Sheldon Wolin and The Question of Radicalism

The Question of Radicalism in Sheldon Wolin’s Political Thought: A Marxist Perspective

Yiorgos Moraitis

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Critical Sociology

2014, Vol. 40(6) 893–914

© The Author(s) 2013

Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/0896920512461385 crs.sagepub.com

Abstract

It is widely accepted that Sheldon Wolin has revitalized the tradition of radicalism in the context of modern political thought, as evidenced by his contribution to the debate on the so-called death of political philosophy and his forceful critique of Rawls and modern political liberalism. However, Wolin’s fugitive democracy has met with opposition. This paper investigates fugitive democracy from a Marxist perspective and questions whether fugitive democracy can actually confront crucial socio-political issues such as the lack of democracy for the masses in the production of social wealth. Moreover, Wolin’s misinterpretation and rejection of Marx’s theory of democracy and politics leads him to a misconceived view of the Marxian philosophy of history and the progress of political societies as a whole, a misconception that leads to inconsistencies within his own work. And finally, although Wolin seems to be a radical democrat and appears to hold a worldview close to that of socialists, he in fact, despite his criticisms, follows a liberal logic.

Keywords

deficiency of democracy, dialectics, fugitive democracy, Karl Marx, materialism, Open Marxism, Sheldon Wolin, social democracy

Introduction

This article aims to address the issue of radicalism in Wolin’s political thought. First, however, it is important to clarify what is meant by radicalism. Two different conceptions of radicalism are therefore considered simultaneously. The first concerns the study of political philosophy and its history. The second concerns the philosopher’s engagement with contemporary political problems, by which is meant the problem of the deficiency of democracy, social inequalities, the means by which social wealth is produced, and the place of the masses in this process. As far as the second conception is concerned, Wolin’s most important contribution is his fervent criticism of modern political liberalism and his famous analysis on fugitive democracy, an issue that is elaborated upon

Corresponding author:

Yiorgos Moraitis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Department of Philosophy and Pedagogy, Thessaloniki, 541 24, Greece.

Email: gimoraitis@yahoo.com

throughout his most important political texts. While his theoretical work and observations are clearly radical, I have serious reservations about his concept of fugitive democracy as a possible solution to the problem of democratic deficiency. While Wolin’s political thought and his analysis of fugitive democracy may be characterized as radical, especially in the American political context, it is of primary importance to underline that even though Wolin appears to be a radical democrat and holds a position that seems closely connected to that of socialists, he is nevertheless a liberal and not significantly different from Rawls, despite his forceful criticism both of Rawls and liberalism in general. Moreover, nowhere in his extended work does he seriously consider the socialist perspective, which is either absent or harshly criticized, despite the fact that his position appears to be similar in important ways. This is clear from his misunderstanding and rejection of Marxist dialectical materialism. With this in mind, I am led to the conclusion that despite Wolin’s opposition to the present capitalist system, or as he calls it ‘the liberal megastate’, nowhere in his analyses does he challenge the capitalist mode of production effectively or address the prospect of an alternative way of satisfying our basic needs.

It is important to note that criticisms of the concept of fugitive democracy have already been made by scholars of Wolin’s philosophical work, of which Kateb’s (2001) approach is probably the best known. Moreover, criticisms of Wolin’s treatment of Marxism have also been made. Xenos’s (2007) critique in response to Wolin’s On Reading Marx Politically is notable in this regard. In this text, it is clear that Xenos’s intention is not to produce a Marxist critique of Wolin’s political thought but rather to clarify what Wolin means by the notion of Marxism presented in Politics and Vision and On Reading Marx Politically. In his critique, however, Xenos does not attempt to defend Marx’s dialectical materialism, which is fundamentally rejected by Wolin throughout his work, especially in On Reading Marx Politically. In particular, when Wolin observes that ‘at the heart of Marxism was the claim that society could be transformed by political action transformed by the knowledge of historical laws’ (Wolin, 2004: 271), Xenos makes no effort to clarify what dialectic materialism actually means. In so doing, he indirectly supports the orthodox Marxist view, in which socialism and communism are regarded as abstract historical moments somewhere in the indeterminate future, moments where the connection between the productive forces and the relations of production will have created the appropriate conditions for a communist revolution. It is evident, therefore, that neither Xenos nor Wolin has evaluated Marxian dialectics properly. Both Xenos and Wolin substitute dialectical materialism with historical materialism, or as Holloway (2010a) would argue, they identify dialectics with Hegelian synthesis rather than Marxian negation. In other words, in Wolin’s analysis, Marxism degenerates into a historical determinism, an endeavour to discover the objective laws that lead history to a predetermined end, which, as I will argue, is far from the aim of the Open Marxism tradition that I closely follow in my analysis.

