From agonistic to insurgent democracy

Introduction

Over the last three decades, agonistic democracy has arisen as a powerful challenger to liberal, cosmopolitan and deliberative models of democracy (Honig 2007; Mouffe 1999; Tully 1999; Wenman 2013). Against these dominant conceptions of democracy, agonistic democracy stresses the inherently conflictual nature of politics. Political conflict is constitutive, in the sense that it both founds existing social and political forms (Laclau and Mouffe 1985; Marchart 2018) and cannot be subsumed by constitutional, procedural, technocratic or other means (Mouffe 2006; Honig 2007). When channelled correctly, conflict is not a necessary evil but the sign of a healthy democracy (Wenman 2013, 45–57).

This article argues that theories of agonistic democracy are marked by an internal tension over the meaning and the appropriate place of conflict in democracy. On the one hand, agonistic democracy defends a radical account of pluralism, where different identities, viewpoints or positions are constitutively opposed to one another without the possibility of a final reconciliation (which does not exclude temporary compromises) (Mouffe 1993, 1–9; Wenman 2013, 33–45). In this sense, it does not privilege one position over another but attempts to construct the symbolic and institutional conditions that enable them to openly confront each other (Tsakatika 2007; Westphal 2018). We will term this conception of agonistic democracy ‘symmetrical’ agonism, understood in the sense that two (or more) positions are recognized as representing equally legitimate positions on the political scene. This equal legitimacy becomes the precondition for the proper functioning of an agonistic democracy.

On the other hand, agonistic democrats also normatively prioritize the ability of groups to overturn relations of domination (Tully 2008; Wenman 2013, 263–297). Domination is generally understood in a (neo-)republican sense as the arbitrary rule of a hierarchical power over its subjects (Khan 2013; Pettit 1997). However, domination does not always remain restricted to traditional rulers in the political realm, as, for instance, in James Tully’s analysis of the imposition of neoliberal governance across the world, where market forces can equally come to discipline subordinated populations (Tully 2008, 264–267). In these cases, agonistic democracy aims ‘to ensure that those subject to and affected by any system of governance are always free to call its prevailing norms of recognition and action coordination into question’ (Owen and Tully 2007, 287).

As we will argue, this internal tension highlights a fundamental distinction surrounding the place of struggles against domination in democratic theory. In the first, symmetrical account, agonistic pluralism can come about when relations of domination have to a large extent been expulsed from the political scene. Within a shared space with minimal domination, political actors can openly and agonistically engage with one another (Tsakatika 2007; Rummens 2009). What matters is not the outcome of the struggle but the conditions which allow the struggle to take place at all. In the second account however, struggles against forms of domination permeate every social and political situation. It is therefore impossible to delineate a space where a symmetrical struggle between political actors occurs. Here, agonistic democracy becomes first and foremost a theory of emancipation, perhaps more accurately described as insurgent democracy.

A strong reason in favour of the first account of agonistic democracy is that it appreciates the value of political pluralism. This chimes with a rejection of any pure Subject of History (Laclau and Mouffe 1985) or the moralization of politics (i.e. unequivocally distinguishing a good from an evil camp) (Mouffe 2005, 2009, 80–107). However, we will argue that this position underestimates the extent to which the institutionalization of a symmetrical agonistic conflict is premised on prior exclusions and dominations (Balibar 2016, 100–101; Mbembe 2019). In order to adequately respond to this claim, symmetrical agonistic democrats must either deny that an agonistic political scene with a minimal amount of domination has ever properly been brought about or entirely ignore these forms of domination. Both options remain unsatisfactory.

In contrast, this article argues that agonistic democrats must put the multifarious struggles against domination front and centre, moving in the direction of a theory of insurgent agonistic democracy or insurgent democracy altogether. It outlines how such a theory can take shape by turning to the writings of the French philosopher Étienne Balibar, who has remained relatively ignored by the agonistic democratic literature (Balibar 2002, 2009, 2014a, 2015, 2016). Balibar shows that the modern political space institutes a decisive symbolic revolution in the practical acknowledgement of the idea of ‘equaliberty’ (égaliberté), a portmanteau of equality and liberty. When democracy articulates itself with reference to equaliberty, it opens the space for a whole host of insurgent actors to impose themselves on the political scene. In this account, insurgent actions become the driving force of democracy. In contrast to the symmetrical agonistic position, which delineates a space for symmetrical conflict, Balibar shows that the key stakes of democratic struggles concern the definition and modalities of that delineation itself.

