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If the project of the Left is to survive the discredit that the collapse of "actually existing socialism" has thrown over the very idea of socialism, it requires a new formulation. Even social democracy is presently suffering from the impact of the events in the East and the proclaimed triumph of liberal capitalism. Claims for social justice, economic democracy and struggles against inequalities are increasingly dismissed as relics of a foregone age dominated by the rhetoric of class struggle.
The recognition of the virtues of pluralist democracy is indeed an important achievement, but it would be a serious setback for democracy if we were to accept "actually existing liberal capitalist democracies" as the "end of history." There are still numerous social relations where the process of democratization is needed and the task for the Left is to envisage how this can be done in a way that is compatible with the existence of a liberal democratic regime.
To be sure, such a project has been on the agenda for some time and from many quarters proposals have been made for different forms of what we could call "liberal socialism," but today this question has taken a dramatic urgency. I think that it is important to show not only how socialist goals can be reinscribed within the framework of liberal democracy but also how the Left project can be redefined as the extension of democracy to a wide range of social relations so as to include the demands of the new movements. This is the meaning of the "project of radical and plural democracy" that we have put forward in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. What I propose to do here is the following: (1) to affirm that pluralism is the central characteristic of modern democracy, i.e., of the liberal democratic regime whose principles of legitimacy are the assertion of liberty and equality for all; and (2) To show that the Left project can be visualized as the deepening of that pluralism and that socialist goals can be an important step towards such a development of pluralism.
In other words, I am arguing in favor of a complete reversal of the Left identity. So far it has been generally identified with a view of society that put homogeneity, equality, and harmony as its central values. Pluralism, difference, and heterogeneity were seen as the ills of capitalist society to be overcome because of signs of inequality. It is such a view of society which has to be discarded. The left should cease to see individual freedom in negative terms and begin to take liberty as seriously as equality in order to examine how they can be both enhanced.
This requires that we envisage democracy in a different way. First it is necessary to recognize the specificity of modern democracy that consists in the articulation between liberalism and democracy and accept that the logic of popular sovereignty, on its own, is not enough to guarantee individual freedom and the respect of rights of minorities. Here we must admit, following Bobbio, that only a liberal state can guarantee the basic rights without which the democratic game cannot take place. We should also agree with Bobbio that the struggle for democracy is the struggle against autocratic power in all its forms. What is at stake is not the creation of a completely new form of democracy but the struggle against hierarchic and bureaucratic forms of organization in an increasing number of social relations and institutions: the family, schools, the economy, public administration, etc. Nevertheless, contrary to Bobbio, I believe that this cannot be done without breaking with the framework of individualism. I am not postulating a return to an organicistic and holistic conception of society, which is clearly premodern and does not make room for pluralism. It is rather that I think the individualistic conception predominant in liberal theory is not the only alternative to such a view. The problem is to theorize the individual not as a monad, an "unencumbered" self, existing previously and independent of society, but as constituted as an ensemble of "subject positions," members of many communities and participants in a plurality of collective forms of identifications.
In that line, the question of "representation of interests" as well as the question of "rights" have to be posed in a completely different way. The idea of social rights, for instance, needs to be envisaged in terms of "collective rights" that are ascribed to specific communities. It is through its inscription in specific social relations that a social agent is granted rights, not as an individual outside society. Some of these rights can of course have a universalistic character and correspond to all members of the political community; but some others will only correspond to specific social inscriptions. It is not a question of rejecting universalism in favor of particularism, but of acknowledging the need for a new type of articulation between the universal and the particular. There is indeed a way in which the abstract universalism of human rights can be used to negate specific identities and to repress some forms of collective identities corresponding to specific communities.
Once we have accepted that the crucial question of modern democracy is pluralism and the struggle against autocratic power, it is important to show how the capitalist system in its present stage of big corporations constitutes a fetter to the development of pluralism and the enhancement of individual freedom. Here I think that we can find an important source of inspiration in the attempt by Paul Hirst in several articles to retrieve the tradition of associational socialism that flourished during the nineteenth century and the early 1920s both in France and Britain. It is generally. consid ered as utopian and obsolete but Hirst argues that the end Cold War and some recent changes in the West have created conditions in which those ideas could become applicable. His main thesis is that the current move toward flexible specialization in several countries has increased the importance of regional economic regulation and small- to medium-scale firms. Associational socialism, says Hirst, could be relevant in the struggle for democratization of the economy and decentralization because its central idea is that economic units should be cooperatively self-governing associations. If we want to redefine socialism as a dimension of the struggle to deepen liberal democratic values and against all forms of autocratic power, associational socialism can provide us insights into how to establish the democratic governance of private corporations and the democratization of state administration. More specifically, because of its emphasis on the plurality and autonomy of enterprises and collective bodies as decision-making agencies, it can show us the way to enhance the tradition of Western pluralism and liberalism. Because associational pluralism encourages the organization of social life in associations and challenges forms of hierarchy and administrative centralization, it can give us important models for the democratization of corporations and public bodies. For instance, education, health, welfare, and community services could be provided by cooperatively or socially owned and democratically managed bodies that set their own objectives. Hirst shows how associational socialism is compatible with a pluralistic society in which there are distinct sorts of values or organized interests. He indicates that it could tolerate and indeed welcome the Catholic church and the gay community, which provide health and welfare services for their members.
I find Hirst's analyses very convincing and I think that in that tradition of socialism we can find important insights on how to overcome the obstacles to democracy constituted--as Bobbio has pointed out--by the two main forms of autocratic power: large corporations and centralized big governments. In that way we would be able to enhance the pluralism of modern societies. But this requires a break with the universalist and the individualistic modes of thought that have been dominant in the liberal tradition. Today to think of democracy exclusively in terms of control of power by individuals considered separately is completely unrealistic and democracy's future rests less on the choices of individual voters than on the effective representation of organizations representing major social interests. The central issue of democratization today is how antagonistic interests can be controlled so that no concentration of interests can be allowed to exercise a monopoly on economic or political power and dominate the process of decisionmaking. Western societies are democratic because of the pluralism of interests that they have been able to effectively secure and the competition that exists among them. A multiplicity of associations with real capacity for decision and a plurality of centers of power are needed to resist effectively the trends towards autocracy represented by the growth of bureaucracy and technocracy. In that defense and deepening of pluralism and democracy, the Left could find a new identity and appear as the only consequent heir to the ideals of liberal democracy and as the only force able to resist the increasing dangers facing the democratic process today.
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