Ernesto Laclau’s Oblivion of Political Economy: Capitalism and Institutions in Post-Marxist Discourse Theory

Abstract

Post-Marxist discourse theory, initially developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, has become a central node of contemporary critical theory. This essay explores how, in their attack against orthodox Marxism, Laclau and Mouffe self-consciously expelled political economy from the vast array of post-Marxism’s theoretical influences. While attempts have been offered to theorize capitalism while respecting discourse theory’s ontological postulates, most post-Marxist analyses, Laclau’s included, suffer from an insufficient account of institutions. Consequently, the complex cartography of political interactions these analyses provide is affected by the post-Marxists’ conceptual incapacity to grasp the strictly capitalist specificity of the societies they refer to. To substantiate this claim, three areas of Laclau’s work are scrutinized: the consequences derived from positing social demands as the primary unit of analysis; the effects of uniformly treating “class” as just one mode of political identification; and the understanding that results from theorizing temporal dynamics under capitalism in this particular way.