Moreover, in On Reading Marx Politically, Wolin presents an unconvincing analysis of Marx’s position. In particular, Wolin’s (1983) misunderstanding of Marxian dialectical materialism is based simultaneously on how Marx fragmented his methodological approach on democracy into theory and revolutionary practice, thereby subjugating theoretical activity to a crude and violent practice, and on how Marx tried to theorize or to ascribe a scientific character to his crude revolutionary call for action. For Wolin, Marx ultimately failed in his task, as ‘the theory has overcome its original intention’ and ‘the revolution has been institutionalized before the proletarian revolution has taken place’ (Wolin, 1983: 106–7). In the same instance, ‘the proletariat has to be abolished because … it lacks the virtu to constitute the new society’ (Wolin, 1983: 106).

On this point, it can be argued that Wolin’s evaluation of Marxism is close to that of the orthodox Marxist tradition. This can be demonstrated through his analysis of the ‘megastate’, which he identifies with the capitalist system that dissociates people from any democratic process. In this

regard, a parallel can be drawn between Wolin’s understanding of the relationship between people and the megastate and orthodox Marxism’s understanding of the relationship between the base and superstructure. In the orthodox Marxist tradition, the base (productive forces) is separated from the superstructure (relations of production), and each evolves independently of the other. In the same way, Wolin’s capitalist megastate, which creates the oppressive reality in which we live, evolves independently of us, and we are obliged to create a parallel context of action, or a parallel universe, in which we can fulfil our desires. For Wolin, these desires are encapsulated in a distinctive democratic experience, and the issues of material abundance and the satisfaction of basic human needs as regards food, drink, housing, education, and so on are not seriously considered in his analysis. In Wolin’s thought, then, the issue of democratic participation and experience outweighs all other radical demands, and the means through which a better society can be created is restricted to a call for democratic experimentation and participation.

With this in mind, this article attempts to forward this debate a stage further. I argue that Wolin’s fugitive democracy avoids addressing the main political and social issues in a truly radical way because it does not focus on the way in which people socially organize to produce the wealth that enables them to satisfy their basic human needs. In other words, the content of real democracy should be the demand for dignity, something that is completely absent from Wolin’s elaboration. By dignity, I mean that all are free to satisfy their basic needs in a desirable way and that each person mutually acknowledges the equal right for all others to do the same. Therefore, any discussion on democracy must include a consideration of the social and material organization of human life and practice.

I contend that fugitive democracy – in contrast to Marx’s materialistic conception of democracy – merely describes a form of political practice and is therefore unable to satisfy the demand of the working class for dignity. When Wolin discusses fugitive democracy, his focus is only on how political actors can be introduced to and participate in democratic practices, and he proposes nothing that might improve the satisfaction of their basic needs. Thus, he does not question the way that wealth is produced.

The reason that I contend that Wolin should be compared to and interpreted through Marx’s democratic prism has two elements. Firstly, I consider the exposition by Marx and Engels of democracy and social theory by far the most radical, especially their discussion of how democracy is a moment of social practice that takes its form from the most important social relationship, that of capital. In their analysis, injustice and social inequality do not arise from a violation of the political consensus between those who govern and the electorate, but from the unfair way in which wealth is produced. In this regard, Wolin acknowledges Marx’s contribution to the development of the notion of radicalism in the wider context of the history of modern political thought (Wolin 2001: 16). However, Wolin misconceives the central elements of Marx’s political and democratic theory.1 Specifically, Wolin’s misconception is clearly illustrated by the way in which he understands the Marxist philosophy of history and the social and material content that Marx himself attributes to democratic politics, both of which are elements of clear radicalism.

