What is Radical Democracy?
By Christopher Ryan Maboloc, PhD
Radical politics, in the works of Laclau and Mouffe (1985), is rooted in contestation. Agonism is about the acknowledgement that conflict is a reality in society. The embrace of difference, in this way, is at the heart of the meaning of radical democracy. Radicalism means the movement away from the center where the possibility of consensus or agreement is often controlled by a definite majority who often silences every dissenting opinion and authentic political engagement. The majority is actually the elite hiding under the guise of rules and a consensus that they define for the people, thus making politics conformist instead of being reform oriented.
There is a need to distinguish the political from politics. Politics is institutional while the political is concerned with relations of power. Politics is what governs the status quo where the meaning of freedom is founded on the basis of norms and laws set forth by liberal ideals. The radical means of putting them into question, the possibility of dismantling the control of the center by the powers that be, is what the political is about. Poor farmers fighting for their rights is political. Politics, meanwhile, is telling them that they are part of the plan when in truth, they are outside the sphere of influence when it comes to policy and law, which is controlled by the elite in society.
Democratic inclusion, in this way, cannot be limited to formal and institutional actions. The problem is that the system is already influenced by the nature of an institution and how it functions and maintains itself. For instance, a poor man can be denied assistance for the reason that a cut off must be duly observed. Yet, outside of institutional rules, people know that excluding this man is a substantive violation of his freedom. The government must serve everyone, it can be said. Being radical, in this sense, is not about disobeying rules. It is a question of justice.
Mouffe (1995) says that liberals confuse politics and morality. The idea of liberalism is rooted in agreement. People, who are characterized as rational and equal, must arrive at some form of a consensus in the state. To do so, they must overcome all forms of contestation or conflict. Yet, under the ideal of a formal type of deliberation, particular voices are not heard and the most powerful reasoning is often considered but not those from the margins. In fact, people listen to authority on the basis of a legitimacy that only those who are in power themselves determined.
