For a Left Populism

by Chantal Mouffe

What is the “populist moment” and what does it mean for the left?

We are currently witnessing in Western Europe a “populist moment” that signals the crisis of neoliberal hegemony. The central axis of the political conflict will be between right- and left-wing populism. By establishing a frontier between “the people” and “the oligarchy,” a left–populist strategy could bring together the manifold struggles against subordination, oppression and discrimination.

This strategy acknowledges that democratic discourse plays a crucial role in the political imaginary of our societies. And through the construction of a collective will, mobilizing common affects in defence of equality and social justice, it will be possible to combat the xenophobic policies promoted by right-wing populism.

In redrawing political frontiers, this “populist moment” points to a “return of the political” after years of postpolitics. A return may open the way for authoritarian solutions—through regimes that weaken liberal-democratic institutions—but it could also lead to a reaffirmation and extension of democratic values

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Theory, Academic, Political Science, Essays

112 pages, Hardcover

First published July 10, 2018

About the author

Chantal Mouffe is a Belgian political theorist. She holds a professorship at the University of Westminster in the United Kingdom. She is best known as co-author of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy with Ernesto Laclau. Their thoughts are usually described as post-Marxism as they were both politically active in the social and student movements of the 1960s including working class and new social movements (notably second-wave feminism in Mouffe's case). They rejected Marxist economic determinism and the notion of class struggle being the single crucial antagonism in society. Instead they urged for radical democracy of agonistic pluralism where all antagonisms could be expressed. In their opinion, ‘...there is no possibility of society without antagonism’; indeed, without the forces that articulate a vision of society, it could not exist.

Reviews

[Kristofer D · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm giving this a 3/5, but read the review for some context. Mouffe is great and deserves to be read and discussed as widely as Zizek or Judith Butler, particularly during this political moment.

The intended audience for this book is a bit hard to discern - maybe there is more of a built-in audience in Europe or Latin America (or elsewhere)? Overall, Mouffe's argument is clear, but she seems to _allude_ to arguments (and the arguments of her interlocutors) more than she reckons with them in any substantive way. This is a fun little book if you are already familiar with Mouffe/ Laclau and are curious what she makes of certain recent developments in political theory - she discusses (and dismisses) recent work by Badiou, Zizek, Hardt and Negri, and more. However, their arguments are treated in only a summary fashion; to anyone who isn't at least passingly familiar with Badiou or Negri or whoever, the discussions here will likely confuse rather than edify. So, although the book's brevity and clarity might lead one to recommend to someone still green in political theory, I reckon the best reader for this book would be someone already familiar with contemporary political thought who is looking for a gentle intro to Mouffe's thought on the way to a more substantive engagement both with her solo efforts and her work with Laclau.

Otherwise, this book is great for anyone already familiar with Mouffe who has wondered what she would make for this political moment, one that seems to demand a reckoning with 40 years of her theorizing. I was disappointed she didn't discuss Sanders or Corbyn in any detail besides a doff of the cap, but her endorsements of Podemos and Syriza (and Melenchon, thanked in the book's acknowledgements) are a bit, uh, rose-tinted and optimistic.

Unfortunately, of course, one other outcome of this book's brevity is that some of her discussions seem to raise more questions than they answer, particularly (for me, anyhow) the sections on psychoanalysis and on liberalism. This is unfortunate; a more robust diagnosis of the failure of liberalism might go further in explaining this particular moment than the simple recognition of the failure of neoliberalism. This book, of course, is carried out a very high level of abstraction, with only passing references to actual politicians or movements, but surely the failures of political liberalism (and in particular, that of Obama) helped determine the current conjuncture? Reaffirming its necessity to *any* emancipatory project seems to beg the question; of course the old Communist movement had failed, but declaring the need for agonism AND liberalism is a bit puzzling, to put it mildly.

tl; dr
This book is good if you know some political theory and want an entry to Mouffe or if you've read some Mouffe/Laclau and want to know how she feels about this conjuncture and about some recent theoretical developments (Hardt and Negri's latest book, the "affective turn", etc).

Otherwise, you might be better off starting with Mouffe's "Antagonistics" or "The Democratic Paradox". If you are looking for an intro to left populisms that discusses politics in a little less, uh, "abstract" fashion, I'd recommend finding Susan Watkin's longish New Left Review article "Oppositions," alongside Seymour's book on Corbyn, Pablo Iglesias' book on Podemos, and Bernie Sanders' books.

[Steffi · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘For a Left Populism’ (VERSO, 2018) is a MUST READ for a number of reasons. I will also add it to the carefully curated mandatory induction reading list for new boyfriends. I must investigate this thought some more but I really feel like there is an increasing trend to make socialist political theory more accessible and relevant to actually existing struggles, kind of a populism within the mostly academic discourse. The book is very short, only about 80 pages, and breaks down Mouffe’s earlier and theory heavy work into a few key thoughts and proposed consequences for a left populism. For those who are familiar with Gramsci and post-Marxism this is a neat summary and recap of the story since Mouffe’s and her late husband Laclau’s 1985 post-Marxist manifesto Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. Then, in 1985, they argued that Marxists need to accommodate (theoretically and politically) the demands made by the new movements, moving beyond an economistic and class essentializing understanding of social relations towards building chains of equivalence between the various emancipatory struggles. In the 1990s and 2000s, neoliberal hegemony subverted the progressive potential of the new movements, as reflected in liberal feminism, rainbow capitalism, green growth. The 2008 global financial crisis brought about an ongoing crisis in and of neoliberal hegemony (and the model of liberal democracy wedded to the liberal economy) which opened a ‘populist moment’ both for the right and the left (the right on the basis of an authoritarian and nationalist neoliberalism rather than an alternative to neoliberalism itself). Interestingly, the only remaining social force fighting for the neoliberal hegemony status quo is the centre-left/social democracy. The left populism, which we are currently seeing (especially in the US where there is no social democratic tradition and the undemocratic two-party state which structurally enables populism), is precisely the chain of equivalence between the various struggles – minimum wage, immigration, rent control, racism – under the populist antagonism of ‘the people’ versus the oligarchy. Contrary to social democracy’s post-political and post-democratic technocratic fixes to social ills – eg Obama’s market based health insurance or silicon valley’s universal basic income or digital or green capitalism – the left populism aims to re-politicize and re-democratize politics and the economy through disarticulating liberal democracy from the liberal economy and the free market.

