neoliberal policies. This is “what Gramsci calls an interregnum: a period of crisis during which several tenets of the consensus around a hegemonic project are challenged. A solution to the crisis is not in sight and this characterizes the ‘populist moment’ in which we find ourselves today.”

Mouffe argues that the political success of the world-left lies in the acceptance of this situation and the adoption of a populist political strategy. Her approach challenges many of the cherished dogmas of the left. Key to this are two theoretical innovations: “an anti-essentialist approach,” and an “agonistic conception of democracy.”

By an anti-essentialist approach Mouffe mean conceptions of political identities as pre-established. In particular she takes aim at orthodox Marxist dogmas that attribute pre-existing political positions to social classes. Such dogmas assert that membership in a specific class; the working class for example, necessarily implies a specific political orientation such as socialism. Mouffe argues that political identities are socially constructed by political discourses that attempt to create a “chain of equivalences” between diverse identities and issues. She also opposes any attempt that would reduce a socialist politics to an emphasis on class issues at the expense of concerns over issues such as racism, sexism, or the environment.

This of course has led to the inevitable caricaturing of the work of Laclau and Mouffe as somehow ignoring or eschewing class issues in favor of those of ‘the new social movements.’ Far from doing so Mouffe argues that what instead is necessary is the construction of a chain of equivalences between different forms of oppression. Thus class oppression is made equivalent to racial or gender oppression in a movement that opposes all forms of oppression. Indeed she points out that at the time Hegemony and Socialist Strategy had been written much of the left still prioritized class struggles over anti-racist or anti-sexist struggles. Today many people say that the opposite situation holds, with class oppressions being ignored and concerns over racism, sexism or gay rights being emphasized. Much of the Keynesian and social-democratic advances of the post World War 2 era have been unraveled. The proper approach is one that links social appropriation of the means of production with opposition to other forms of oppression.

The other key theoretical approach, an agonistic conception of democracy, is one that accepts conflict as a permanent feature of political life. This rejects an antagonistic approach that perceives political antagonists as enemies to be destroyed, as well as an emphasis on consensus building that attempts to deny competing interests in favor of a technocratic management by centrists. An agonistic conception recognizes instead the permanence of adversarial relations within the rules of liberal democracy. Like Ralph Milliband, Mouffe argues that the institutions of liberal democracy allow a space for a radical, democratic socialist politics to advance. Indeed she argues that there is a permanent and ongoing conflict between liberalism; with its emphasis on the rule of law, separation of powers and individual freedoms, and democracy; which emphasizes popular sovereignty and equality. An agonistic conception of democracy rejects any conception of a society where all conflicts have been harmonized or suppressed, as well as anarchistic doctrines that attempt to do away with or remain uninvolved with the state. For Mouffe the state is a site of struggle in which political adversaries conflict.

Like her partner Laclau, Mouffe sees a populist strategy as one that attempts to establish an “internal frontier” between the people and the oligarchy. What distinguishes a left populism from right-wing variants is precisely its emphasis on a radical democracy, one that attempts an extension of democracy throughout all areas of society, including the economy. This is opposed to a right-wing populism that claims to oppose the elites in the name of the people, but which does so with a restricted concept of the people and does not advance democracy, but authoritarianism instead. Like Laclau she points to the People’s Party of the late 19^th century US, from which the term ‘populism’ is derived, as an example of left populism.

One area where For A Left Populism differs from Hegemony and Socialist Strategy is in its recognition of the importance of environmental issues. “It is impossible to envisage a project of radicalization of democracy in which the ‘ecological question’ is not at the centre of the agenda. It is therefore essential to combine this with the social question. No doubt this will require profound changes in our way of life and multifarious resistances will have to be overcome. To abandon the productivist model and to implement the necessary ecological transition will require a truly Gramscian ‘intellectual and moral reform.’ This will certainly not be easy, but an ambitious and well-designed ecological project could offer an attractive vision of a future democratic society that might entice some sectors that are currently within the neoliberal hegemonic bloc.”

For A Left Populism is a timely work, one that is quite relevant to today’s political scene. This reviewer read Hegemony and Socialist Strategy back in 2000, just before the presidential elections. Then it seemed that Laclau and Mouffe had raised some interesting issues, but that their overall approach left the reader uncertain. In the 18 years since the relevance of their work only seems to grow in stature, to the point that it seems to be the only way forward for the world-left. Chantal Mouffe’s For A Left Populism is a definite must-read!