Secondly, I contend that Wolin lacks a true appreciation of Marx’s dialectical method, which is absolutely central to Marx’s political philosophy, and the way in which Marx conceives reality as the product of man’s practice. Wolin’s view of how Marx conceives the political question and how his elaboration elevates the socio-economic element over the political not only misrepresents Marx’s theory, but also misunderstands Marx’s dialectic. In this regard, Wolin argues that ‘[a]lthough Marx contested what he perceived as the ideological and ahistorical biases in the liberal conception of modern power, he not only shared but expanded its major assumptions: that economic forces were primary, that political life was secondary to the central problem of organizing the productive powers

of society, that a rational society would see to it that politics was gradually displaced by public administration, and that technical education was emblematic of the cultural needs of a modern society’ (Wolin, 2001: 16).

As will be shown later, Wolin makes two errors in interpreting Marx’s theory of democracy. First, he does not acknowledge that the different levels of human practice have an internal relation and that they mediate each other (Wolin, 1983: 82). Furthermore, Wolin tends to argue that if politics and democracy are to be elaborated on in a constructive manner, they must be granted analytical primacy over other aspects of reality such as social and economic issues. And second, by concluding that Marx prioritizes socio-economic aspects and affords politics and democracy a lower level in his analysis, he misunderstands the Marxian dialectical method.

In Marx’s conception of reality, the dialectic relationship between form/appearance and content/ essence is of crucial importance.2 In other words, the element that gives cohesion to modern society is not the form of governance (that is to say, the state), but the way in which society spends its time3 in order to satisfy its basic needs. This in turn means that the form that bourgeois democracy takes is merely a form of the most important social relation, capital, under which we organize the satisfaction of our basic human needs in the specific historical era, that of capitalism. In other words, contemplating democracy in Marxian terms means that we must reflect upon the way in which the satisfaction of food, drink, clothing, housing, education, and health needs are organized. Therefore, changing the appearance of democracy (its form) without simultaneously changing the way in which wealth is produced (its essence) shackles any democratic change merely to a change in its form.

The Marxian Method of Dialectical Materialism

The previous section briefly identified how democracy acquires a material content in Marx’s critique which leads to the heart of Marx’s dialectical materialism. Since Marx’s dialectical method is of primary importance to his critique, it must therefore be analysed. As Marx did not provide a precise description of his own method in his work, my analysis closely follows the tradition of Open Marxism. Open Marxism evaluates Marx’s dialectical materialism differently from traditional Marxism. How, then, do the orthodox and Open Marxist approaches differ?

In brief, the differences between these two approaches to Marxism are based on whether Marxism is a science in a positive sense, that is to say, whether it has precise categories that can be controlled by the historical materialist so as to guide history in a predetermined direction towards an objective target, which is the transformation of society through revolutionary means. This tradition began with Engels when he attempted to define the scientific nature of Marxism in a pamphlet entitled Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Holloway observes that

in speaking of Marxism as ‘scientific,’ Engels means that it is based on an understanding of social development that is just as exact as the scientific understanding of natural development. The course of both natural and human development is characterized by the same constant movement. For Engels, dialectics comprehends the objective movement of nature and society, a movement independent of the subject. (Holloway, 2010a: 121)

Moreover, ‘dialectics, for Engels, becomes a natural law, not the reason of revolt’ (Holloway, 2010a: 121). Despite their differences on other issues, almost all the revolutionary theorists of the early part of the 20th century followed Engels’s methodological approach. Among these theorists were Rosa Luxemburg, Vladimir Lenin, Leo Trotsky, and Antonie Pannekoek, all of whom ascribe a distinctive, scientific and positivistic element to Marx’s dialectical materialism.4

According to Open Marxism, however, historical materialism is based on two different aspects. The first is the phenomenon of fetishism, which refers to the fragmentation of reality into separated parts (economy, politics, etc.) that appear to move and evolve independently of each other. In other words, these levels of reality acquire autonomy over their real and absolute subject, man. The second is the practice of submitting our creative labour or ‘useful doing’ to the logic of abstract labour or the logic of abstract time, which denotes the ‘socially necessary labour time’ for the production of a commodity for exchange in a competitive market. First of all, I wish to clarify what materialism means in the context of Marx’s analysis.