[Kai · Rating 2 out of 5]

if you've read any of Mouffe's books since the Democratic Paradox, you can pretty much already guess what the argument is going to be here. "Democracy" is taken to be the main thing all left movements are striving towards, populism (oddly) appears to be a strategy for attaining democracy via "radical reformism" (???) and the only real route for defeating the (you guessed it) neoliberal consensus / third way technocrats. All other left analyses (namely, marxism, anti-capitalism, anarchism, etc) are reductively described as misguided or mistaken attempts to apply essentialist abstractions from afar (somehow, Mouffe has access to the real people. she has discovered that "democracy" is *not* an abstraction, but the real thing the people around the world actually desire). Gramsci is rendered a liberal reformer Mouffe reads as instructing us to "become state," a pretty incorrect reading but one i won't mind playfully throwing at my revolutionary/anarchist Gramscian friends and colleagues. the sole new contribution of this book seems to be a few pages on affective politics (which we're told was always a part of the antifoundationalist hegemonic perspective?) and Spinoza and Freud are given a few efficient pages. Of course, one couldn't perform such a synthesus without a denunciation of "the affective turn" whose promoters "present their view of affect as based on the thought of Spinoza, but there are good reasons to question such genealogy" (75). Such a claim would probably be shocking to anyone who has even a passing engagement with any number of the interminable studies that constitute "affect theory," (let alone most of the past 50 years of french and italian marxisms, marxist-feminisms, eco-marxisms, etc [I guess they can't be admitted to exist if we're to maintain the view that they're all economistic essentialists]). Such prolific slipshod assessments make this a frustrating text (albeit one which, at 80 pages, can be easily rage-read in an hour at the library rather than purchased). No such luck for those of us who write about populism, who will now have to prepare ourselves for a Mouffe question at every talk we give (alongside the Mudde/Muller and Trump question), sidestepping the really quite interesting literature that's developing from young scholars writing on the subject (namely see: Laura Grattan's "Populism's Power" and Paulo Gerbaudo's "The Mask and the Flag")

[Tomasz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Z jednej strony ciekawa analiza, z drugiej jednak propozycje są tak ogólne, a użyty język tak zawiły, że ciężko się przez to brnie. Przeszkadzało mi też ciągłe nawiązywanie do poprzednich prac autorki, które były wspominane wielokrotnie, co wybijało mnie z rytmu czytania. Można przeczytać, ale nie czuję, żeby wniosła wiele do mojego życia.

[Pavol Hardos · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a rather brief summary of Mouffe's views on populism and agonistic democracy, a somewhat dense re-tread with gestures to latest developments that leaves one puzzled as for the intended audience - it is presented as a manifesto of sorts, but I wonder to what extent someone who hasn't encountered her ideas in other formats might take away something useful from this. As a refresher for those who did encounter the ideas elsewhere, it might serve.

To be fair, it is always a disappointing line of criticism to complain that a manifesto is too abstract and lacking in specificities, so I am not going to go there.

But I was struck by something else. Nothing in this volume particularly upset me, and I count myself a neoliberal. I don't think you could come up with a more damning critique in the eyes of self-respecting lefties than that a neoliberal could also sign up for this. Maybe I am wrong. Or maybe the neoliberal hegemony is thicker than suspected. Mind you, I am not quite on board with her diagnosis of what & how went wrong, or that the neoliberal hegemony was somehow misplaced when it appeared (obviously I wouldn't think that). But if we are talking about constructions of the people in their pluralistic variety, if we are talking about people in the inclusive, rather than the exclusive versions, if we are talking about the people and their equality of freedom in their variegated subjectivities, then a neoliberal would not necessarily object against her proposals. I know I wouldn't.

This conclusion of mine follows from her somewhat puzzling expectation that if the neoliberal hegemony really is on its way out that her preferred left populism might formulate a new hegemony along which the new lines of political conflict might also be drawn. That seems to me, even in the lines of a manifesto, as too far an optimistic view.

If the neoliberal hegemony is really going away, then the new lines of conflict won't be populist left vs some version of the mean ol' neoliberals, but the conflict will most likely really be drawn along purely populist frames - between the two versions of who gets to construct the people: the right-wing authoritarian exclusionary (let's not drop the f-word just yet) populism vs. the inclusive left-wing populism. But this won't be an agonistic struggle where both parties necessarily appreciate the underlying values of liberal democracy. This might make every election a life&death struggle for the very possibility of the survival of liberal democracy as a regime against versions of aspirational fascism (there is the f-word). Obviously, as a neoliberal, I would join the left. But I don't think even the left would want the democratic agon to take this shape.

[Mona · Rating 4 out of 5]

musste ich für meine hausarbeit lesen, war aber überraschen spannend!

[Donald · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great summary of Mouffe's political arguments over the years as they culminate in the present crisis of neoliberalism. Mouffe explains her shift in emphasis over time from a sort of renewed socialist politics towards a 'popular' left politics that focuses on deepening democracy. The short book also handles traditional annoyances of Mouffe's, like attempts to transcend the liberal-democratic state through Hardt/Negri style theorizing, but each of these interventions is focused on a useful contemporary update. It is also probably Mouffe's most accessible book. The main weakness is that it does not give much room to discussing what happens when the strategy runs into problems. The crisis in Greece is mentioned but does not seem to trouble Mouffe at the level of theory.

[Mack · Rating 2 out of 5]

sooooo opaque for no reason, classic mouffe. she’s smart enough to identify and criticize neoliberal recuperation, but then turns around and defends those same liberal democratic institutions perpetuating the practice. centrism masquerading as “radical democracy”, and boring at that.

[J TC · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uma análise muito lúcida das origens e consequências do neoliberalismo na Europa. Um livro indispensável para quem pretenda compreender as origens do movimento populista e as oportunidades que este oferece para recentrar o debate político, na sequência do velho debate entre liberdade e democracia, de forma a criar agonismos num debate em que o povo é ele mesmo um sujeito político

[Russell Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished this wonderfully provocative and learned short book a couple of months ago, but kept putting off reviewing it because I wanted to write a longer piece which made use of what it claimed about populism, and how those arguments related to other concerns about different types of radical localist politics. I'm still going to write that piece, but I need to get this up before the end of the year, so hear it is: Mouffe's extended monograph on "left populism" is, I think, pretty essential for situating the pressures which democracy currently faces in a fully accurate context.