For A Left Populism

By Chantal Mouffe

ISBN-13: 978-1-78663-755-0

Verso Books, London, 2018

98 pages

$17.95

“Populism” is a magical word. Its mysterious power unites the Erdogan and Putin governments, Latin American leftists like Evo Morales and the late Hugo Chavez, the resurgent Right in Europe and the United States, Hungarian and Polish anti-communist parties, Podemos, the Eurocommunism of the tragic Syriza, the revitalizers of social democracy Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn – all under the same umbrella.

Almost everyone now uses this word in an unthinking way but “populism” is not an innocent characterization. The term has political implications. It gives the discredited “mainstream” politicians of the world, their reputations tarnished by their very real subservience to powerful economic interests, a common fighting cause. What’s more, the continual use of the word is a give-away to the ascendant Right-wing.

When initially described as “populist”, the French  National Front at first rejected the term, but after being labeled as such again and again, the FN embraced the term. In effect, writes Anton Jager, “they [commentators] transformed the FN from a fascist party into a populist one.”

The concept’s life purpose is an ignoble one. “Populism” has become a useful shroud for political opportunists. Every player gains from its obscurations except the Left. The so-called “center” can present itself as a necessary bulwark against the Right, while the Right itself can cloak its pathological character in either the righteousness of championing “the people” or the rebelliousness of opposing “the establishment”.

In this division between “populists” and “anti-populists”, the Left is the losing party. When the Right seems on the edge of taking power, leftists are instructed to lend their support to the Clintons of the world. When a socialist party gains some success, however, it is immediately lumped together with xenophobes and chauvinists as “populist”. The very Left-Right antagonism is frequently denied any relevance at all. Instead we hear continually about dichotomies of “pluralism” and “anti-pluralism”, “openness” and “closedness”, “globalism” and “parochialism”.

In an essay for the Guardian, John B. Judis gives a typical precis of “populism”. “Populism” has both a left-wing and a right-wing variant. The former, represented today by Bernie Sanders and Podemos, organizes the “bottom” and the “middle” of society against the “top”, while the latter, represented by Trump and Le Pen, opposes both the “top” and “bottom” from the middle.

Judis treats Left and Right as simply window dressing for the underlying “populism”. This has some superficial truth to it, yet it seems to me to quite a leap to say both are expressions of the same phenomenon. The character of “populists” on the Left and the Right differ fundamentally. They play completely different roles. They relate to the rest of society in different ways. We need go beyond their apparent similarities and grasp what they really stand for.

The Original Populists

The American People’s Party, which is often referred to by the proper noun Populism, is central to Judis’ conception of “populism”. He claims that Populism was the “example [which] would establish the basis for “populism” in the United States and Europe.” George Wallace, his other main historical example, merely “created a new rightwing variety of populism”. This is quite suspect. To see Wallace as simply another version of Populism in rightist disguise because both appealed to the “people” against the “elite” suggests a profound error.

In late 19^th century, the American farmer was confronted by the squeeze of the crop-lien system, the rate gauging of railway companies, and a fall in agricultural prices. The old way of life, the familiar rhythms of agrarian culture, the communal bonds holding self-sufficient yeoman together was eroded by an urban, industrial, capitalist civilization. The farmer’s social existence was threatened. With the collapse of their livelihood came the collapse of their entire moral universe.

In the South, the failure of Reconstruction opened the door for Southern conservatives whose grip on Southern society rests on their control of the Democratic Party. These elites ruled over a great mass of poor farmers, whites and freed blacks, tenants and small landowners. In this part of the country, the contradictions of agrarian life were the most acute.

Populism was born of these contradictions. The Farmers Alliance, a mass movement of insurgent farmers, organized cooperatives aimed at the indirect expropriation of the middleman. Farmers united against their impoverishment which was the same as the destruction of their entire way of life. The natural extension of this movement was the birth of the People’s Party.

Populism expressed the antagonism between farmers and the course of social development. It reflected the farmers own contradictory historical position. Nostalgia for pre-capitalist social relations, the allure of prosperity from commercial farming, and the radical potential of the masses define the personality of agrarian movements.

In Populism, progressive demands were cloaked in the language of Jeffersonian restoration, drawing its collective self-understanding from a vision of a true Republic of small producers. Despite the democratic aspects of this ideology, this vision was infused with many accepted hierarchies of home and community and what’s more obscured the real nature of the struggle.

At the same time, the farmer’s inheritance of tradition, prejudice and backwardness was challenged by an egalitarian impulse at the heart of this mass movement. The Populists were not just repeating the perennial pattern of peasant protest, where violations of their moral economy are opposed, but further transformation is avoided. The Populists demanded a progressive income tax and the nationalization of railways. Nowhere else is this thrust felt more than in the Southern Populists’ efforts to overcome racial division and organize black and white farmers together.