Very early in his theoretical development, Marx tackled the question of materialism, which refers to how we perceive the reality or the social world around us. Marx argued that ‘human history began when man created social relations in which humanity was no longer an exploitable resource but a purpose’ (Bonefeld, undated). His critique does not merely wish to expose these constituted forms, but seeks to show that they are forms of human social practice, forms that clearly also entail democratic politics and a democratic participatory system. For Marx, then, there is no other reality than man himself and his practice. This is the material basis for Marx’s revolutionary call for the abolition of all relations that render man a dispossessed being and the creation of a society of the free and equal, a society of human dignity where all is returned to man, who, no longer ruled by self-imposed abstractions (such as capital and its various social and economic forms and categories), controls his own social affairs and is in possession of himself.

The materialist basis of Marx’s thought is also revealed by the subtitle of Capital, that is, Critique of Political Economy. Bonefeld and Psychopedis’s (2005: 7–9) and Backhaus’s (2005: 15–21) analyses are the most enlightening of all on this issue. This subtitle means that Marx’s intention was not to produce an alternative theory of political economy but rather to criticize political economy as it is elaborated by bourgeois economists. For Marx, since economics describes the relationship between things, it is a clear case of fetishism since it involves the active fragmentation of the social reality created by man. In other words, it is not the case that the existence of the apparently different and independent phenomena-forms is unavoidable but rather that man’s practice renders every form around us as such. In this respect, it is a contradiction in terms to discuss ‘Marxist economics’ or ‘Marxist economists’.

According to Marx, the separation of reality into fragmented forms and categories is constituted by ‘the conditions of labour’, which confront workers ‘as alien property, as an independent, alien force capital’ (Marx, 1972: 271). This implies that these ‘conditions of labour confront them as capital’ (Marx, 1972: 271). Marx called the ‘relationship among the things themselves’ the ‘form of value’ and this is the focus of Marx’s critique of fetishism, where ‘all productive power of labour is projected as powers of capital, the same as all forms of value are projected as forms of money’ (Marx, 1962: 634). All these projections and fetish-like forms hide the fact that they are ‘the product of a social relation, not the product of a mere thing’ (Marx, 1966: 391).

According to Marx, for a critique to be radical, it must be ‘ad hominem’. An ‘ad hominem’ critique means that the focus of the critique is man himself, with all his possibilities and dignity: ‘To be radical is to grasp that man himself lies at the heart of the critique’ (Marx 1975b: 182).

From this definition of an ‘ad hominem’ critique, then, examining reality without underlining the mediation of appearance and essence is a fundamentally flawed approach. Despite paying attention to the essence of this world – man as the absolute subject – a non-ad hominem approach tends to focus on the forms or modes through which reality is crudely expressed, such as representative democracy, the bourgeois form of the state, capital, value in the form of money, prices, the rate of inflation, and so on. This entire situation was described by Marx as a perverted, topsyturvy world. The question that must be posed, then, is this: how can people change or overthrow this perverted and inverted world?

Fetishism is the active fragmentation of reality into separated parts that appear to be independent of each other or in a constant external relationship, whereby the change of one does not mean the mutual alteration of others. Fetishism, therefore, is not a process that has been completed, as traditional Marxism contends; rather, it is an active, ongoing process that takes place every moment we organize our practice under the dictates of abstract labour and expanded profit. In this respect, fetishism becomes a process of ‘fetishisation’ (Holloway 2010a: 78–80). Every moment that we subjugate our practice to the demands of the maximization of capital, we create fetishism. In this way, fetishism is real because it is the reality in which we choose to live without taking into serious account the difficulties that such a situation creates.

Fetishism as fetishization is real in the sense that the dialectical relationship between essence and form becomes a living antagonism between concrete doing and abstract labour. We create the perverted world in which categories and forms appear to have a life of their own, where the human being is merely a means for the achievement of something other: capital and the expansion of profit. The question is, therefore, how something other than this perverted world can be constituted. According to Marx, dialectics provides the method through which a future different social reality can be imagined and realized. As Holloway repeatedly argues throughout his writings, to think dialectically means that we live in, against, and beyond capital or the fetishist world of mere things and categories.

