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Gramsci's Democratic Theory: Contributions to a Post-Liberal Theory of Democracy, 1992

Please note: this is Chapter 3 in Gramsci's Democratic Theory. I could only upload one section at a time - this is section 8 of 13 in total. FROM THE BOOK: The prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci serve as the foundation for Sue Golding's in-depth study of Gramsci's contribution to radical dem- ocratic theory. Her analysis encompasses English, Italian, and French debates on the subject, as well as political and philosophical discus- sions on the limitations of liberal and socialist democratic theory. Golding explains how Gramsci arrives at the conclusion that a funda- mentally pluralistic 'post-liberal' democracy - that is to say, one that is 'open/ fluid, and based on an immanent and heterogeneous will of the people - is not only possible and preferable, but actually obtainable. The consequences of his analysis are dramatic: on the one hand, Gramsci is able to provide a conception of the structure which is no longer static or reducible to a formal economic moment; it is, instead, profoundly political, since it becomes both the repository and expression of change as well as the terrain upon which a better society can emerge. On the other hand, he is able to incorporate as fundamental to a post-liberal democratic theory a number of concepts often overlooked in the theoretical discussions of socialist democracy. Gramsci demonstrates that if one is to take seriously historical materialism and the kind of democratic society to which it points, one will necessarily be faced with a clear choice. One can either accept a flawed but strategically powerful methodology based on the dialectics of a philosophy of praxis or, more to the point, take as a given the profundity of the political and the radical diversity this implies, and search for a new logic. In the concluding chapter, Golding takes a look at the possible resolutions offered by way of a discursive (or what has come to be known as postmodern) philosophy outlined in part by the surrealists and further developed in the work of Laclau, Mouffe, Foucault, and Derrida.