Mouffe's argument is a complex one, but never dense, or at least so I thought. Her thesis is built upon the Gramscian assertion that any kind of social order invariably--and necessarily--introduces an element of the hegemonic. Critics of liberal democracy like Carl Schmitt, on Mouffe's reading, understood that well, as have many conservative politicians who have instinctively recognized, and attacked from a "populist" direction, the hegemonic elements of liberalism, which many on the left, for class or cultural reasons, floundered in their defense of. The "left populism" she calls for necessitates a recognition of the hegemonic, or the social totality, or any political construct. This means that liberal democracy will always struggle, since liberalism's social totality is a universalism (natural rights, individual equality, etc.), whereas democracy's social totality is always particular (any demos must be self-identifiable as such--"we the people"--and thus cannot really be universal). Mouffe does not believe that such means that leftists, in constructing a new left populist hegemonic, should dismiss with liberalism; on the contrary, she thinks that tension is valuable, not the least reason for which being that she is not a revolutionary.

In my favorite part of her argument, she breaks down the left (defined as those looking to extend egalitarian empowerment into not just political but also economic and social realms; she is very much with Erik Olin Wright in seeing socialism as most fundamentally a democratization and equalization of society) into three categories: "pure reformism," which accepts and simply seeks to move in a democratic and egalitarian direction both liberal democracy and the neoliberal hegemonic social formation; "radical reformism," which accepts the legitimacy of the former but wants to overthrow the latter; and "revolutionary politics," which rejects both. Mouffe is clearly in the social democratic/democratic socialist, and thus the second, camp; rather than embracing an anarchism or communism which would see the state withering away, she follows the Gramscian line of seeking the radical democratization of the state. What's the difference? The difference is that the liberal institutions of the modern constitutional state, even if radically democratized, would still allow for a partisan management of the antagonisms that democratic particularism will unavoidably bring about.

Ultimately then, Mouffe invitation to develop a left populism is a call for a certain kind of pluralistic socialism, one in which the libidinal attachments which will characterize particular regional or national communities (Mouffe allows that direct local democratic decision-making or "commons-thinking" should have a place, but is liberal enough to be suspicious of too much localization) will be respected. She doesn't get into what would such involve, and that is a flaw in her argument, but she does at least admit that advocates of left populism need to be patriots in the conventional sense, which also means that such advocates cannot automatically exclude the bourgeoisie which the liberal democratic totality will always create, in favor of the a theory that legitimates only the poor and working class. So, a very radical conceptualization of the current agenda of the left, but one that is aiming solely at establishing "a new hegemonic formulation within the liberal democratic framework." A liberal pluralistic democratic socialism? As much as I have become much more sympathetic to various forms of localism, anarchism, and mututalism of late, it's still better than most alternatives, I think.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a Left Populism, by Chantal Mouffe, is an interesting little book looking at the modern Populist moment in Western democracies and looking at ways for the Left to engage in these movements. Currently, Populism is a loaded term, and used as a slur for any politician who engages with the underprivileged masses - often seen as an exploitative term ie. a charlatan politician. It is also overwhelmingly associated with the Right, and sometimes takes as a synonym or complimentary term for nationalism. These assumptions are false, and are often directed by members of the Left. This shows, according to the author, the issues the Left have with engaging with lower class voters, who are disenfranchised with the Left's acceptance of Neoliberal hegemony and movement toward consensus and centrist politics.

Mouffe goes through the history of this change, as the Left in most Western democracies bowed to the inevitability of Neoliberlism, especially of the ilk of Thatcher. Mouffe looks to this tradition as a way to engage voters who are tired of picking between two parties with little that differentiates them. The author posits that these competing elites may have wild and discourse heavy election campaigns, but at the end of the day, govern and make decisions using the same ideologies, and benefiting big business and the wealthy at the expense of the middle and lower classes. This is certainly the case in Canada, where the Liberal Party and Conservative Party, the two parties that have governed Canada since independence, often run similar platforms, and interact with the citizenry in similar ways. Mouffe uses Western Europe as an example, so this issue is certainly prevalent in Western democracies.

Mouffe argues for the creation of a unified message to the left, uniting the interests of the working class, LGBTQ+ community, advocates for women's rights, anti-racists, and those of the lower and middle class. In reality, these groups are all historically oppressed peoples, but in recent years the Right has been able to control the narrative for the middle and lower classes of society. They have done so by appealing to economic needs, and fears of joblessness, poverty, and security - all things that are compounded by issues within Neoliberal thought itself. This is an obvious thesis, but Moufe has a succinct argument; that we need to ensure as much of society is democratized as possible, without moving into the sphere of revolutionary democracy. Instead, a more radical democracy should be created, within the sphere of Liberalism, that encourages citizens to participate in institutions, all with the goal of removing power from the elite, and ensuring it remains squarely within the .framework of a participatory democracy. Mouffe does not argue against representative democracy per se
All in all, a fascinating little read on political theory, where the author argues that the Right are monopolizing the political narrative, and the existing left are intellectually stagnant. The left needs to reorganize, re-energize, and continue to promote a society where discourse is allowed, and the freedoms and liberties of all are prioritized. Recommended for those interested in the left, and those looking for an interesting political theory read.

[Faiza Sattar · Rating 4 out of 5]

★★★★☆ (4/5)

Perhaps it is verbose and pedantic in its style and treatment, but this brief book is a staggering eye-opener for those who find themselves enmeshed in and confused by contemporary political airs. It makes a case for appropriating the word "Populism" within the Leftist spectrum, in accordance with core ideals and foundational values of democracy. Chantal also asserts that the relative "otherness" of Right-wingers must neither be completely erased or stifled, nor be ignored. Rather, Leftists should recognize these divisions as being fundamental to the democratic process and view the Right as adversaries, not enemies.

The author also highlights the unintended consequences of a post-political world where true democratic ideals have perished under the weight of mercenary callings, hyper-individualism and corporatism. Gradual erosion of liberal democracy is not only owed to the rise of the Right-wing but also to duplicitous misgivings by Liberals and Leftists - those who ceded ideas of equality and popular sovereignty in lieu of second-hand power and construction of an abstract enemy.

This is a dense read, especially for a novice. But the author's stance is worthy of further deliberation, even if the reader disagrees. And that is the essence of intelligent discourse.

A selection of my favourite passages from the book

Definitions
• Anti-essentialist theoretical approach that asserts that society is always divided and discursively constructed through hegemonic practices.
• Laclau defines populism as a discursive strategy of constructing a political frontier dividing society into two camps and calling for the mobilization of the ‘underdog’ against ‘those in power’.
• Neoliberalism is the term currently used to refer to this new hegemonic formation which, far from being limited to the economic domain, also connotes a whole conception of society and of the individual grounded on a philosophy of possessive individualism.
• The ‘populist moment’, therefore, is the expression of a variety of resistances to the political and economic transformations seen during the years of neoliberal hegemony.
• ‘Post-democracy’, first proposed by Colin Crouch, signals the decline in the role of parliaments and the loss of sovereignty that is the consequence of neoliberal globalization.