Furthermore, we will show that Balibar’s theory of insurgent democracy can adequately acknowledge the existence and legitimacy of agonistic pluralism. By prioritizing insurgencies in our theory of democracy, we do not necessarily fall into the trap of either moralizing political conflict or positing a singular Subject of History. We can do this by examining Balibar’s assertion that the idea of equaliberty opens a symbolic space within which different ideological positions operate. This reading is complemented by Balibar’s investigation into the aporias of Marxist politics, most notably the latter’s constitutive inability to think the existence of a proletarian ideology (Balibar 1994). From this dual reading, we derive the idea that insurgent struggles against domination acquire a normative priority in democracy (a democracy without insurgencies is a passive democracy and therefore not democratic at all), but that those struggles necessarily express themselves in an ideological discourse. They therefore always run the risk of dissimulating or repressing other conditions of domination or oppression. It is democracy’s task to remain permanently open to challenges by insurgent practices and by their potential internal subversions.

This article aims to provide a threefold innovation. Firstly, it uncovers an internal tension within agonistic democratic theory between the establishment of a symmetrical agonistic political stage with a minimal amount of domination and the prioritization of democratic emancipatory struggles. Secondly, it defends the superior theoretical and normative coherence of a model of insurgent agonistic democracy. Thirdly, it demonstrates the relevance of Étienne Balibar’s theory of insurgent democracy for agonistic democratic debates, which has largely gone unnoticed within the literature on agonistic democracy. ¹

Symmetrical agonism

Mark Wenman’s Agonistic Democracy (2013) remains one of the most consistent attempts to formulate a systematic account of agonistic democratic theory as a coherent theoretical framework. In this work, we can trace the aporetic relationship that agonistic democracy entertains with the idea of domination.

Wenman claims that the agonistic aspect of agonistic democracy is comprised of three basic elements. The first element is constitutive pluralism, which refers to the existence of radically different visions of what constitutes a ‘good world’ or ‘the good’. Within agonistic democracy, this value pluralism is ineradicable and incommensurable. Wenman invokes the picture sketched by Isaiah Berlin (1990), of the existence of radically different values between (and within) different cultures, peoples and between different times. These (clusters of) values between groups are not different in all respects and communication between them is possible. Nevertheless, they differ in ‘profound, irreconcilable ways, not combinable in any final synthesis’ (Berlin 1990, 10). Wenman pushes this insight one step further by claiming that pluralism is a constitutive fact of political life. The identities of groups and individuals are not self-contained, but formed in relation or opposition to other groups and individuals. As such, pluralism is a ‘conditioning quality of political “reality”’ (Wenman 2013, 31).

Importantly, both Berlin and Wenman emphasize that pluralism does not amount to relativism, that is, the thought that ‘anything goes’. Rather than taking an impartial God’s eye view and asserting that all values are equally meaningless, agonistic pluralism fully affirms the incompatibilities between values and works within this field of tension between ultimately irreconcilable views-of-the-world. This means that agonists are suspicious both of attempts to entirely diffuse the tension between different political groups and of situations that lead to complete ‘disaggregation or fragmentation’ of the political bond (for instance, during violent ethnic or religious conflicts) (Wenman 2013, 33).

The second element of agonism is a tragic vision of the world. In the ancient Greek tragedies, we find stories about conflicts between figures who take incommensurable positions. These are not stories of a moral good against evil. Rather, they represent a strategic ‘contest between two or more rivalrous but nonetheless legitimate powers’ (Wenman 2013, 35). Moreover, the tragic aspect of agonism entails that there is always a possibility of loss. In other words, political actors have no guarantee at all that their vision of ‘the good’ will win out in the end. A tragic view of politics that rejects moralism also highlights the importance of the ‘strategic question’. Political actors are encouraged to use their wit and talents to change the historical circumstances which condition their lifeworld: One must attempt to bend Fortuna to their will in order to achieve the desired outcome. Thus, in Wenman’s view, ‘agonism is ultimately a strategic doctrine concerned with the interplay between freedom and necessity’ (Wenman 2013, 39).

