3 | Laclau and Mouffe: or, How We Learned to Hate Class and Love Derrida

Episode Overview

• This episode provides an in-depth critique of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, arguing it is the foundational text of a flawed post-Marxist turn on the left.
• The hosts contend that the book's central project is to replace materialist class analysis with a purely discursive "linguistic idealism," thereby abandoning the core tenets of socialism.
• A central piece of the critique is the accusation that Laclau and Mouffe fundamentally misread and misrepresent the Marxist tradition they claim to be moving beyond, particularly in their analysis of Harry Braverman's work on labor.
• The podcast concludes that the theory, born from the academic left of the 1980s, is ultimately an abstract exercise that lacks the tools to analyze or challenge the totalizing force of capitalism.

Key Concepts

• Post-Marxism and its Influence: Hegemony and Socialist Strategy is identified as the seminal text of post-Marxism, whose premises have dominated leftist academic thought since the 1990s.
• Abandonment of Class Analysis: The hosts criticize the book's rejection of class interest as a "metaphysical" concept, arguing it replaces a material understanding of class with a focus on contingent, discursively-formed identities.
• Discourse over Materialism: The core of Laclau and Mouffe's project is presented as replacing material and economic analysis with "discursive articulation"—the linguistic practice of linking disparate struggles into a temporary hegemonic bloc.
• Misreading of Marxist Tradition: A key argument is that Laclau and Mouffe build their critique on a strawman of Marxism, exemplified by their "upside down" misreading of Harry Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital.
• The Historical Context of the Academic Left: The theory's rise is linked to the New Left entering academia in the 1980s, leading to a conflation of scholarly work with on-the-ground political action.
• Hollowed-Out Political Concepts: The hosts argue that key terms like "democracy" and "antagonism" are stripped of their material basis, becoming vague stand-ins for a kind of liberal pluralism.

Quotes

• At 0:02 - "This book would have been better titled 'How I Learned to Hate Class and Love Derrida.'" - An introductory voiceover setting a critical and humorous tone for the episode's analysis.
• At 5:48 - "The working class is like the fundamental obstacle for expanding democracy... like the idea of the working class is an obstacle for socialist politics." - A host summarizes what they see as a shocking and central conclusion of Laclau and Mouffe's argument.
• At 22:42 - "That is the exact opposite point of that book." - The speaker emphatically states that Laclau and Mouffe's critique of Harry Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital is a complete inversion of its actual argument.
• At 30:41 - "...our interventions exist on the same plane as like a strike." - The speaker criticizes the political implication of this kind of theory, where academic work (discursive interventions) is seen as equivalent to material political action.
• At 50:13 - "Part of the reason why... I think we can't jettison the idea of a class core is because capitalism is totalizing." - A host explains the core theoretical problem with rejecting "totalizing" concepts when confronting a totalizing system like capitalism.

Takeaways

• Post-Marxist theory's shift from materialism to discourse detaches political analysis from the economic realities of class struggle, hindering effective anti-capitalist strategy.
• Critiques of classical Marxism should be scrutinized to ensure they are not based on fundamental misreadings or strawman versions of the theories they oppose.
• A political framework that rejects "totalizing" concepts like class struggles to offer a meaningful challenge to the all-encompassing, totalizing system of capitalism.
• Treating academic or discursive work as a substitute for material political action risks creating theories that are abstract and disconnected from real-world organizing.