Chantal Mouffe, Belgian philosopher: “Democracy requires the existence of conflict; without it, there is no politics”

Chantal Mouffe, a Belgian philosopher and political theorist born in 1943, has been one of the most influential figures in post-Marxist thought. Although now retired, she was a professor at the University of Westminster.

Among her most important works is Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985), co-authored with Ernesto Laclau, in which she argues for abandoning economic determinism in favor of focusing on the construction of a “collective will.”

Her thinking is defined by a distinction between “politics,” understood as the set of institutions, and “the political,” which refers to the conflict inherent in human relations.

From her perspective, the greatest mistake of liberal democracies is the pursuit of a rational consensus that seeks to eliminate conflict – what she calls “post-politics.” As she puts it: “Democracy requires the existence of conflict; without it, there is no politics.”

Political passions do not disappear

Mouffe maintains that if conflict is removed from public debate, political passions do not vanish but are instead pushed to the margins. In her view, when there are no clear differences between left and right, citizens become frustrated, which can fuel the rise of extremist populisms.

As an alternative, she proposes a model of agonistic pluralism, in which adversaries, despite holding opposing ideas, recognize one another’s mutual legitimacy to exist. For Mouffe, democracy should not aspire to make everyone think alike, but rather to create institutions capable of channeling disagreement without violence or exclusion.

Today, Mouffe advocates for left-wing populism and a “green revolution” that brings together feminist, environmental, and social demands, convinced that democracy can survive only if it manages to mobilize people and offer genuinely distinct visions of society.

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