Demise of Democratic Values and Post Politics
• According to this perspective, that we called ‘class essentialism’, political identities were the expression of the position of the social agents in the relations of production and their interests were defined by this position. It was no surprise that such a perspective was unable to understand demands that were not based on ‘class’.
• Multiple struggles for emancipation are founded on the plurality of social agents and of their struggles.
• By claiming that the adversarial model of politics and the left/right opposition had become obsolete, and by celebrating the ‘consensus at the centre’ between centre-right and centre-left, the so-called ‘radical centre’ promoted a technocratic form of politics according to which politics was not a partisan confrontation but the neutral management of public affairs.
• On the one hand, the tradition of political liberalism: the rule of law, the separation of powers and the defence of individual freedom; on the other hand, the democratic tradition, whose central ideas are equality and popular sovereignty.
• With the demise of the democratic values of equality and popular sovereignty, the agonistic spaces where different projects of society could confront each other have disappeared and citizens have been deprived of the possibility of exercising their democratic rights.
• As a result the role of parliaments and institutions that allow citizens to influence political decisions has been drastically reduced. Elections no longer offer any opportunity to decide on real alternatives through the traditional ‘parties of government’. The only thing that post-politics allows is a bipartisan alternation of power between centre-right and centre-left parties. All those who oppose the ‘consensus in the centre’ and the dogma that there is no alternative to neoliberal globalization are presented as ‘extremists’ or disqualified as ‘populists’. Politics therefore has become a mere issue of managing the established order, a domain reserved for experts, and popular sovereignty has been declared obsolete.
• By drawing a frontier between the ‘people’ and the ‘political establishment’, they were able to translate into a nationalistic vocabulary the demands of the popular sectors who felt excluded from the dominant consensus.
• Although such protest movements have certainly played a role in the transformation of political consciousness, it is only when they have been followed by structured political movements, ready to engage with political institutions, that significant results have been achieved.
• They cannot recognize that many of the demands articulated by right-wing populist parties are democratic demands, to which a progressive answer must be given.

To stop the rise of right-wing populist parties
"It is necessary to design a properly political answer through a left populist movement that will federate all the democratic struggles against post-democracy. Instead of excluding a priori the voters of right-wing populist parties as necessarily moved by atavistic passions, condemning them to remain prisoners of those passions forever, it is necessary to recognize the democratic nucleus at the origin of many of their demands. A left populist approach should try to provide a different vocabulary in order to orientate those demands towards more egalitarian objectives. This does not mean condoning the politics of right-wing populist parties, but refusing to attribute to their voters the responsibility for the way their demands are articulated."

Right-wing populism vs. Left populism
• Right-wing populism claims that it will bring back popular sovereignty and restore democracy, but this sovereignty is understood as ‘national sovereignty’ and reserved for those deemed to be true ‘nationals’. Right-wing populists do not address the demand for equality and they construct a ‘people’ that excludes numerous categories, usually immigrants, seen as a threat to the identity and the prosperity of the nation.
• Left populism on the contrary wants to recover democracy to deepen and extend it. A left populist strategy aims at federating the democratic demands into a collective will to construct a ‘we’, a ‘people’ confronting a common adversary: the oligarchy.
• We are living through a ‘populist moment’. This is the expression of resistances against the post-democratic condition brought about by thirty years of neoliberal hegemony. This hegemony has now entered into crisis and this is creating the opportunity for the establishment of a new hegemonic formation. This new hegemonic formation could be either more authoritarian or more democratic, depending on how those resistances are going to be articulated and the type of politics through which neoliberalism will be challenged.

On Economic Liberty & Democracy
• To apprehend the nature of the Keynesian welfare state as a hegemonic formation, it is necessary to acknowledge that, although it played a crucial role in subordinating the reproduction of the labour force to the needs of capital, it also laid the conditions for the emergence of a new type of social rights and profoundly transformed democratic common sense, giving legitimacy to a set of demands for economic equality. In several countries, the strength of the trade unions allowed the consolidation of social rights.
• In his report to the Trilateral Commission in 1975, Samuel Huntington declared that the struggles in the 60s for greater equality and participation had produced a ‘democratic surge’ that had made society ‘ungovernable’. He concluded that ‘the strength of the democratic ideal poses a problem for the governability of democracy.’
• According to Hayek, the idea of democracy is secondary to the idea of individual liberty, so that a defence of economic liberty and private property replaces a defence of equality as the privileged value in a liberal society.

Gramsci's Influence
• Gramsci calls ‘hegemony through neutralization’ or ‘passive revolution’. By that, he refers to a situation where demands that challenge the hegemonic order are recuperated by the existing system, satisfying them in a way that neutralizes their subversive potential.
• Indeed, Gramsci suggested such a path when he asserted that it was ‘not a question of introducing from scratch a scientific form of thought into everyone’s individual life, but of renovating and making “critical” an already existing activity’.
• To abandon the productivist model and to implement the necessary ecological transition will require a truly Gramscian ‘intellectual and moral reform’.

Strategy and Objectives of Left Populism
• The strategy of left populism seeks the establishment of a new hegemonic order within the constitutional liberal-democratic framework and it does not aim at a radical break with pluralist liberal democracy and the foundation of a totally new political order. Its objective is the construction of a collective will, a ‘people’ apt to bring about a new hegemonic formation that will reestablish the articulation between liberalism and democracy that has been disavowed by neoliberalism, putting democratic values in the leading role.
• In democratic societies, further crucial democratic advances could be carried out through a critical engagement with the existing institutions.
• Clearly articulating democracy with equal rights, social appropriation of the means of production and popular sovereignty will command a very different politics and inform different socioeconomic practices than when democracy was articulated with the free market, private property and unfettered individualism.
• In our post-political times the difference between left and right is usually envisaged in terms of a ‘cleavage’–that is, as a type of division which is not structured by an antagonism but signals a mere difference of position. Understood in that way, the left/right distinction is not suited to a project of radicalization of democracy. It is only when it is envisaged in terms of frontier, indicating the existence of an antagonism between the respective positions and the impossibility of a ‘centre position’, that this difference is formulated in a properly political way. I believe that this ‘frontier effect’ is more difficult to convey with notions like ‘progressive’ or ‘democratic’ populism and that ‘left’ populism brings more clearly to the fore the existence of an antagonism between the people and the oligarchy without which a hegemonic strategy cannot be formulated.