In this respect, Marx’s dialectic refers to the mediation between essence and form. The different social forms and economic categories are simply modes of existence of the essence, and, conversely, essence is what gives meaning to the different forms or categories. The core feature of this dialectic is that this essence transcends and overflows the specific forms that are seen in a specific historical period. The essence exists in-against-and-beyond the forms that emerge in a specific historical moment. This means that we can create a different way of organizing our practice, one that is communal, collective, and collaborative.

Wolin’s Critique of Rawls’s ‘Political Liberalism’ and of the ‘Modern Liberal Megastate’

Wolin’s critique of modern political liberalism forms the basis of his apparent radicalism. In this regard, his famous critique of Rawls’s Political Liberalism, which focuses on Rawls’s conception of democracy and the conditions under which democracy can function effectively, is noteworthy. By referring to this critique, I aim to demonstrate how Wolin, a theorist who appears to pursue a radical goal, ultimately fails to be truly radical due to following a liberal train of thought. In other words, I believe that Wolin, like Rawls, does not abandon the liberal theoretical approach to democracy. This liberal approach is encapsulated in the notion that reality is fragmented into different levels of reality that evolve independently of each other. In this regard, Wolin contends that while economic reality dictates that we experience a wretched daily existence – one of oppression, inequality, and exploitation – we still have the opportunity to improve our condition through politics and at least attain a high level of political participation and democratic experience. In other words, Wolin dissociates democracy from its materialistic basis, a relationship that is of crucial importance for both radical democrats and socialists.

According to Wolin, Rawls appears to favour a closed and limited form of democracy because he stresses the need for stability and socio-political tranquillity, both of which depend for their attainment on a representative system of government, an institutionally consolidated periodic right to secret ballot, and the redistribution of a minimal, and tempting, portion of the produced surplus value (Wolin, 1996a: 99). From this, in Wolin’s view, limited perspective, Rawls tries to address

the problems of social inequality and injustice. Wolin argues that Rawls’s inability to provide a solution to these problems is partly because a Rawlsian consensus among individuals serves the purpose of supporting political agreements rather than creating them (Wolin, 1996a: 99).

Although Wolin regards Rawls’s analysis of the political phenomenon as insightful, he argues that his attempts to address social inequalities necessarily favour the influential and economically strong (Wolin, 2004: 531). For Rawls, provisory redistribution of incomes is intimately related to the exercise of political authority. Therefore, socio-political elites are likely to consent to such redistribution only if it has ‘somehow acquired greater political virtue than corporate culture and a fiercely competitive society ordinarily instill’ (Wolin, 1996a: 101) and a confirmed social, political and economic role exists for it. In other words, rather than addressing the underlying conditions and persistent structures that have historically determined the present social situation of inequalities and injustices, Rawls confuses cause and effect, instead turning his attention to the results of these historical conditions and advocating remedial action to address inequalities (Wolin, 1996a: 101). Therefore, in order to function properly, Rawlsian democracy silences and suppresses vital elements of the political debate and, most of all, the issue of political economy and its connection to citizens’ political participation (Wolin, 1996a: 102). It is clear, then, that Wolin endeavours to connect politics with political economy and represents a genuinely radical form of political thought in which individuals are presented as real political subjects. However, while Wolin tries to connect the political and the economic, he fails to recognize that they are both merely two modes of appearance of the same content, that of capital.

In order to provide a critique of Wolin’s democratic theory, it is important to examine how Wolin depicts the existing political arrangement, which he terms the ‘liberal megastate’ (Wolin, 1989: 180–191). In describing this liberal megastate, Wolin articulates his awareness of modern political problems, especially the practical effects of a deficiency of democracy, as will be shown in the analysis that follows.