The third element of agonism is the conviction that struggle is a political good. According to Wenman, agonism is a ‘constructive mode of contest and rivalry’ (Wenman 2013, 46). In Mouffean terms, politics always has the latent potentiality of transforming into relations of antagonism (i.e. the friend/enemy distinction) (Mouffe 2006). Since this dimension of antagonism is constitutive of human societies, we can only attempt to sublimate it into less violent forms of conflict. This less violent expression of the dimension of antagonism is conflict as agonism, where political actors treat each other as legitimate adversaries instead of enemies. Agonistic democrats argue that when legitimate political oppositions find no room for expression, this can lead to antagonistic outbursts of violence or extremism.

Importantly, Wenman stresses that agonism acts as the other of domination. Agonism is contrasted to ‘forms of domination, where ascendant powers seek to shut down the agon through hierarchical modes of rule’ (Wenman 2013, 46). Khan (2013), for instance, has highlighted how Mouffe’s framework is broadly in line with contemporary republican theory, most notably with its view of liberty as non-domination (Pettit 1997). In such a republican view, an agonistic society is one where forms of domination have been expulsed from the political scene, so that, following Foucault, ‘games of power’ can be played with as little domination as possible (Wenman 2013, 47). Only when political relations of domination have been thoroughly defeated can a symmetrical agonism come into being. A similar account animates Mouffe’s reformulation of citizenship as an identification with the ‘respublica’, conceived as a shared adherence to the ethico-political values that bind that society together (Mouffe 1993, 69). For an agonistic political community to persist, one must exclude those groups or identities that are diametrically opposed to the liberal democratic values of freedom and equality (Rummens 2009). Once this is established, a struggle can unfold over the specific content of those values. In contrast, if relations of domination persist, agonism cannot appear as a conflict between two equally legitimate actors.

The aporia of agonistic democracy

Wenman therefore sketches a model of agonistic democracy where mutually opposing but equally legitimate forces struggle on the political scene under conditions of non-domination and non-violence. Since either position can formulate an equally legitimate vision of ‘the good’, agonistic democrats should abstain from advocating for one over the other (except if one recognizes that one intervenes as a political partisan on the political scene, for example (Mouffe 2018)). Therefore, when considering the institutionalization of agonistic democracy or its mode of citizenship-belonging, agonistic democrats tend to focus on the possibilities of politicization and the facilitation of symmetrical political pluralism rather than on substantive political visions (Tsakatika 2007; Mouffe 2012; Westphal 2018; Tambakaki 2011).

It is therefore surprising (but highly symptomatic) that towards the end of his analysis, Wenman takes a sharp turn of emphasis where agonism suddenly comes to represent a militant mode of political action that instantiates a radical break with existing liberal democratic regimes (Wenman 2013, 263–297). According to Wenman, two developments legitimate this ‘revolutionary’ break: Firstly, the novel networked forms of imperialism and North–South dependencies created by the disciplinary rule of neoliberal capitalism (Tully 2008) and secondly, Giorgio Agamben’s (2005) diagnosis that contemporary sovereign states have instituted a ‘permanent state of exception’. ² In response, Wenman develops the logic of a revolutionary break created by a political subject (the privileged actors include proponents of environmentalism, feminism, Christianity, Islam, etc. (Wenman 2013, 295)) and that can be taken up across the globe by other groups in creative and unpredictable ways.

What justifies this formulation of a ‘militant agonism’ is that the two trends mentioned above entrench a form of structural domination. In Wenman’s analysis, domination by persons or groups is replaced by impersonal structures such as neoliberal discipline and the authoritarian tendencies of nation-states (the only agents left are the various subaltern groups dominated by neoliberal hegemony). ³ On the one hand, the republican value of freedom as non-domination sustains a militant commitment that abolishes these dominating social and political forms and institutions. ⁴ On the other hand, as we have seen, radical pluralism entails that different political visions of what society should look like can be equally legitimate. Within this configuration, a dominating group unavoidably occupies an aporetic position: Is it a legitimate participant on the agonistic political scene or an enemy to be defeated?