On Leadership
• ‘Leadership’ must be constantly subordinated to the multitude, deployed and dismissed as occasion dictates. If leaders are still necessary and possible in this context, it is only because they serve the productive multitude. This is not an elimination of leadership, then, but an inversion of the political relationship that constitutes it.
• The leader can be conceived of as a primus inter pares (a first among equals) and it is perfectly possible to establish a different type of relation, less vertical between the leader and the people.

On Agonistic Confrontation - Adversary not Enemy
• The main problem with existing representative institutions is that they do not allow for the agonistic confrontation between different projects of society which is the very condition of a vibrant democracy. It is this lack of an agonistic confrontation, not the fact of representation, which deprives the citizens of a voice. The remedy does not lie in abolishing representation but in making our institutions more representative. This is indeed the objective of a left populist strategy.
What is important is that conflict when it arises does not take the form of an ‘antagonism’ (struggle between enemies) but of an ‘agonism’ (struggle between adversaries). The agonistic confrontation is different from the antagonistic one, not because it allows for a possible consensus, but because the opponent is not considered an enemy to be destroyed but an adversary whose existence is perceived as legitimate.

On the Construction of a People
• A relation of equivalence is not one in which all differences collapse into identity but in which differences are still active. If such differences were eliminated, that would not be equivalence but a simple identity.
• To partake in a ‘we’ of radical democratic citizens does not preclude participation in a variety of other ‘we’s’.
• Once we acknowledge the dimension of ‘the political’, we begin to realize that one of the main challenges for pluralist liberal-democratic politics consists in trying to defuse the potential antagonism that exists in human relations so as to make human coexistence possible. Indeed, the fundamental question is not how to arrive at a consensus reached without exclusion, because this would require the construction of a ‘we’ that would not have a corresponding ‘they’. This is impossible because the very condition for the constitution of a ‘we’ is the demarcation of a ‘they’.

Three kinds of politics within the Left
1. ‘Pure Reformism’ that accepts both the principles of legitimacy of liberal democracy and the existing neoliberal hegemonic social formation.
2. ‘Radical Reformism’ that accepts the principles of legitimacy but attempts to implement a different hegemonic formation.
3. ‘Revolutionary Politics’ seeks a total rupture with the existing sociopolitical order.

No relationship between Political and Economic Liberalism
• Despite the claim of many liberal theorists that political liberalism necessarily entails economic liberalism and that a democratic society requires a capitalist economy, it is clear that there is no necessary relationship between capitalism and liberal democracy. It is unfortunate that Marxism has contributed to this confusion by presenting liberal democracy as the superstructure of capitalism.
• People do not fight against ‘capitalism’ as an abstract entity because they believe in a ‘law of history’ leading to socialism. It is always on the basis of concrete situations that they are moved to act. If they struggle for equality it is because their resistances to various forms of domination are informed by democratic values and it is around those values, addressing their actual aspirations and subjectivities, and not in the name of anti-capitalism, that people can be mobilized.

[Robin · Rating 2 out of 5]

not this book naming "Die Linke" as a successful leftist party

[Manuela Rot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very inspiring, truly some food for thought on how to improve politics and solve the crises we currently face. Sometimes it was a bit hard to understand due to all the jargon, but the main message was clear and convincing.

[Tim Lindemann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Für Laien schwer verständlich aber gut geschrieben. Hat mir neue Denkanstöße vermittelt.

[Mikaellyng · Rating 1 out of 5]

Neoliberal hegemony is in crisis and in this book, Mouffe argues that it needs to be replaced by a left, or progressive populistic alternative. Although this book is called For A Left Populism it reads more as a theory of leftist populism, rather than a polemical attack against neoliberalism.
Mouffe spends most of the book discussing the nature of populism, its problems and doesn’t really get into what kind of specific policies she is advocating. Democracy is mentioned a million times, with the notion of left populism “deepening democracy”, but does not explain if this means breaking up two-party systems into plural democracies, workers-cooperation or some sort of decentralization of the state? It all remains vague.

Mouffe turns to the populist moment which was experienced in Europe some years ago and still lingers many places with the rise of left populist parties like that of Syriza, Podemos, Labour etc. But none of these have been successful in finally breaking with neoliberalisms hegemonic power. Surely society is more politicized and polarized but a break, or a return to Keynesianism seems unlikely. Mouffe partly rejects the notion of capitalisms inherent antagonisms, and argues that there can never be a anti-capitalist struggle as antagonisms are found in particular struggles and not in the totality of capital. On a plane of action and strategy this is mostly true, but Mouffe ends up overemphasizing this problem of class struggle to the point where she ignores the antagonisms of previous social democratic and left populist projects.
I found this book to be a decent theorization of left populism, also in that it showcases many of its flaws, like the fetishization of democracy without much explanation on what this entail, and a rejection of traditional left politics and historical materialism. The populistic movement Mouffe has in mind is not that of emancipation but of the reformist kind that carries with it the false belief that social democracy can “fix” capitalism and that emancipatory projects such as socialism is mythological.
All in all, it’s a decent read on the topic of populism and establishes a somewhat coherent theory behind such political movements.

Sidenote: Mouffe also refers to basically all she’s ever written (taking up nearly half of all her footnotes) in a pretensions fashion which makes me glad I read this smaller pocket and not one of her longer books. Interesting read, bad politics.