The progressive motive force of Populism was the movement from a defensive position of the traditional yeoman farmer into a class politics that challenged the established social order. This motive force, however, was undermined by Populism’s own contradictions. The farmers positioned themselves against outside forces: merchants, financiers, the urban bourgeoisie. Within their own ranks, however, conservative elements steadily ate away at the radical drive. This conservatism did not merely rely on the resilience of tradition but was infused with the vitality of the adolescent capitalist economy.

The farmer’s unity only existed politically. Structurally, the base of the Populist movement was divided between small landowners and prosperous farmers, and poor tenants. The former, geographically represented by Populism’s Midwestern wing, steadily gained control of the party. The farmer’s movement becomes a catalyst for integrating farmers into bourgeois society as just another economic interest fighting for its share of the spoils under the slogan “free silver”.

The Populists joined with the silver Democrats, while the fragile shoots of racial unity in its Southern wing were crushed under the heel of the threatened Southern elite. White supremacy is thoroughly codified in Jim Crow. The South’s power structure is erected on the grave of the Populist promise.

This brief, schematic history of populism illustrates its basic essence: a movement of the masses, with emancipatory potential, undermined internally and externally by the spirit of the times. Can we make the same judgment about Wallace and his supporters?

Was George Wallace a Populist? 

To answer this question, the starting point should be the crucial difference between Populism and what Wallace represented. Populism was rooted in a mass movement of class self-defense that for a moment threatened the existing power structure. Wallace, on the other hand, was a figure who embodied in a visceral manner, the pathologies of American life.

Before 1968, George Wallace was just a defender of the threatened Southern order, an enabler of racist violence, and an opponent of the civil rights movement. In this role, he is a pure reactionary, the fiery representative of a legally codified system of racial oppression. It is in the guise he assumes during his 1968 and future presidential campaigns that in the eyes of some earns him the label “populist”.

Wallace skillfully exploited the terrain of American politics. The New Deal, the mass unionization campaigns of the CIO, the mobilization of the Second World War, and the GI Bill resulted in a tremendous improvement in the lives of millions. The reforms of the 30s and 40s, however, were accompanied by the persistence of conservative tendencies: racism, anti-communism, and militarism. McCarthyism marginalized the Left and Taft-Hartley and the bureaucratization of the labor movement put a stop to further mass unionization efforts.

The New Deal order left behind most blacks and a mass of unorganized workers. A sharp division existed in American society between those who experienced social mobility and improvement, and those who were still excluded from the post-war promise. This fostered an illusion that rather than a conquest by the working class and a base for further struggles, the gains won in the Roosevelt era were a fulfillment of a new higher social position, the “middle class”. This feeling was buttressed by racial and ethnic identity. The sudden inclusion and social advancement of blacks via civil rights legislation and affirmative action as well as gains by the multiracial “Other America” via War on Poverty programs was interpreted by the already existing beneficiaries of American public policy as a threat.

This division provided Wallace his base. To call his supporters “white working class” is somewhat misleading. His appeal extended beyond just workers; and even though plenty of wage laborers, a substantial number of whom were union members, supported Wallace, he was not appealing to them as a working class. Wallace’s politics was built on a denial of class identity. Instead, he appealed to the illusion of “middle America”.

The “middle-ness” Wallace tried to harness is not a place in society, but a social practice. To understand the nature of this practice, we need to break with the American liberal idyll of the “middle class”. In this nice vision of security and relative prosperity, the opposition to welfare or support for “law and order” appear as the random frustrations of the average Joe. When one considers, however, a collective emotion like that of the “white backlash”, one needs to uncover its source in the core workings of capitalist economy and society.

The Roots of White Backlash 

Pre-capitalist, feudal agrarian systems are held together by traditional, communal, and hierarchal bonds which fix an individual’s place in society. The passage to modernity breaks these bonds. The strict boundaries of rank and estate are replaced with a ceaseless society-wide war of all against all for resources, power, and positions.  Alongside this Darwinian contest there exists the stability of a definite class structure. Individuals occupy structural roles: capitalists, workers, various other strata. The capitalist experience is simultaneous the experiences of different classes and a common experience of actors in a competition where everyone feels ripped off in one way or another.

The political consequences of this dual experience can be progressive. Without traditional obscurations, society can appear as it is, a system of naked exploitation. The obliteration of sentimentalities such as the ideal of a caring master or of a dutiful servant means social relations have a more transparent character, facilitating the organization of workers as a class.