Wenman could respond to this claim in two ways. Firstly, he could retort that a militant agonism fights against the conditions of domination, which in turn can bring about the possibility for a genuine pluralist agonism ‘with as little domination as possible’. Militant action then clears the obstacles for a genuine agonistic pluralism to come about. ⁵ This, in effect, represents the position defended by symmetrical agonists. However, we want to suggest a second, more productive path, which unsettles the sharp distinction between militant agonism and agonistic pluralism. Instead of viewing the agonistic political scene as one rid of relations of dominations, is it not more realistic to conceive of agonistic contest as always marked by asymmetrical power relations, where some degree of domination or oppression is involved? Indeed, one can credibly wonder whether a political scene with only minimal domination has ever existed. Without a doubt, neoliberal governance has its precursors in previous colonial and imperial political forms; certainly, the period preceding the permanent state of exception had its own measures of authoritarian control and suppression of dissenting voices? Therefore, echoing Derrida, should we not take the position that any categorical distinction between agonistic pluralism and relations of domination is untenable and instead view political conflict as always conditioned by political asymmetries?

One advantage of doing so is that we can identify how relations of domination underlie a seemingly symmetrical agonistic political scene. The immediate post-war democratic nation-state in Europe provides a good example of this. As we will see Balibar argue below, these states invoked clear signs of a political symmetry: They expanded social rights, which enabled the participation of a mass of citizens in social and political life (Marshall 1994), recognized socialist and communist parties as legitimate political actors and institutionalized organized bargaining between employers and trade unions. However, as Mbembe (2019, 22) argues, the ‘solar body’ of democracy has always been accompanied by its ‘nocturnal body’ of colonialism, exploitation and the externalization of violence. This radical exclusion from the European democratic political scene should not be seen as an accidental element but relates internally to it insofar as it enabled the stabilization of social relations within the dominant country via rapid gains of wealth. In addition, the institutions and political parties of the post-war democratic state were themselves designed to maintain a stable rule in favour of the dominant capitalist interests. Trade unions, workers parties and welfare legislation must therefore be interpreted as material concessions made by the dominant classes in order to successfully reproduce hegemonic rule (Poulantzas 1982, 190–194). In a word, the very structures and institutions of the capitalist state are designed to ensure bourgeois political domination (Poulantzas 1980). The symmetry of the post-war European political scene in reality covered both external and internal political asymmetries.

This has profound implications for the way we understand pluralism in the political sphere. Without an analysis of asymmetrical relations of power, or the fact of domination, pluralism risks becoming an empty celebration of diversity without any purchase on political reality. Different identities or political positions are certainly not reducible to this asymmetrical power relation, but the latter is indispensable to understanding the configurations of the former (Balibar 2012, 65–78). In the second part of this article, we will turn to the writings of Étienne Balibar to outline a theory of democratic conflict which starts with the fact of domination and the struggles against it. Importantly, our goal is to argue that insurgent struggles give life to the democratic political scene, without ascribing it an absolute (moral or ontological) priority which overrides all forms of pluralism.

The proposition of equaliberty

What distinguishes the trajectory of Étienne Balibar from most agonistic democrats is his continued engagement with Marxism. ⁶ The Marxist framework remains an important lens lens through which Balibar develops his theory of democracy, although he transforms it in crucial ways. Ingram (2015, 213–214) has pointed out how some of Balibar’s core ideas come through in his polemical defence of the notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat (Balibar 1977, 2014a, 146–147). ⁷ Although he has since abandoned this concept, what remains in Balibar’s later thought is the idea that ‘the political’ (in the structuralist Marxist tripartite of the economic, the political and the ideological) is responsible for the reproduction of capitalist social relations. This does not necessarily entail a unitary notion of state power (where the capitalist class would monopolize state power) but sees the political as composed of an asymmetrical relation of forces between the dominant and the dominated classes of society (Balibar 2016, 75). This contrasts with those agonistic democrats (and much democratic theory in general, see e.g. Peden (2013, 34)) who attempt to construct the political as a neutral space where different groups can engage with one another on a basis of political symmetry.

One must therefore place Balibar’s introduction of the concept of ‘equaliberty’ (égaliberté) within an analysis of concrete material conditions of domination, exclusion or oppression. According to Balibar, the idea of equaliberty, or equal liberty, has a long history that is neither reducible to a certain time period nor a geographical space. ⁸ However, a decisive moment in the history of the concept was its reformulation in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789 since this text inscribed equaliberty at the heart of one of the primary constitutional texts of the modern period (Balibar 2014a, 2017). The proposition of equaliberty brings together two identifications. Firstly, it makes ‘man’ identical to ‘citizen’. This designates that the rights of man are at the same time the rights of the citizen or, more precisely, that the rights of man guarantee every human being the ability to participate politically as a citizen, to assert their rights or to claim new rights. The identification of man with the citizen proposes ‘a universal right to political participation’ (Balibar 2014a, 106).