[Pozzo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Politikwissenschaftlich ganz gut. Politisch halt nicht
Von Twitter kopiert

Mouffes Politikverständnis basiert sehr stark auf dem antagonismus Schmitts (generell im gesamten Buch kann man Schmitt rauslesen, auch bei der Schaffung des Volkes). Für Mouffe ist Politik also eine klare Frontlinie bei der zwischen verschiedenen Seiten unterschieden wird.
Gleichzeitig ist ihre Hauptkritik am neoliberalen Establishment der Mitte, dass es zur Postpolitik (also quasi Einheitskonsens) führt (was ja nicht ganz unrecht ist). Dabei sieht sie sowohl den linken und den RECHTEN Populismus als einen Mittel diese Postpolitik zu bekämpfen
Ihr linker Populismus entfernt sich dabei von den rein ökonomischen Fragen und bindet die neuen sozialen Bewegungen ein (an sich nicht schlimm). Dabei verliert aber der ökonomische Charakter ziemlich viel Macht und sie spricht fast nur vom Neoliberalismus statt Kapitalismus

Und letztendlich ist für sie der Linke Populismus nur dazu da die liberale Demokratie zu verteidigen und will nicht wirklich etwas neues schaffen sondern wenn schon einfach die Gesellschaft liberal demokratischer machen. Vom wahren gesellschaftlichen Wechsel ist nicht die Rede

[Rodrigo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Calling back the people's will to the democratic spectrum is extremely dangerous, even if she covers it with a counter hegemonic blanket, it is still the godlike sovereign that traditional politics defended as the ultimate saviour of the world. Homogenous counter hegemony. Dangerous, she covers the leaks of the theory relatively well but still.... If you really hold a democratic ideal why not keep the absolute theological sovereign outside???. Mouffe is angry, she sees the power of Schmitt and thinks that she can appropriate that idea into a left wing concept. But the idea itself is totalizing and diversity can't shine in totalizations

[T · Rating 2 out of 5]

średnio zrozumiałam:3

[Helena · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have enjoyed and appreciated Mouffe’s intellectual work ever since I read ‘On the Political’ for one of my university courses (on critical and interpretive theories). It felt refreshing reading her again, breaking from my usual pic of fiction and biographies, and diving in to thought provoking writings. I have read this cut-to-the-chase text at breakfast, on my commute and during solo meals.

I appreciate the directness of Mouffe’s mapping and conclusions of the current ‘populist moment’ and her call to action aimed at progressives.

I found myself missing an explanation and concretization of her use of ‘citizen’ and ‘citizenship’ in the chapter ‘The Construction of a People’. All other concepts and components of her argument were explained and repeatedly mapped out in a forthright manner.

I am curious to see the response from other academics and political progressives.

[Robin Huber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zweifellos eine grossartige Denkerin mit zukunftsweisender Vision. Allerdings wäre es sinnvoll, ein Buch, das die radikale Demokratisierung verlangt, so zu schreiben, dass man keinen Uni-Abschluss und begleitenden Fremdwörter-Duden braucht, um es zu verstehen. Dieser Hang zum möglichst komplizierten Schreiben scheint Tradition der Kritischen Theorie zu sein. Schade, denn diese elitäre Sprache widerspiegelt m.E. genau die empfundene Distanz des "einfachen Volkes" zur "meritokratischen Elite", die kritisiert wird.

[Diana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even though I study English literature at university & often tackle challenging texts, I actually really dislike most theoretical (and often political) texts purely because I believe they’re too difficult to read. When reading them, it often feels like a writer wrote what he/she originally wanted to say then went back over it with a thesaurus for every. single. word. (Foucault I’m looking at you). So I’m in a weird position of absolutely loving the topics of theories/debates but not liking the texts themselves because I feel they’re too inaccessible for most people, even those studying it at a degree level. I’ve been on a year off from university and since I’m going back soon I wanted to tackle something to practise theory reading. I picked up ‘For a left populism’ by Chantel a few years ago on a whim when it came out and never read it until now. So it was definitely weird to be reading it, seeing where we were politically a few years ago and the benefit of hindsight in terms of physically being able to see things the way they have unfolded to the present day of posting this review.

Straight off I just want to say that I won’t be giving my opinion in terms of how much I agreed politically & how much it resonates with my personal views, what they are etc as I prefer to look at each topic individually rather than publicly say how I feel about a movement as a whole or a political party - I’ll only be looking at it from reader enjoyment/literature POV.

While this isn’t the most complicated theory text ever, this is a more challenging theoretical read rather an essay collection or a piece of argument in favour of something. It took half a day just to read the first 10/15 pages because I had to refresh my memory of political and theoretical jargon as well as the complicated semantics that Mouffe uses but once I did that, it became relatively easier to read the rest of it without having to stop too often to look up something up. Again, political jargon aside, it isn’t the most challenging read but still you have to be prepared to look up the meanings of words often.

At the beginning, I feel that Mouffe accurately captured and explained the precursor of the political situations/landscape of the past 30 years, especially the recent decade, that led her to the thoughts that she had and to writing this text. She also provides some well chosen quotes, figures and case studies to back this up and I definitely feel like she accurately in as neutral a way as possible, explained how the dominance of the neoliberal hegemony has led us to the situation we’re in now. She claims that as a result of this rule of neoliberalism (which has left a significant numbers of ‘losers’ and very, few numbers of elites who have actually benefited it) there has been a creation of a ‘post-political’ state of things. Due to this post-political state not only has the traditional ‘left/right’ grouping become defunct but there is absolutely no group/direction/party specifically battling - just that there is this tense, ineffective state of trying to manage society as though it is an office department and not people’s lives. The combination of the huge swathes of society who have suffered as a result of the stringent pursuing of globalist neoliberal policies in the past 30 years, the 2008 financial crash and this post-political state where nobody is being represented at all really, has resulted in extraordinary divisions in society due to people fighting for some kind of political representation, equality and justice and a chance to actually be heard. This is one of the reasons that right-wing populist parties have really made lead and bounds in the past decade - its supporters are being sold the opportunity to be ‘heard’ and fight against a particular establishment (not always a ‘left’ one but often) that has not only caused their suffering due to pursuing neoliberal policies but isn’t listening to them in this post-political state.

Mouffe very interestingly explains how the the concepts of liberalism and democracy are present in both the left and right, even in ways which we might not traditionally expect; some of these things may not be new to those who know political history in detail but nevertheless she does a good job of keeping it fresh. Mouffe then goes on to differentiate liberalism/democracy whilst also showing how they’ll always be inextricably linked no matter how diametrically opposed some of their corresponding tenets are - and how imperative they are to this new vision ‘left populism’, especially in order for it to succeed. I like how she doesn’t simply present the left populism that she is advocating for in this book as some kind of easy utopia-style vision. Mouffe robustly points out the serious failings that have led us to the current situation and thus how it difficult it would be to both technically achieve the vision that she’s advocating for and to get people to agree with it. Likewise, throughout the book she consistently points out the number of things that it would take for it to actually be achieved - it isn’t easy, but if done it could be truly successful in getting both justice and equality for all whilst satisfying the political demands of the many.

It is very complicated at times, but I may just be saying this because a) I don’t read political theory often at all b) I’m not a fan of complicated writing. But I like how there is very clearly an intention behind every chapter and every sentence that Mouffe writes; it may be a short but its an impactful, well-structured and well written text.