But capitalism can also take advantage of its egalitarian aspects. If the charm of feudal hierarchy was like an opiate where serfs could find some bliss in their immobility, bourgeois society intoxicates its members with the possibility of wealth and power. Bourgeois freedom and equality does not just break the bonds of the ancien regime. They democratize the masterdom once reserved for the aristocracy, giving everyone the potential to gain some relative material benefit, exercise some relative domination, and feel some relative superiority over others. Capitalism’s perverse equality is what lay behind “middle America”.

When members of different social classes unite around racial identity to gain a relative advantage over others, they are only intensifying the intoxication. The tendency by some to treat race and class as two separate universes misses this. Both are expressions of capitalist social relations. Class struggle is a pure, demystified, expression of those relations which is why it makes sense to speak of the “primacy” of class. The organization of workers as a class is the first step towards freedom from capitalist drives. Racism does the opposite. It feeds off bourgeois society’s irrationality giving it a more targeted and more terrible form.

The collectivism of the “white backlash” does not require any greater solidarity than that which exists in the everyday experience of life under capitalism. It is a union of extremely narrow, immediate, and destructive self-interests, capable only of triumphing over the socially marginalized. When the ­­Wallace supporter became the Reagan Democrat, the union members among them got what they wanted against the deadbeats and welfare mothers, but in the process they surrendered true solidarity. They were powerless against Reagan’s anti-labor onslaught. “Right-wing populism” always ends in the betrayal of its popular constituencies. This betrayal is nothing more than the logical conclusion of a politics which emphasizes indifference to deprivation and oppression: the real masters find it easier to deprive and oppress everyone.

“Right-Wing Populism” = Organized Chauvinism Not Populism 

“Populism” is a very inappropriate term to describe the politics of the Right. Its popular character is a façade masking an acquisitive struggle for dominance. For “left-wing populism”, or simply genuine Populism, the “people” are more than just a random majority.  They are united by their downtrodden character. Their common situation of subordination provides Populism its rationale: to end their oppression. Alongside condemnation of exploitation, Populism idealizes the virtues of the common people as the basis for a new egalitarian, moral society.

“Right-wing populism” also idealizes the morals of its “people”, but these morals lose their universal character. They are held as proof of innate superiority, a justification for others’ inferiority and exclusion. In this regard, “right-wing populism” is nothing more than the small man’s aristocratism. Its condemnation of “elites” is empty since its “people” begin to resemble the image of a cruel and detached elite. “Populism” is reduced in right-wing rhetoric to its most superficial features. The “people” lose the solidarity, equality, and morality which genuine Populism invests in them. Instead, they are vessels for a politics whose ends are opposed to those values. This is not to say that Populist movements do not have reactionary features. There is, however, a world of difference between a politics where prejudice is backwardness with a potential to be overcome and a politics where prejudice itself is a motive force.

If Populism must be differentiated from its imitators, it should not be simplistically idealized. Populism has a moralistic character which tries to awaken the pre-existing egalitarianism of the “people”.  While it can have tremendous power, morality is often not enough to forge a durable politics which can construct a better social order. Marxism is an advance on naïve Populism since it emphasizes the importance of understanding bourgeois society’s social relations and the classes which inhabit it. For Marxism, society is not static but dynamic and continually changing, driven by contradiction and conflict. Marxism substitutes the working class for the romanticized “people”, not because workers are all noble from the outset but because through organized struggle workers form a conscious, collective solidarity that can act as the basis for reconstructing society.

These criticisms aside, genuine Populism cannot be lumped together with organized chauvinism. Distinguishing between the two is essential. To remain on a level where Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump can both be described as “populist” is along the lines of saying a person is experiencing emotion without specifying whether they are feeling love or hatred.

Cyryl Ryzak is a member of Solidarity living in Portland, Oregon.

Chantal Mouffe argues that Jeremy Corbyn represents the success of left populism. 

For too long 'populism' has been a term of political abuse. The time has come for the American Left to reclaim the mantle of one of its most illustrious ancestors.

Eric Blanc discusses the history of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor party as showing why socialists ultimately need to break with the Democratic party.

One of the most interesting things about Steve Early’s new book Refinery Town, Big Oil, Big Money, and the Remaking of an American City, is the way it seems to provide an empirical confirmation for theoretical positions that have been debated on the left for decades. Thinkers from Althusser’s current of Marxist thought, such as Etienne Balibar, have advocated for a shift from a class based to a mass based politics, while Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe in their 1985 classic Hegemony and Socialist Strategy make use of Gramsci’s notion of hegemony to argue that the secret to politics, and thus of socialist advance, is in the adoption of a populist political strategy. Of course Mr. Early does not mention these theoretical debates. This is not to say that he may not be highly conscious of these matters, but that what is important in this book is that it is a record of lived political experience whose testimony helps to confirm the insights of certain political theorists. Mr. Early does nothing less than demonstrate how to successfully organize a counter-hegemonic bloc!