It can be inferred from Wolin’s texts that while he is a fervent critic of the political, social, and economic aspects of the modern system, he does not acknowledge their internal cohesion as different expressions of the same content of the topsy-turvy world. According to Wolin, the notion of the liberal megastate encapsulates the distinction or separation of politics and the political (Wolin, 1996b: 31–2). In brief, it can be said that politics corresponds to the megastate itself and refers to the exercise of political power by a clique of professional politicians in the Weberian tradition. Moreover, politics ‘refers to the legitimized and public contestation, primarily by organized and unequal social forces, over access to the resources available to the public authorities of the collectivity’ (Wolin, 1996b: 31). For Wolin, it is this form of organization, namely, ‘organized and unequal social forces’, that is the main barrier to effective democratic political action and participation. In this regard, I contend that Wolin’s main inconsistency lies in his approach to addressing democratic deficiency. For Wolin, it is the political that should be the focus, not the social. It is clear, therefore, that Wolin does not recognize the interaction that exists between the political, social and economic aspects, but instead believes that their relation is parallel and external. This means that one aspect (for example, the political) can be elaborated independently of another that affects it (the economic, for example). Therefore, in contending that democratic politics can be improved without confronting the economic aspect of reality, Wolin fails to recognize the common content of the economic and political aspects of reality.

A second feature of the liberal megastate is the establishment of boundaries during the process of practising politics, boundaries that create the need for a common identity and homogeneity among the citizens of a political society. Furthermore, these boundaries, in Wolin’s political vocabulary, are connected simultaneously with the monopolistic or, in one sense, the totalitarian

power of social and political elites and with the limited political action and participation of the ordinary citizenry in their political societies.

The question that must be posed to Wolin is this: how is his concept and analysis of boundaries connected with the issues of democracy and democratic politics? For Wolin, ‘the reality cloaked in the metaphor of boundaries is the containment of democracy and … the crucial boundary is a constitution’ (Wolin, 1996b: 33) and other ‘democratic’ institutions that reinforce and replicate the particular form of democracy (Wolin, 2004: 563–4, 578, 588–9; 1996b: 33–4). In Wolin’s critique of the liberal megastate, the constitution refers to the dominance of socio-political elites over the masses and also prescribes the limits of political participation. Wolin eloquently describes this process as the ‘taming’ of the political body (Wolin, 1996b: 34).

Wolin reveals the mechanism through which the taming of the political body takes place in the context of the megastate, a process that has an administrative character that ‘regulates the amount of democratic politics’ (Wolin, 1996b: 34). In my view, Wolin has undoubtedly comprehended the true nature of megastate politics, observing that politics degenerates into ‘an illusion of perpetual political motion launched initially by democratic elections’ (Wolin, 1996b: 34). In this way, the liberal megastate not only regulates the constitutional form of democracy, but also specifies what is to be considered legal and illegal political activity, the temporal rhythms or periodicity of politics, and generates ‘ritualistic forms’ for politics including the right to a secret ballot every four or five years to select a representative from a limited number of candidates. Wolin is acutely aware of the centrality of the economic to this procedure, noting that the dominant social powers that organize and run the elections avail themselves of the ensuing opportunity for economic investments and benefits.

According to Wolin, this administrative democratic politics primarily aims to guarantee the economic satisfaction of the ‘dominant power groups in the society’. It is clear, therefore, that it is not democratic politics that lies at the heart of the megastate but rather the attainment of certain economic/material interests. As Wolin puts it ‘[the] modern state-power is deeply dependent upon the market’ (Wolin, 1996b: 36), a theme that reoccurs throughout Wolin’s works from 1996 to 2008. The economic character of the liberal megastate is of vital importance, a point that Wolin drives home in Politics and Vision and Democracy Incorporated (although he substitutes the term ‘Superpower’ for liberal megastate in these works). Wolin associates the liberal megastate with the Superpower, but Superpower refers specifically to the era of the dominion of the megastate rather than the state itself. It could be said, therefore, that the megastate and the Superpower are simultaneously two different sides of the same reality.

The economic function of the liberal megastate is not to serve the political body as a whole, that is to say, the material interests of the masses as the political subject-actor; rather, ‘the political economy has emerged … as the integration of corporation, state and economics’ (Wolin, 2004: 564). In other words, the liberal megastate represents the material interests and development of multinational corporations and globalized finance, the domination over culture, and the dissemination of values by media conglomerates and control over a world economy by institutions staffed predominantly by economists (Wolin, 2004: 564).