[Evan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Needlessly academic language, but I think she's correct.

[Don · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in the tradition of the polemical political pamphlet, Mouffe offers a crisp and direct analysis of the impasse of leftist politics in the liberal democracies. Noting the disarray of both social democratic and Marxist parties, she roots this their floundering in a failure to come to grips with the historical moment - the 'conjuncture' in Althusarian terms. An analysis of populism crystallises understanding of what this conjuncture actually is.

The populist moment "signals the crisis of the neoliberal hegemonic formation ... progressively implemented in Western Europe through the 1980s" (p.11)

"The core of this new hegemonic formation is constituted by a set of political-economic practices aimed at imposing the rule of the market ..... and limiting the role of the state to the protection of property rights, free markets and free trade." (11-12)

This system moved into deep crisis in 2008 with the near collapse of banking and credit and has opened up an interregnum - "... a period of crisis during which several tenets of the consensus established around a hegemonic project are challenged." (12) The fact that a "...solution to this crisis is not yet in sight characterises the 'populist moment' we find ourselves in today." (12)

She has already defined populism, following Laclau, as "... a way of doing politics that can take various ideological forms according to both time and place, and is compatible with a variety of institutional frameworks." (11) Most crucially it can come in both right and left wing forms and work in ways that range from authoritarian through to radical democratic.

The argument goes on to explain how traditional forms of parliamentary democracy have been drawn into the crisis of neoliberalism, becoming in effect the 'post-democracy' desribed by Colin Crouch. She quotes:

"The fundamental cause of democratic decline in contemporary politics is the major imbalance now developing between the role of corporate interests and those of virtually all other groups. Taken alongside the inevitable entropy of democracy, this is leading to politics once again becoming an affair of closed elites, as it was in pre-democratic times." (13)

Mouffe adds her own perspective on post-democracy, seeing it arising from “… the agonistic tension between liberal and democratic principles, which is constitutive of liberal democracy.” (16) The ascent of neoliberalism, with the limitations it imposes on state action and the reduction of the spaces in society where citizens could contend with one another, together with the demise of the democratic values of equality and ‘popular sovereignty’, has brought us to the place where we now are.

She goes on to note the emergence of protest politics of the ‘Occupy’ kind as a “… signal of awakening after years of relative apathy.” (19) but argues that the refusal to engage with political institutions has limited their impact. (19-20).

Her proposal for a left populism is intended to address this critical defect and bring the perspectives nurtured in the anti-globalisation movements into the political sphere. The guiding strategy aims for the federation of “…. the democratic demands into a collective will to construct a ‘we’, a ‘people’ confronting a common adversary: the oligarchy.” (24) The idea of a ‘chain of equivalence’ is aired at this point, which takes the demands of workers, immigrants, the precarious middle classes and others, are allows each social fraction to see its grievance mirrored in the predicament of others.

A chapter titled ‘Learning from Thatcherism’ shows how this task of creating a chain of equivalence was taken up in the 70s and 80s to bring the complaints and frustrations of small business operators into alignment with big capital and a part of the working class. The result was the creation of a post-Keynesian hegemony which facilitated the dismantling of indicative economic planning and much to the welfare state. Mouffe opines:

“To learn from Thatcherism means realising that in the present conjuncture, the decisive move is to establish a political frontier that breaks with the post-political consensus between centre-right and centre-left. Without defining an adversary, no hegemonic offensive can be launched.” (36)

So, the left needs a project which establishes a ‘frontier’ between itself and its opponents, generates ‘chains of equivalence’ which allows subaltern groups to share their grievances and build solidarity, but is also salient at the level of mainstream, democratic politics. Bringing these components of strategy into alignment is a means to the forging of a new consensus that can go face-to-face with neoliberalism. But what is the project she has in mind?

The answer is the radicalisation of democracy itself. Why this? Because she identifies the processes which have produced the subordination of so many social groups as the feature of neoliberalism which the left is called to react against most immediately. But being forced into a subordinate position does not in itself generate antagonism to the prevailing order. For that to happen Mouffe argues that a ‘discursive exterior’ is needed “…. from which the discourse of subordination can be interrupted.” (42) This exterior is to be found in the “…. main political vocabulary in Western societies…” which are still in place to challenge subordination. – the ideas of liberty and equality. (42)

From Mouffe’s Gramscian perspective, “The objective of hegemonic struggle consists in disarticulating the sedimented practices of an existing formation [ie parliamentary democracy] and, though the transformation of these practices and the instauration of new ones, establishing the nodal points of a new hegemonic social formation.” (44) She argues that articulating democracy with equal rights and the ‘social appropriation’ of production and popular sovereignty with “… command a very different politics and inform different socioeconomic practices than when democracy was articulated with the free market….” (44).

But, controversially for some on the left, her advocacy of radical democracy does not aim for a break with pluralist liberal democracy. “Its objective is the construction of a collective will, a ‘people’ apt to bring about a new hegemonic formation that will reestablish the articulation between liberalism and democracy that has been disavowed by neoliberalism…” (45)

Her arguments goes through another Gramscian concept, of the ‘integral state’, which is seen as including both civil society and the political society. (47) “In this view, next to the traditional apparatus of government, the state is also composed of a variety of apparatuses and public spaces where different forces contend for hegemony.” (47) These are spaces that “… can provide the terrain for important democratic advances.” (47) The fate of the state is not to ‘wither away’, “… but a profound transformation of those institutions to put them at a the service of a process of radicalisation of democracy.” (47) The aim of is not the seizure of the state, but to become the state.

The book then goes on to consider some of the issues contingent in the task of constructing a ‘people’. Mention is made of the need for a radical democratic concept of citizenship, with the importance of collective action being of its concepts. Mouffe sees the need for “plurality of engagements” (67) which involve actions at the ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’ levels. She references both Podemas in Spain and La France Insoumise as existing movements which are acting on these principles.

A final point that needs to be mentioned is her insistence on the ‘affective dimension’ to politics which is required for the citizens to identify with the project. (72) This means shifting the left’s commitment to a rationalist approach to politics to one which works with Freud’s understanding of the human mind divided into the conscious and unconscious. Personality is constructed around elements that lie outside the consciousness and rationality of agents. The implications of this for left politics is that the identities which will play a part in forging democratic change will include the element of “affective libidinal bonds”. (73) She quotes Freud: “A group is clearly held together by a power of some kind: and to what power could this feat be better ascribed that to Eros, which holds everything together in the word.” (73)

Conclusion: Mouffe maps out an approach to left politics which builds democracy into its essence. It holds out the possibility of achieving radical change – to the point of mounting a challenge to the centrality of capitalism in the modern world – but also mounting a defence of democratic values. All in all, a valuable contribution to an important debate.

