Iñigo Errejón – Populism, Reform and Transition – Februar 2012 What is populism? Rancière has a very provocative phrase which states that if there is something that unites the old Marxists and the new liberals, then it is their shared rejection to that thing they call populism. I would say that if it has any relevance to ask why the term populism has been able to become accepted by everyone as a demeaning term, as a term that disqualifies the opponent yet without anyone having been able to offer a roughly clear definition of what populism means, of who is a populist and which traits compose it, then because it bears an illusion. And the illusion is believing that it is possible to replace a tumultuous and conflictive politics arising due to the incorporation of the many in it, with a more or less technical management, in which the political matters are basically non-confrontational, of negotiation between the interests of rational individuals who ultimately delegate tasks to more or less efficient institutions which represent the interests of the many and which satisfy some of their needs in return for political obedience. This post-political illusion in which politics are numbed and turned into a mere management within some normative frameworks that are never discussed and are left on the sidelines because they come from domains that are not political, and therefore cannot be politicized and therefore cannot be debated, that are today basically the economy as a kind of science to which religious powers are granted because it is granted the ability to determine what is good and what is bad for a society independently of the views expressed by the members of that society. It is logical that this post-political illusion slanders and denigrates the conflictive political experiences, which have all the ugliness, all the impurity of the plebeian politics, calling them populist. A politics made in a tumultuous and conflictive way. That’s why I think that, yes, it might make sense to ask the question of what populism might mean, which brings together political positions that we normally view as very distinct from each other, but which feel more or less comfortable in their joint condemnation of certain phenomena. I think that all the attempts to define populism as an ideology have failed, and that, nonetheless, in order to explain some social phenomena usually characterized as populism, I regard those attempts as more useful which describe them as a form and not as a content. I’m talking about the works of the whole school of Ernesto Laclau and others, that tend to describe it as a manner of discourse that symbolically unifies very different and fragmented positions in a simplification of the political space and dichotomizes it. And it dichotomizes it dividing between the people, as the representation of the general will, and the elites. This is so on condition to bear in mind that these are symbolically generated positions, that is to say, that there is no such thing as a people, that there is no such thing as the elites, if not as a common representation arising in the societies. And in this sense populism would be a way to generate political identities. A way to generate political identities in conflict that are usually in a process of rupture. Because it is true that the regimes, let’s say, of a “populist form” have later serious difficulties while building institutions that can regulate the new correlation of forces. In Europe, the main manifestation of populism we have is a right-wing one. Like in Latin America, what got to be called neo-populism has a clear left-wing character, of the recovery of popular sovereignty, of distribution of wealth and so on. These political forms that we called populist are not defined by an ideological content but by a way of building popular unity, a people, a way in which the most impoverished subaltern sectors of society reclaim for themselves, with relative success, the representation of the common interests. And they do so building a kind of social block that is initially counter-hegemonic and capable of gaining, disputing with success, the political power in their societies. What obstacles are in the way of socialism in Latin America? I think that even though the term socialism of the 21st century may arouse sympathy, it probably hides more than it shows. Perhaps in the case of the Venezuelan government, but I wouldn’t say that the path to socialism in the rest of the leftist political processes in Latin America is a direct path. One could say that they are political powers in transition, which is not saying much, but… Well, what is the main defining characteristic of this governments? it is that of political forces that take on, in a more or less precarious and temporal way, the representation of much broader social conglomerates which hold the political power in their states, but which do not have the economic power, or they have it in a limited extent, do not have the control of the media, certainly not the control of the military, or say, it is something they gradually conquer. So what we have here is left-wing governments within state and social structures, social regimes, which are clearly inherited from, and with the typical inertia of oligarchic regimes. Oligarchic regimes insofar that the exercise of political power is restricted to a minority social sector which is always privileged when it comes to holding the political power and when they distribute, almost like prebends [priest’s stipends], what should actually be citizens’ rights. This means that these are much weaker governments than how they are often described. These are governments which have taken on states with far less capacity of regulating social life, and so, taking the political control of for example the Ecuadorian or the Paraguayan state is a tool but it’s not the only tool. At the same time they have to reverse more than five hundred years old processes of the formation of an economy and social structure that is typical for the periphery, typical for colonial societies, with the typical economic malformations of that geopolitical role in the global system, and with the cultural habits inherited by its middle and ruling classes. This means that the emancipatory perspective of redistribution of wealth and democratization of the social relations is definitely a long-term perspective that will continuously take place with profound contradictions. Besides, well, perhaps this teleological conception of socialism as a moment in which social contradictions cease to exist, or are no longer present, because the capital-labor contradiction disappears, might not be able to endure the outbreak of new conflicts arising from other types of subalternities, that of gender, of ethnicity… which do not always and at every movement relate to the capital-labor contradiction, and it is not certain that they will disappear with it. And thus, it is possible that the practice of, say, imagining an horizon of socialist emancipation would be imagining an horizon of permanent expansion of the democratic capacity of the societies to govern themselves, above the private powers which impose asymmetries and exploitation. What problems exist with the concepts of “reform” or “revolution”? I think the concepts of reform and revolution pose difficulties insofar as they today don’t refer to any practice anymore, that they have to