The second identification in the proposition of equaliberty is between equality and freedom. Balibar interprets this hypothesis in a negative manner: ‘there is no example of conditions that suppress or repress freedom that do not suppress or limit – that is, do not abolish – equality, and vice versa’ (Balibar 2014b, 49). Capitalism, for instance, is most often reproached for exacerbating inequalities. But simultaneously, these inequalities correspond to an inability for the labouring classes to transcend their class position and they expose them to the ‘despotism’ of the workplace, where the capitalist dominates the labourer either directly or via intermediaries (Marx 1990, 450). ⁹ Similarly, the freedom that was denied to the subjects of the states of really existing socialism corresponded to radical inequalities between those who governed and those who were governed. Balibar’s proposition of equaliberty brings together both sets of equations. The identification of liberty with equality supports the identification of man with the citizen: No one, not even those supposed non-citizens of a state, can legitimately be excluded from politically struggling against violations of equaliberty.

Balibar’s post-Marxist attention to the power asymmetries embedded in social relations gives the proposition of equaliberty its political radicality. Indeed, even though modern constitutions generally make a reference to equaliberty in the form of an affirmation of egalitarian sovereignty (the people, as equals, found the constitution), the principle is most credibly claimed by political movements that contest social or political forms of domination. Even though modern constitutions inscribe it at their foundation, equaliberty always carries an excess which these states cannot control. Whence derives the affinity of equaliberty with insurgencies (in the plural), those emancipatory movements that challenge the hierarchies and forms of domination sanctioned by existing states (who may or may not be the principal actors of domination or oppression). According to Balibar, there is a dialectic between constitution and insurrection, where insurgent actors push an existing constitution towards expanding the spaces of equaliberty, only to produce new limits, borders and hierarchies (Balibar 2016, 36–38).

Balibar’s notion of equaliberty contrasts with the formal pluralism championed by symmetrical agonistic democrats, who view equality and liberty as floating signifiers that can be given meaning in multiple ways (e.g. from a liberal or socialist perspective). Mouffe (2009, 103–104), for example, advocates for an agonistic democracy where legitimate political struggle can take place between parties that accept certain indispensable ‘ethico-political principles’, chiefly equality and liberty, but that differ in their interpretation of it. This essentially understands the political as held together by a ‘conflictual consensus’. As we will see, Balibar retains some notion of the pluralism of ideological debate opened up by the modern affirmation of equaliberty. But, crucially, this debate is overdetermined by the fact that equaliberty is more legitimately claimed by those insurgent groups that struggle against domination. Any conflictual consensus has to take into account that at the heart of the modern constitution lies an affirmation of the capacity for insurrection, which can be reactivated at any time (Balibar 2016, 32–33).

Asymmetrical democratic conflict

Balibar translates the dialectic between constitution and insurrection in terms of a foundational aporia for any democracy. On the one hand, democracy is identified with a moment of collective autonomy, where the demos organizes its own institutions. It is the expression of popular power or egalitarian sovereignty. On the other hand, that egalitarian sovereignty can only be expressed through political conflict, as the demos is internally riven with social contradictions. Far from giving rise to a political scene where conflict is staged in a symmetrical manner, democratic conflict always involves asymmetries. Similar to Jacques Rancière, the democratic impulse of a political conflict resides with the ‘part of no-part’ (part des sans-part), that is, those who claim a stake in the exercise of collective autonomy on the basis of the proposition of equaliberty (Balibar 2002, 5; Ranciere 2015).

The dialectic between constitution and insurrection decisively transforms the shape of democratic conflict. In this regard, Balibar makes two important points which we must be carefully unpacked: Firstly, that for a political conflict to be democratic, it must put into question the limits, modalities and even the neutrality of the political scene itself. Secondly, that democratic agonism is incessantly asymmetrical: The complete symmetry of between political opponents carries the mortal danger of ‘neutralizing the political’ itself (Balibar 2016, 100).