[Rhys · Rating 3 out of 5]

A timely essay on Mouffe's notion of 'left populism' in a 'post-democratic' West. Something akin to a radical and open democracy that reinvigorates a public ideal of agonistic discourse. Society isn't economy; society isn't neo-feudalism.

"The current situation can be described as ‘post-democracy’ because in recent years, as a consequence of neoliberal hegemony, the agonistic tension between the liberal and the democratic principles, which is constitutive of liberal democracy, has been eliminated. With the demise of the democratic values of equality and popular sovereignty, the agonistic spaces where different projects of society could confront each other have disappeared and citizens have been deprived of the possibility of exercising their democratic rights. To be sure, ‘democracy’ is still spoken of, but it has been reduced to its liberal component and it only signifies the presence of free elections and the defence of human rights. What has become increasingly central is economic liberalism with its defence of the free market and many aspects of political liberalism have been relegated to second place, if not simply eliminated. This is what I mean by ‘post-democracy’."

As for a Left Populism:

"Everything hinges on the discursive and affective register through which meaning is going to be assigned to the manifold democratic demands that characterize this ‘populist moment’. The possibility of implementing counter-hegemonic practices to bring an end to the post-political consensus requires the construction of a political frontier. According to the left populist strategy, this frontier should be constructed in a ‘populist’ way, opposing the ‘people’ against the ‘oligarchy’, a confrontation in which the ‘people’ is constituted by the articulation of a variety of democratic demands. This ‘people’ is not to be understood as an empirical referent or a sociological category. It is a discursive construction resulting from a ‘chain of equivalence’ between heterogeneous demands whose unity is secured by the identification with a radical democratic conception of citizenship and a common opposition to the oligarchy, the forces that structurally impede the realization of the democratic project" (p.79).

[Alistar Flofsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

„A hegemonic formation is a configuration of social practices of different natures: economic, cultural, political, and juridical, whose articulation is secured around some key symbolic signifiers which shape the ‘common sense’ and provide the normative framework of a given society. The objective of the hegemonic struggle consists in disarticulating the sedimented practices of an existing formation and, through the transformation of these practices and the instauration of new ones, establishing the nodal points of a new hegemonic social formation. This process comports as a necessary step with the rearticulation of the hegemonic signifiers and their mode of institutionalization. Clearly articulating democracy with equal rights, social appropriation of the means of production and popular sovereignty will command a very different politics and inform different socioeconomic practices than when democracy was articulated with the free market, private property and unfettered individualism.”
==========
„Now we need to consider a question that I take to be crucial for envisaging the construction of a ‘people’: the decisive role played by affects in the constitution of political identities. The lack of understanding of the affective dimension in the processes of identification is, in my view, one of the main reasons for which the left, locked in a rationalist framework, is unable to grasp the dynamics of politics. This rationalism is no doubt at the origin of the stubborn refusal of so many left theorists to accept the teachings of psychoanalysis.”
==========
„Freud shows that, far from being organized around the transparency of an ego, personality is structured on a number of levels that lie outside of the consciousness and rationality of the agents. He therefore obliges us to abandon one of the key tenets of rationalist philosophy – the category of the subject as a rational, transparent entity able to confer a homogeneous meaning on the totality of her conduct – and to accept that ‘individuals’ are mere referential identities, resulting from the articulation between localized subject positions. The claim of psychoanalysis that there are no essential identities but only forms of identification is at the centre of the anti-essentialist approach that stipulates that the history of the subject is the history of her identifications and that there is no concealed identity to be rescued beyond the latter.”

[vanessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

With the dawn of the new millennium, social-democratic parties everywhere had discarded their ‘left’ identity and embraced the centrist politics of the ‘third way.’ Mouffe's analysis of the hegemonic terrain laid down by the neoliberal consensus is really on point. By claiming that the traditional left/right binary has become obsolete, the essentially neoliberal ‘right' guised under the label ‘centrist’ promoted ‘a technocratic form of politics according to which politics was not a partisan confrontation but the neutral management of public affairs.’ Since political questions have been reduced to mere ‘technical' issues, operating in the liminal space defined by the neoliberal consensus, the possibility for democracy as an exercise of the political will of the people has been eliminated. As a result, Mouffe identifies the emergence of post-democracy whereby the two vital democratic components – equality and popular sovereignty – have been eroded.

A panacea for this condition? Left populism articulating democratic demands.

And this is where the book gets problematic. Although I agree with her conceptualisation of populism as an emancipatory project that establishes a political frontier between the people and the elites, I really hated her prescriptive analysis. She discards the 'far-left' (what does this even mean?) and adopts a strategy of 'radical reformism.' However, her blind deference to the institutions of liberal democracy – the very same institutions that have been born out of and often perpetuate the entrenched inequalities – such as the representative model, cancels out the 'radical.' All in all, she makes a whole lot of bold claims that remain largely unsustained, is really vague at times (at no point she explains what is meant by 'deepening democracy' – a phrase she used a gazillion times) and throughout the book references mainly her own work, while rather arrogantly dismissing all those she disagrees with.

[Steven]

such a baffling pastiche of leftist theories, including--somehow--her own, which she admits were maybe wrong before but are correct now. she's made a career out of advocating for an ill-defined leftism that is not marxist, but to do that, she has to actively misread or ignore large swaths of marxism.

[Ea Grønlund · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.4 stars

Read this for a class on populism and polarisation
I think Mouffe has done some really important work on our understanding of populism in the context of liberal democracies. I also found the contemporary analysis in this book quite spot on and the politica project she proposes (a radical democracy) definitely has potential, and is pretty in line with my own views on what the left can and should do.
However, I think her understanding of populism and the way she uses it in this book is wrong, in the sense that I don't believe she can argue for a left populism without diluting the potential of populism as a lens for criticising many of the current shortcomings in western democracies. Also, her ideas of how a left populism can create "agonistic pluralism" are just too abstract for me, and I don't see how that can be implemented in Europe, without fueling polarisation.
But, nonetheless an interesting read

[Pauline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ebenfalls für meine Hausarbeit gelesen. Man braucht definitiv Vorwissen für dieses Buch, sollte sich mit dem Thema Populismus schon auseinandergesetzt haben. Gleichzeitig sehr interessante Sichtweise auf linken Populismus.