The left’s embrace of pluralism wrongly led it to abandon hegemonic alternatives

Evidence

Its roots are to be found in the fact that the coming to terms by the left with the importance of pluralism and of liberaldemocratic institutions has been accompanied by the mistaken belief that this meant abandoning any attempt to offer an alternative to the present hegemonic order. Hence the sacralization of consensus. the blurring of the left/right distinction and the present urge of many left parties to locate themselves at the cenne. — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 501

Categorization

• QUESTION: Mouffe asserts accepting pluralism need not mean abandoning left alternatives — this is the crux I’m testing: whether a hegemonic alternative can exist without an excluded enemy.
• XREF: connects to: Neoliberalism succeeded by capturing sixties anti-authoritarian energies the left failed to harness — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2101; Thirty years of hegemony atrophied the left’s imaginative capacity — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 2229; The left’s failure was lacking an alternative modernity, not Fordism’s end. (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Left solidarity requires heterogeneous coalition rather than unity or horizontalism #complicates (0.85) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1743
• Frame choices that collapse politics into nationalism versus postmodernism erase socialist alternatives. #expands (0.82) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 393
• The left’s failure was lacking an alternative modernity, not Fordism’s end. #corroborates (0.78)
• Neoliberalism is internally plural yet not formless #complicates (0.72) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 10