In the profusion of essays recently published on populism (Müller 2016, Moffitt 2017, Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2017) one stands out for its claim of the term, the idea and the program: Chantal Mouffe’s (2018) manifesto For a Left Populism, which has received much attention from political scientists as well as politicians. Whereas most authors writing on this timely topic distance themselves from what they regard as a nefarious ideology or a treacherous disguise, the Belgian political theorist promotes it as the only way, for the left, to respond effectively to right-wing populism and, like the phoenix, rise from the ashes.
The starting point of her argument is a relatively straightforward political diagnosis, which she develops in four steps (9-24). First, we are living through a populist moment. Populism is not an ideology but the discursive strategy that sets up an opposition between the elite and the people and is therefore able to accommodate various institutional frameworks. Second, this moment results from the crisis of the neoliberal hegemonic formation which has itself replaced the social-democratic welfare state in the 1980s. This crisis corresponds to the disarticulation of liberal principles of freedom and the rule of law from democratic principles of equality and sovereignty of the people, the former remaining alone after the elimination of the latter, thus causing the advent of current post-democracy. Third, the left has committed two historical errors. Initially, its class essentialism has made it impervious to the emergence of new social movements involving race, gender, sexuality and environment. Later, its attempt to propose a third way to create a consensus at the center generated a post-politics which did not leave space any more for contradictions and conflicts. Fourth, the combination of post-democracy (decline of social justice and distrust in representation) and of post-politics (extinction of the right/left opposition) paved the way to populism as the only alternative to neoliberalism and the sole response to people’s discontent. Q. E. D.
Based on this diagnosis, Mouffe draws her plan for the left, taking as her model Margaret Thatcher who gained power by using populist arguments (25-38). Indeed, the Conservative prime minister successfully contrasted the oppressive establishment of the state and the unions with the industrious people who did not receive the benefits of its labour. But once in power, she implemented a classical form of authoritarian neoliberalism which not only allowed her to apply her Hayekian political project but which was later adopted by her successors of the Labour Party under the aegis of Tony Blair. Right-wing populism had therefore served as a stepping-stone for imposing a hegemonic model. For Mouffe, this is what the left should in turn do, but with as an objective the advent of a new hegemony reuniting liberalism and democracy. In her view, populism is a short-term tactic for a long-term strategy. She sees Jeremy Corbyn as the best example of the successful application of this winning scheme based on his espousal of the opposition us/them. More generally, for her, populism is the means, whereas radical democracy, which supposes pluralism and representation, is the end (39-57). Contrary to other radical thinkers, she does not consider pluralist representative democracy itself to be in crisis. It is rather its contemporary post-political expression that is failing because it does not allow for the agonistic confrontation between various hegemonic projects. The objective is therefore not to reject representation but to render it more democratic, which is what left populism achieves. But for populism to exist, there has to be a people. As an anti-essentialist, Mouffe proposes to construct it (59-78). Indeed, what she means by people has no empirical reality; it is a discursive construction including and excluding various segments of the population. Thus, while a few decades ago, the left was focused on the working class, ignoring new social movements, it is today the opposite. To avoid this counter-productive segmentation, the left then needs to retrieve the social question, while not losing sight of the causes of minorities, feminists, immigrants, and the environment. But it must not do so in a horizontal way. Left populism is vertical. The people have to be represented – in its plurality – and it shall have a leader – though not an authoritarian one. Moreover, the struggles to be fought should not be global. They need a national frame, in which affective identifications that are crucial to populism can occur.
