The Democratic Paradox

Mouffe, Chantal. The Democratic Paradox. London: Verso, 2000. I finished reading this on Wednesday, and it was a complete pleasure. Mouffe is strong on reasoning and low on jargon. She's committed to reviving a radical politics, but she's not given to raving and gnashing her teeth. On the contrary! She focuses closely on the way plurality works in the world -- if you say you want a democracy, you have to be ready to deal with the realities of diversity (or classically, a plurality). A "people" does not become a unified, undifferentiated mass even when they agree on something. In every agreement (or consensus), there must be disagreement (or exclusion). She takes Habermas to task (as have others, of course) for imagining an "ideal speech situation" -- well, not for imagining it, but for arguing as if it could be made real.

Mouffe also writes sensibly about the tension (or conflict) between equality and liberty (which I tend to characterize as the conflict between rights and responsibilities). She situates the conflict in the framework of the paradox that is the subject of this book, placing the equality argument with the radical left, and the liberty argument with the "liberals" -- who in the U.S. we would call the libertarians today, I think.

Mouffe also argues the flaws in the "third way," especially as it has played out in contemporary British politics.