Democracy Dialectics And Difference

It has been nearly two centuries since Marx famously turned Hegel on his head in order to repurpose dialectics as a revolutionary way of thinking about the internal contradictions of our social relations. Despite critiques from post-structuralists, post-colonialists, and others, there has been a resurgence of dialectical thought among political theorists as of late. This resurgence has coincided with a rise in the mention of words like class warfare, socialism, and communism among the general public on the streets of Seattle in 1999, in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, in the actions of the Greek anarchists and the Spanish indignados, and in the rallying cry of "we are the 99%" of the Occupy Movement, and in academia. This book explores how it is that dialectical thought might respond to the critiques brought forth by those on the left who are critical of Marxism’s universalizing and authoritarian legacy. Brian C. Lovato singles out Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe as the key interlocutors in this ongoing conversation between Marxism and post-structuralism. Laclau and Mouffe argue that Marxist theory is inherently authoritarian, cannot escape a class-reductionist theory of revolutionary subjectivity, and is bound by a closed Hegelian ontology. Lovato argues the opposite by turning to two heterodox Marxist thinkers, Raya Dunayevskaya and C. L. R. James, in order to construct a radically democratic, dynamic, and open conceptualization of dialectical thought. In doing so, he advances a vision of Marxist theory that might serve as a resource to scholars and activists committed not only to combatting capitalism, but also to fighting against colonialism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and heteronormativity. The writings of Dunayevskaya and James allow for Marxism to become relevant again in these tumultuous early years of the 21st century.

It has been nearly two centuries since Marx famously turned Hegel on his head in order to repurpose dialectics as a revolutionary way of thinking about the internal contradictions of our social relations. Despite critiques from post-structuralists, post-colonialists, and others, there has been a resurgence of dialectical thought among political theorists as of late. This resurgence has coincided with a rise in the mention of words like class warfare, socialism, and communism among the general public on the streets of Seattle in 1999, in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, in the actions of the Greek anarchists and the Spanish indignados, and in the rallying cry of "we are the 99%" of the Occupy Movement, and in academia. This book explores how it is that dialectical thought might respond to the critiques brought forth by those on the left who are critical of Marxism’s universalizing and authoritarian legacy. Brian C. Lovato singles out Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe as the key interlocutors in this ongoing conversation between Marxism and post-structuralism. Laclau and Mouffe argue that Marxist theory is inherently authoritarian, cannot escape a class-reductionist theory of revolutionary subjectivity, and is bound by a closed Hegelian ontology. Lovato argues the opposite by turning to two heterodox Marxist thinkers, Raya Dunayevskaya and C. L. R. James, in order to construct a radically democratic, dynamic, and open conceptualization of dialectical thought. In doing so, he advances a vision of Marxist theory that might serve as a resource to scholars and activists committed not only to combatting capitalism, but also to fighting against colonialism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and heteronormativity. The writings of Dunayevskaya and James allow for Marxism to become relevant again in these tumultuous early years of the 21st century.

Anticolonial theorists and revolutionaries have long turned to dialectical thought as a central weapon in their fight against oppressive structures and conditions. This relationship was never easy, however, as anticolonial thinkers have resisted the historical determinism, teleology, Eurocentrism, and singular emphasis that some Marxisms place on class identity at the expense of race, nation, and popular identity. In recent decades, the conflict between dialectics and postcolonial theory has only deepened. In Decolonizing Dialectics George Ciccariello-Maher breaks this impasse by bringing the work of Georges Sorel, Frantz Fanon, and Enrique Dussel together with contemporary Venezuelan politics to formulate a dialectics suited to the struggle against the legacies of colonialism and slavery. This is a decolonized dialectics premised on constant struggle in which progress must be fought for and where the struggles of the wretched of the earth themselves provide the only guarantee of historical motion.