As to the first point, by taking into account asymmetrical relations of power, Balibar argues that democracy incorporates into its functioning a dimension of illegitimate domination (Balibar 2016, 93–98). As we have seen, insurgencies denounce the illegitimate hierarchies that violate the principle of equaliberty. When democracies accept the emancipatory content of equaliberty, they open the door for these insurgencies ‘from below’ to challenge illegitimate dominations. However, insurgencies will themselves also often be branded as illegitimate political practices, as their exact object is to transform the balance of power that underlies the existing political arrangements. This remains the permanent Achilles heel of liberal (and symmetrical agonistic) accounts of democratic pluralism, who attempt to pacify political differences by making them accept certain procedural ‘rules of the game’. However, when what is at stake is transforming the power relations that structure the existing state (or material constitution (Goldoni and Wilkinson 2018)), an insurgent practice faces not only political opponents but the state itself, who becomes an interested party to the conflict (Balibar 2016, 92). As Balibar writes, ‘a conflict that could truly be called “real” or “effective” is never satisfied with respecting the established rules, because its stakes are precisely the constitution and even the content itself of pluralism’ (Balibar 2016, 93). The histories of working class, feminism and anticolonial movements amply attest to this fact.

Let us take the example of the development of class politics in the framework of the European Nation-State, one of Balibar’s longstanding concerns. From its inception in the 19th century, socialist and communist politics took an insurgent form, as it challenged dominant relations of power that did not recognize these contestations as legitimate politics. Through successive movements (which included progress and setbacks, victories and defeats), working class politics succeeded in politicizing the social (or the socio-economic), making possible reforms that were instituted in the framework of the Nation-State. Balibar understands this legitimation of class politics as taking an ambiguous form. On the one hand, class politics still retained an asymmetrical dimension. The communist party, in particular, often took up the role of functioning as the ‘tribune of the plebs’, which voiced concerns of the popular classes against existing power holders (Balibar 2002, 122, 2016, 84). This Machiavellian dynamic not only helped to stabilize existing relations, but it also enabled asymmetrical conflict to be expressed at the centre of political debate (Machiavelli 1996).

This brings us to our second point. As class politics became institutionalized, it also tended to transform into a symmetrical conflict, becoming part of legitimate debate within the political scene. Such legitimation of class politics tended to displace antagonisms towards social spheres outside the narrow sphere of production (consumption, education, family and international relations), some of which, as Foucault amply demonstrated, became privileged zones for disciplinary techniques of normalization. The tumultuous events of May 68 showed how zones outside the realm of politics could become sites of insurgent action, once again questioning the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate conflict. Furthermore, the institutionalization of the pillars of working class politics created communities that themselves too often remained silent or even perpetuated alternative forms of domination, such as the oppression of women, the super-exploitation of migrant workers and anticolonial forms of struggle – hence the importance of the following remarks, which we should cite in full:

There is no such thing as an “equal” political conflict, especially not when it comes to the struggle for equality. We might say that symmetry, whether it is that of “adversaries” or of bodies in the political space (society, the state), carries the mortal danger of neutralizing the political and “active” citizenship itself. We can see this in the history of contemporary socialism, which began with an effort by the labor movement (and by the working class itself) to rise up from its ‘subaltern’ position, to overcome exclusion (whether this was exclusion from elementary social rights or from political representation), and arrived at a symmetry of a struggle of “class against class,” and more precisely of “bourgeois states” against “proletarian states,” which became symmetrical “camps” at the international level. (Balibar 2016, 100–101)

In order to escape the pitfalls to which much of the labour movement has succumbed, Balibar proposes a model of democratic conflict that is incessantly asymmetrical, where, in other words, the fight against domination constantly informs the democratic struggle. Democracy is kept alive by active insurgent practices which challenge democracy as an established form of the political. This explains the importance of the description of insurgent actions as ‘democratizing democracy’, which means that without them, democracy regresses to a passive state in which domination goes unchallenged (Balibar 2016, 119–131).