be traced back from historical practices from quite some time ago, and above all, from long before transformations occurred which have fundamentally changed the world we live in. This doesn’t mean a kind of opportunistic politics renouncing all principles. It means attempting to put the way in which we think political developments at the same level in which we live them, at the level in which we are practicing them along the way, rather than adapting to dogmas lived in a religious way. Dogmas that are very comforting but do not help much when it comes to unravel the political form. I would say… what axis, what form if not thinking through this two forms? I think that the virtue is in being able to move with a foot within the existent consensuses and with the other foot in the consensuses to come, to avoid the parallel abysses of, on the one hand, marginalization that is self-satisfied in a supposed moral purity that is completely powerless and unable to transform anything, or satisfied with repeating the same dogmas year after year; and the other abyss, which is the abyss of recovery, of total integration in the existing order and thus of the loss of the ability of impact, of transformation. Of course this is always easier said than done, but I insist, I think that the game consist in managing to stand, as I said, with a foot in the existing consensuses and with a foot in the consensuses that one wants to bring about. According to my understanding, the politics of hegemony lie in the art of not being entirely inside, but certainly not entirely outside; in not posing an outright rejection, but being able to reshape. I think that the best way to understand the competition, the political dispute, and a better way to exercise it in a more virtuous way, that is, with more chances to succeed, is understanding that in politics the factions are not already formed. That is to say that the political positions depend on what are the fundamental dimensions which arrange loyalties. If one is able to arrange the axis dividing the loyalties or identities in the political arena, then these sides are able – or not – to align majorities in favor of these or that objectives. I think that any politics that take the camps for granted and view them as already fixed, is either inevitably static or inevitably powerless; either conservative of the existing order, or mourning after it. By contrast, I think that this Gramscian concept of the war of positions is very useful when thinking a politics which does not see the given loyalties as something stable, but which disputes the legitimacy and the capacity of regulating social life. We can put it another way: consensus and conflict. A politics that practices consensus just as well as conflict. In other words, a politics that understands that it is possible to subvert the fundamental political ordering of loyalties depending on what are the main topics sorting them. I think there is a possibility for the formation of transformative political identities, of popular political identities, in the sense that they are built up from the pain related to the existing order, which can facilitate a relatively transformative practice. Though, knowing that there are no certainties, and that there are no certainties means that there are no safety grab bars on the journey. We don’t know what’s the path of arrival and it’s clear to us that the starting point is always a sort of contingency, of a gamble. And in this sense there are no guaranties. I mean, in politics you gamble and what one can judge is the success deriving from one’s political analysis and practices. I think that all other sorts of certainties have rather to do with the field of religion than with the field of politics, which is always an art of invention, of contingency and conflict. Is there a way out? It is already turned into a chliché to say that transitional moments, political orders in decay and political orders that are still difficult to characterize or to anticipate, as Gramsci said, are moments of the monsters. Of phenomena that are difficult to classify, difficult to think and interact with. I think that the profound social fragmentation that neoliberalism has created in our societies, opens the way for all sorts of regressive and reactionary solutions, for reactionary disaffection which disqualifies political elites but always exonerates the economic elites of responsibility, for racism, for the phenomenon of profound lack of solidarity, for anomic social violence coming from the second last ones directed against the last ones. All this is possible, of course. But the moments of fragmentation are also moments in which the cards are dealt anew. Those are the moments in which the blocks begin to erode and cannot longer be understood as steady. And hence a possibility is opened up for a hegemonic politics, as a politics that re-articulates, rearranges the political positions and which perhaps – depending on certain starting conditions and the virtue of those who are embarked on this political projects – has a certain ability of provoking or generating political alignments that work in favor of the subaltern sectors. There is nothing necessary about that, this does not derive from any necessary objective conditions which would occur. I think that it can’t be assumed as natural at all, but that it can be assumed as possible. In this sense, the horizon of the possible expands with the social mobilizations, with the everyday politicization we are witnessing in civil society, which is a phenomenon that I regard as highly positive. And, I insist, it will depend on the amount of flexibility that the subaltern sectors will have to offer proposals that include a broad social conglomerate which does not necessarily share the conditions that would make them be the same thing, and will only become the same thing though the political construction of common identities. I think that we are starting to see possibilities for this to happen in a transformative sense. When I say transformative sense, I’m very clear, I’m saying it in the sense of destitution of the current order, an elitist order which distributes less and less benefits to those who obey, and hence reward them less for their obedience. And not only of destitution but also of constitution. I’m thinking of a constituent scenario in the sense that it would produce a new social and political contract that is at the level of the needs of those who already feel and see in our everyday life that the old contract has been, first of all, broken by the elites, because they gave it away in its entirety, because they have subjected it to the post-political management of the crisis that robs us the democratic possibilities to decide our destiny, yet no longer governs us, because it does not guarantee our social conditions. Without any optimism, I think that for the first time, maybe within two decades, we can say that the political positions are not fixed, that the cards can be dealt anew. There, I think, is space for a hegemonic intervention capable of re-articulating much of the positions, the demands and wishes of the social majority sectors, in favor of a politics of transformation which can put the collective resources at the service of the collective needs.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Sep 2014 12:10:37 +0000
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