The concept of democratic freedom refers to more than the kind of freedom embodied by political institutions and procedures. Democratic freedom can only be properly understood if it is grasped as the expression of a culture of freedom that encompasses an entire form of life. Juliane Rebentisch’s systematic and historical approach demonstrates that we can learn a great deal about the democratic culture of freedom from its philosophical critics. From Plato to Carl Schmitt, the critique of democratic culture has always been articulated as a critique of its ãaestheticization“. Rebentisch defends various phenomena of aestheticization Ð from the irony typical of democratic citizens to the theatricality of the political Ð as constitutive elements of democratic culture and the notion of freedom at the heart of its ethical and political self-conception. This work will be of particular interest to students of Political Theory, Philosophy and Aesthetics.

The current political climate of uncompromising neoliberalism means that the need to study the logic of our culture—that is, the logic of the capitalist system—is compelling. Providing a rich philosophical analysis of democracy from a negative, non-identity, dialectical perspective, Vasilis Grollios encourages the reader not to think of democracy as a call for a more effective domination of the people or as a demand for the replacement of the elite that currently holds power. In doing so, he aspires to fill in a gap in the literature by offering an out-of-the-mainstream overview of the key concepts of totality, negativity, fetishization, contradiction, identity thinking, dialectics and corporeal materialism as they have been employed by the major thinkers of the critical theory tradition: Marx, Engels, Horkheimer, Lukacs, Adorno, Marcuse, Bloch and Holloway. Their thinking had the following common keywords: contradiction, fetishism as a process and the notion of spell and all its implications. The author makes an innovative attempt to bring these concepts to light in terms of their practical relevance for contemporary democratic theory.

A reexamination of democracy, which during the eighteenthcentury Enlightenment seemed to offer a much-desired escape from arbitrary class structures and oppressive governments, but has not proven to be a sure formula or a simple solution. An awareness of the true complexities of democracy requires an understanding of a perennial dialectic residing at the heart of democracy, and manifesting itself in specific dialectical relationships: between elitism and populism, liberty and equality, smallness and bigness, religion and secular life, politics and economics, etc. This book argues that such dialectical relationships, originally most explicit in particular nations, are also manifest in international relations.

What does it mean to be a citizen? What impact does an active democracy have on its citizenry and why does it fail or succeed in fulfilling its promises? Most modern democracies seem unable to deliver the goods that citizens expect; many politicians seem to have given up on representing the wants and needs of those who elected them and are keener on representing themselves and their financial backers. What will it take to bring democracy back to its original promise of rule by the people? Bernd Reiter’s timely analysis reaches back to ancient Greece and the Roman Republic in search of answers. It examines the European medieval city republics, revolutionary France, and contemporary Brazil, Portugal, and Colombia. Through an innovative exploration of country cases, this study demonstrates that those who stand to lose something from true democracy tend to oppose it, making the genealogy of citizenship concurrent with that of exclusion. More often than not, exclusion leads to racialization, stigmatizing the excluded to justify their non-membership. Each case allows for different insights into the process of how citizenship is upheld and challenged. Together, the cases reveal how exclusive rights are constituted by contrasting members to non-members who in that very process become racialized others. The book provides an opportunity to understand the dynamics that weaken democracy so that they can be successfully addressed and overcome in the future.

This book examines how the democratic form and the struggle for democracy reflects, influences and shapes the struggle for social emancipation. In the context of increased exploitation, rising inequality, and intensified struggle for social justice in the aftermath of the economic crisis, the channelling of populism through liberal democratic institutions has had contradictory effects: giving rise to both Corbyn and Brexit, Sanders and Trump, Syriza and the Golden Dawn, to name but a few. How can we make sense of these developments? In response, this book approaches the idea of democracy from a socialist constitutionalist standpoint and explores institutional forms and principles that challenge and aim at the transformation of the extant social order. This process involves the challenging of well-established ideas of the liberal viewpoint, as well as an unwavering focus on the issue of class rule which enables the highlighting of limitations of -not only mainstream but also heterodox- contemporary approaches to constitutionalism and democracy. Ultimately, democracy is conceived as a process of struggle for creating the conditions, material as well as intellectual, for its actualisation. This significant work of legal and political theory will be of considerable interest to those working in these areas to make sense of contemporary developments, and to further the causes of social justice and social emancipation.