Insurgency and ideological politics

We have seen how Balibar attempts to construct a model of democratic conflict overdetermined by asymmetrical relations of power, thereby imploding any strict distinction between internal symmetrical struggle and the fight against domination. Balibar places the fate of democracy with those insurgent actors that ‘democratize’ the existing constitution (in the broad sense). However, we here risk reducing political conflict to an unambiguous fight between a ‘purely’ oppressed and a ‘pure’ oppressor. In this way, we do away with any reference to legitimate pluralism in democratic conflicts, which much agonistic theory strives to preserve. As Laclau and Mouffe (1985) have shown, the Marxist tradition has been plagued by this reduction, casting it in terms of a revolutionary unity of the working class opposed to the bourgeois class, which would eventually bring about the overthrow of capitalism. It is less well known that around the same period that Laclau and Mouffe published Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Balibar undertook a series of investigations which formulated a similar internal criticism of the Marxist tradition. This investigation centred around the aporia of ideology, ‘which in fact governs the whole fate of Marxism’ (Balibar 1995, 159). In this final section, we will argue that the problematic of a ‘proletarian ideology’ or ‘ideology of the dominated’ serves to perpetually defer any reference to a morally pure insurgent position rid of all ambiguity (Balibar 1994, 99). Balibar’s account of insurgent democracy thereby retains a commitment to political pluralism cherished by agonistic democrats, by keeping open the possibility that insurgent practices ideologically dissimulate other forms of domination.

Throughout the 1970s and 80s, socialist and communist parties faced multiple overlapping crises: The decline of the popularity of the Communist Party in France and other countries, the resurgence of xenophobia and nationalisms of various kinds, the rise of new social movements not immediately reducible to relations of exploitation and the increasing heterogeneity of the working class itself. According to Balibar, Marxist theory had enormous difficulties in responding to these crises due to the privileged status it gave to the working class as homogeneous unity. ¹⁰ Marxism consistently theorized the rise of the proletariat as fundamentally outside and antithetical to the conventional political struggle. In the various works of Marx and Engels, the proletariat is presented as the political subject ‘liberated from illusions’ (Balibar 1994, 161). In its most extreme formulations (e.g. in The German Ideology), proletarian politics is strictly speaking not a politics at all. ‘The proletariat, by definition, is the negation of all politics, identified with an ideological illusion/abstraction’ (Balibar 1994, 95). If the actual working classes that Marx and Engels faced in their time did not yet correspond to this pure subjectivity, it is because they remained under the sway of the dominant ideology (religion, nationalism, political illusions, etc.).

However, undoubtedly due to the fact that both Marx and Engels were politically active in the nascent labour movement, they could not ignore the imperative to actively construct the working class as a political actor. In the writings of Engels, the notion of proletarian ideology did not figure, but in its place came a term such as the proletarian ‘worldview’ (Weltanschauung) (Balibar 1994, 103–107). In other texts, the attention shifted from strict class politics to the politics of the masses, where diverse social groups could be brought together and intervene in history guided by certain (e.g. religious) ideas. However, neither the politics of the masses nor the proletarian worldview could contaminate the eventual purity of the working class as a political subject. If the working class was able to adjust itself subjectively to the objective conditions of capitalist exploitation, it could bring about the revolutionary change for which it was predestined.

Balibar argues that this denial of the active construction of a working class politics made it impossible for 20^th century communist politics to adapt to the changing circumstances, when the increasing heterogeneity of the working class prevented any reference to a homogeneous proletarian position. Balibar therefore intends to show that the political imperatives of forging a working class identity in the face of the increasing heterogeneity of the working population actually correspond to the reality of a proletarian politics since its inception. Politically, working class politics was always ‘a progressive construction, or composition, of forces’ (Balibar 1994, 101), which could only sustain itself by producing a proletarian identity as an ideological construction. As Balibar writes, ‘what showed itself in the nineteenth and twentieth century as a relatively autonomous “proletarian identity” needs to be understood as an objective ideological effect’ (Balibar and Wallerstein 1991, 169). Even though Marxism produced the crucial concept of ideology for thinking about identity, politics and community, its refusal to apply the concept to itself left it vulnerable to the changing tide of historical circumstances. This pertains most notably to the extent to which an ‘ideology of the dominated’ can dissimulate alternative forms of domination or oppression. Stated differently, if Marxism theorized how bourgeois parliamentarianism could ‘mask’ real (class) conflict, it could not see how class politics could itself become a mask of other forms of oppression (Balibar 1994, 165). Indeed, as we have seen, this is what happened when the labour movement became a symmetrical and legitimate actor on the political scene.