Wolin’s analysis indicates that security and material prosperity lie at the centre of the modern liberal megastate. What do these terms mean in Wolin’s analysis? While it might be expected that the notion of prosperity would be applicable to all individuals in the megastate, it instead applies only to the economic interests of multinational corporations. Moreover, since these corporations are engaged in desperate competition to achieve their own material goals, this results in a form of democratic politics dominated by the economic interests of competing corporations. It is clear, then, that in his criticism of the modern liberal megastate and the system that reproduces it, Wolin

displays a great deal of genuine radicalism. Wolin is fully aware of what reproduces the liberal megastate and of how democratic politics has lost its ability to address the socio-political problems faced by a political society. His solution is encapsulated in his notion of fugitive democracy. Unfortunately, as will be shown, Wolin’s analysis falls some way short of being able to produce a systematic programme that might confront these issues. Wolin’s exclusion of the economic from the debate on democracy and his inability to demonstrate how democracy can be attained by citizens undermines his position. In short, Wolin’s democracy is not a materialist conception of democracy, which means that the production of wealth is not democratically determined, and this is the basis for my primary disagreement with him. The aim now is to examine the extent to which Wolin’s fugitive democracy can be considered genuinely radical.

The Concept of Fugitive Democracy and its Radicalism

The notion of democracy has a crucial place in Wolin’s philosophy, confirmed by the role it plays in every one of his works, from Politics and Vision, to Tocqueville Between Two Worlds and Democracy Incorporated.

Before discussing Wolin’s concept of fugitive democracy, it is necessary to examine Wolin’s ideal form of democracy, which appears to be a combination of the diverse ideas about democracy that have gained special positions in the history of western political thought. As clearly shown in Politics and Vision, the first of these is the Aristotelian concept of democracy (Wolin, 2004: 602).

Aristotelian democracy, like the ancient Greek democratic model in general, can be regarded as a negative form of democracy in Wolin’s democratic ethos. While the ancient Greek democratic ethos brought the expansion of political participation by ordinary human beings, who overcame the barriers to power represented by wealth, status, education and tradition, it nevertheless led to the ‘kind of democracy where equal rights are formally guaranteed but social and political inequalities are widespread and the demos is a negligible political actor’ (Wolin, 1996c: 85).

The second democratic pattern upon which Wolin draws, and which he regards as an example of a positive form of democracy, is contained within the democratic projects of Spinoza and Tocqueville. According to Wolin, in devoting much attention to developing a conception of people as political actors, Spinoza provides a genuine starting point for the consideration of democracy because he conceptualizes ‘the delineation of a new kind of actor and its raw power’ (Wolin, 1996c: 72). Spinoza’s concept of conatus, which is related to his notion of the multitude, identifies the masses with a certain elemental force: a raw, embryonic impulse for social participation, which must be developed so as to form the kernel of a generalized political participation and intervention.

With this in mind, Wolin notes that, for Spinoza, ‘the multitude collectively embodies a conatus, but because its psychology is limited to what Spinoza called the realm of imagination (imaginatio) and unable to ascend to the level of reason, it remains ignorant, superstitious, and prone to crude and fantastic religious beliefs’ (Wolin, 1996c: 73) and requires the establishment of appropriate institutions to raise its mentality to a semblance of rationality. Thus, while Wolin accepts Spinoza’s conceptualization of the conatus as a collective political actor, he disagrees with Spinoza’s conclusion, because it creates ‘a system of dual truth, one for the masses and one for the rational few’ (Wolin, 1996c: 74). By contrast, Tocqueville’s notion of democracy outlines the participatory and experimental process that Wolin clearly supports and develops in his concept of fugitive democracy.

For Wolin, ‘Tocqueville was the first political theorist to treat democracy as a theoretical subject in its own right and the first to contend that democracy was capable of achieving a genuine, if modest, political life-form’ (Wolin, 2001: 59). He ‘would challenge the tradition of discourse that had

been unable to conceive democracy except as encased in a preconceived legal form’ and ‘would reveal democracy to mean ways of life and multiple political life-forms’ (Wolin, 2001: 63). From Tocqueville’s perspective, democracy is not a form of institutional organization played out through its institutional forms. Rather, it describes the different ways in which people organize their collective lives. It is the active participation of the demos in its daily affairs.

