A discussion of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (London: Verso, 1985).

Today in advanced capitalist societies there is a rift between radical theory and radical politics, caused by the twin crises of socialism and Marxism. Socialism as model and Marxism as a theoretical approach are unattractive because of the authoritarianism of existing socialist societies, because Marxism's designated revolutionary agent - the working class - does not act as a class, and because many of today's radical issues - nuclear war, ecology, feminism, gay liberation - have not been compellingly addressed within the socialist tradition. Neither socialism nor Marxism offers an integrative vision for many activists in today's new social movements. Marxism creatively informs work within various academic disciplines, but the Marxist notion that there are overarching, total explanations of social reality is considered dubious, if considered at all. The current contenders among general, transdisciplinary outlooks, such as deconstruction, stress the fragmentary nature of reality, indeterminacy, and the lack of a unitary agency for change. The various post-Marxisms - mainly filiations out of the Age (!) of Structuralism - have been debilitating for radical politics. Although there are important contributions in the linguistic turn, emphasizing non-economic motivations, the fluidity of social contexts, the power of language, and the rhetorical construction of social movements and cultural trends, on the whole its message has been that materialist determinism has to be replaced with de-ontologized indeterminacy. Deconstruction might mean critical engagement by which wholes are broken apart so their vibrant elements can be reappropriated in changed frameworks. But in casting aside Marxist answers too many of its critics also set aside the questions these answers were meant to address.