From this discussion, we can better grasp how Balibar’s theory of the proposition of equaliberty reverses the perspective surrounding the question of ideology in Marxist theory. As we have seen, modernity corresponds to the general symbolic legitimation of the concept of equaliberty, which denounces all forms of domination. However, due to its essentially negative character, the proposition of equaliberty is absolutely indeterminate when it comes to proposing constructive alternatives. As Svenja Bromberg (2018, 10) clarifies, equaliberty always ‘refers its content back to what history and the struggles that take place within it define as liberty and equality, or the demands that are articulated in their names’. Balibar (2020) will similarly emphasize in his writings on universality that the universal (in this case, equaliberty) must always be enunciated in a particular ideological language. Therefore, when equaliberty combines both an absolute indeterminacy and a broad symbolic legitimacy, it opened ‘a new ideological field in which the politico-philosophical ideologies of the nineteenth century will take their places, whether they express liberal, socialist, or conservative positions’ (Balibar 2014b, 43).

Three things follow from the fact that equaliberty opened up a new ideological field. Firstly, it entails that socialist or communist politics is ideological from its inception. Indeed, even though it could stake a credible claim to expanding the equaliberty of excluded subjects, it always formulated that claim in an ideological language. According to Balibar, the key discursive mediations that translated the proposition of equaliberty into the socialist discourse and politics were (public) property and (a national or popular) community (Balibar 2014b, 53–56). In effect, the entire ideological struggle between liberalism and socialism situates itself around how to give stability to the terms property and community.

Secondly, if all modern discourses have to express themselves in reference to equaliberty, this entails that in a sense the dominant powers have to adopt the language of the dominated. Balibar therefore flips the common Marxist theory that within the sphere of ideology, the dominant ideas represent the ideas of the ruling class. Instead, ‘the necessary condition for an ideology to become dominant is that it should elaborate the values and claims of the “social majority”, become the discourse of the dominated (distorted or inverted as it may appear)’ (Balibar 2002, 164). Later, Balibar will formulate this even more strongly: ‘there is something like an expropriation of the ideology of the dominated by the dominant themselves, of which multiple examples exist, from the great universalist religions of salvation to the revolutionary ideology of human rights’ (Balibar 2020, 56). This presents both an opportunity and a danger for the dominated classes: The opportunity resides in the fact that they can adopt the discourse enunciated by the dominant in order to use it against them (because it always belonged to the dominated in the first place). The danger resides in the effective ability of the ruling classes to introduce uncertainties within the dominated groups themselves, where these formulations serve to disaggregate and disorganize them (as neoliberal discourses of self-management and autonomy can readily attest to).

Finally, it is crucial to recognize that democratic insurgencies express themselves ideologically because political movements ‘from below’ do not escape the possibility of dissimulating alternative forms of domination when they impose themselves on the political scene. As Althusser (2017, 2020) stressed, the function of ideology is to present society as a coherent whole devoid of internal contradictions. Because working class politics involves an ideological dimension, Balibar can identify the permanent danger that assails any type of insurgent politics, namely, that it can cover up hidden exclusions or injustices. Indeed, he argues that the ideological struggle between socialism and liberalism repressed other social contradictions, most notably those pertaining to sexual difference and the division between intellectual and manual labour (others can undoubtedly be added) (Balibar 2014b, 56–65).

In this sense, Balibar presents an argument in favour of political pluralism quite different from the one usually advanced by agonistic democrats. As we have argued in this article, an excessively formal defence of pluralism denies the dimension of domination which overdetermines most political conflicts and risks misidentifying an asymmetrical relation of power as a symmetrical contest between two equally legitimate actors. Balibar defends a vision of political pluralism based on two components: Firstly, the dominating groups express themselves in terms of the language of the dominated, hence introducing a fundamental ambivalence in the relation between oppressor and oppressed. Secondly, insurgent actors express themselves within the realm of ideology, which entails that they always risk dissimulating alternative forms of oppression and exploitation.

In this latter regard, Balibar advocates for a moment of openness of insurgent actors for the possibility of their own subversion from within on the basis of novel claims to equaliberty. No doubt, this always carries the risk of weakening those very movements themselves, but it is also the only way to ensure that an ideological discourse does not transform into a violent closure. In order to counter this danger of internal exclusion, insurgent movements need a ‘representative moment’, understood as the ‘need for a moment that allows a collective movement, especially a “mass” movement, to take a distance from itself, or to produce a Verfremdungseffekt, in an almost Brechtian sense, vis-à-vis its collective identity and its way of imagining its ends and means (its forces)’ (Balibar 2015, 104). Democracy is not only kept alive by insurgent movements, but also it requires that the latter democratize themselves by maintaining a permanent openness to the call of equaliberty.