No doubt those who would remain restricted to the orthodox Marxist position would attempt to caricature such notions.  However when one recognizes that the working class, even in the most traditional Marxist definition, is an essential element of the popular classes, one recognizes the sheer audacity of what is actually being proposed. Mr. Early, a long time leftist with a solid background in labor activism, describes his experiences in moving from New England to Richmond, California on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay. He describes how he and his wife first became aware of the ‘shelter in place’ warnings due to releases of toxic gasses from the nearby Chevron refinery. When one factors in that Richmond, long tied to its biggest employer, also contains a large population of African-American and Latino residents, one is contemplating a real world situation in which class, race, and environmental factors interact and reinforce each other, within the context of an urban community, to produce conditions of oppression. Mr. Early describes the history whereby these different communities and groups overcame the fragmentation and isolation that the capitalist world-system would impose on us all, and come together in a popular, mass movement that has actually been able to attain and maintain political power. What is more this power has been utilized in ways that largely satisfy the demand ‘power to the people.’ As a result the Richmond Progressive Alliance has had electoral success in running and supporting candidates for electoral office in the city government and have been able to introduce measures that benefit the citizens of Richmond in concrete ways.

Mr. Early displays talents as an historian of labor and other anti-systemic movements in his writings. He gives us a background regarding the economic history of the east bay area and Richmond in particular, providing the necessary context in which to understand the situation. The building up of industry in the early 20^th century; the migration of black workers to the area in search of employment, and the indignities they suffered; the effects of industry on the local ecology are all chronicled. Activists from the labor, civil rights and environmental movements were able to come together in a larger movement, the RPA. One might suspect that Mr. Early is secretly a reader of Laclau, so closely does his investigation of the history of the RPA read like a concrete description of the ‘construction of the people’ described in Laclau’s On Populist Reason. What is more, Mr. Early informs us of the socialist element that plays a prominent role in RPA politics. It must be remarked that populism as a distinct political current was born in the United States, and advocated for things such as the formation of cooperatives, as well as the nationalization of railroads. Issues that even Lenin, in his final writings, could agree with. Recently Frederick Jameson in An American Utopia has raised the question of why those who call themselves socialists display reluctance to defend and propose measures such as nationalization and public ownership? Perhaps more populism is necessary for socialists in order to remind them what socialism is really about! Could a social-populism be successful for socialist advance in the US in the 21^st century?

What also provides evidence for the views of thinkers such as Laclau and Mouffe is the sad fact that, while the RPA has always consciously tried to appeal to workers issues, certain unions with more conservative political tendencies are among their biggest opponents. To recognize this, in itself, tends to falsify the views of those who hold that there is a necessary connection between class position and political position. Here we have clear representatives of Marx’s industrial proletariat taking the side of their capitalist exploiters. Political positions are socially created, they do not pre-exist as some kind of ‘essence’ within those who are supposed to provide the agency to put theory into practice. This means that it is up to us socialists to organize all those who can be organized, as Marta Harnacker so eloquently testifies.

Mr Early’s book admirably relates the fragile nature of the alliance, the pressure it is put under to undermine its political effectiveness, to pull it back apart on racial, class, or environmental lines. At no time can it be assumed that the RPA speaks unchallenged by those who also claim to speak for these issues, and in some cases do so precisely in order to maintain the status quo. What is on display is a repeated effort by the RPA-one is tempted to use a term from Sartre’s later writings: totalization– whereby what might otherwise be seen as isolated and fragmented ‘causes’ become popular demands; more theory and practice?

Refinery Town has a foreword by Senator Bernie Sanders. Whatever one thinks of Sanders, and his co-operation-or collusion- with the Democratic Party, one thing is clear: his campaign proved that a massive yearning for socialist politics exists, particularly among younger people (disclosure: the author of this review crossed party lines to vote for Sanders in the Missouri primary while voting for Jill Stein in the general election). As a result of this the Democratic Socialists of America is now the largest socialist organization in the country, and has even moved leftward. The movement that Early documents is more closely connected with the Green Party. However the other great virtue of the Sanders campaign is the way he showed the power of populist political appeals, which is in fact the great lesson to be gained by reading Refinery Town. Hopefully it will become more widely learned by the US left in coming months. May it spread like a prairie fire.

Refinery Town; Big Oil, Big Money and the Remaking of an American City.

By Steve Early

Beacon Press, Boston, 2017

ISBN9780807094266

Hardcover $27.95

222 pages

John Bellamy Foster informs us that Trump's political vision is not populism, but actually neofascism.