Wolin devotes a significant part of his analysis to how democracy should be the experimental arena in which the taking of collective decisions on the issues of a political society is practised, noting that

[a]lthough Tocqueville can be credited with having been the first to constitute democracy as a serious theoretical subject, almost every commentator has remarked on the great difficulties he encountered in attempting to state clearly what he or others meant by democracy. In part the difficulties were due to the originality of an approach that treated democracy not primarily as an institutional or a legal form but rather as the reflection of certain beliefs and cultural practices. (Wolin, 2001: 74)

This view is clearly at odds with the preponderant modern political notion of democracy, which has at its heart the notions of political power, constituted sovereignty, and a central political authority (Wolin, 2001: 29, 172) and instead places the emphasis ‘not on knowing how to rule but on recognizing what it meant to be ruled in a nonarbitrary way’ (Wolin, 2001: 173). In drawing on Tocqueville, Wolin is clearly opposed to the modern identification of politics with the manipulation of a specific and institutionally based political power.

Wolin’s concept of fugitive democracy is closely associated with the principle of direct democratic governance and is generally regarded as his most distinctive and significant contribution to modern political thought. Central to fugitive democracy are concepts such as political participation, reason, prosperity, pluralism and diversity (Wolin, 1993: 464). Wolin elaborates on the participation of the demos in specific areas of political action, such as the acquiring of ‘experience of the political, participating in power, reflecting on the consequences of its exercise, struggling to sort out the common well-being and finally ensuring continuing political education’ (Wolin, 1996a: 98). He consistently ascribes a moral and politically value-laden content to these notions and connects politics and the political experience as it manifests itself in the daily experience and the evolutionary progress of political societies.

Wolin’s democratic scheme presupposes a constitutive element, namely, the people themselves: it is the masses that constitute the political body (Wolin, 2008: 132), the most distinctive feature of which is its ceaseless contestation of and challenge to the conditions of its governance.5 On this point I accept Wolin’s observation that there is a clear distinction between democracy and liberal democracy, since ‘democracy involves more than participation in political processes. It is a way of constituting power.… Power is not merely something to be shared, but something to be used collaboratively in order to initiate, to invent, to bring about’ (Wolin, 1987: 470).

According to Wolin, the next crucial element that should always be taken into account is the diversity and social pluralism among citizens.6 Wolin maintains that modern liberal political systems continually attempt to repress all elements that render individuals clearly unique and instead promote an illusory or feigned equality and homogeneity (Wolin, 1993: 464–5). Wolin argues that, conversely, democracy is actually distinguished by heterogeneity, which is a consequence of liberty and equality (Wolin, 1996b: 42).

The final aspect of Wolin’s fugitive democracy that can be considered genuinely radical is his treatment of the concept of prosperity. In my view, prosperity has a clear link with the economic, and the treatment that it is afforded by the political thinker is indicative of his or her radicalism.

Unfortunately, however, Wolin does not draw attention to the material aspect of prosperity convincingly, but instead formulates it primarily in a political sense, referring to the distinct pleasure of participation in the political affairs of one’s own society. In so doing, Wolin disconnects politics from its materialistic aspect and therefore leads his readers towards an inevitable moralist understanding and criticism of politics. It can be concluded that Wolin adopts an individualistic sociopolitical perspective that simultaneously supports both private and social interests. In other words, Wolin mounts an imaginative attack on his theoretical enemies, but by lacking an appreciation of the dialectic character of the mediation between the different levels of human practice, his attempts to resolve the issues consistently fall short.

The main critical approach of this article will be developed in regard to this specific aspect of Wolin’s reasoning. As already mentioned, Kateb has noted that Wolin’s political project, from a purely practical perspective, cannot appreciably radicalize political phenomena and the prospects of genuine democratic change. Kateb contends, therefore, that Wolin’s critique amounts to little more than an outpouring of resentment against modern political liberalism and the political context of our time, that of capitalism and the megastate. In other words, Wolin’s critique is purely negative in nature because it does not propose an alternative valid political and economic project (Kateb, 2001: 42).

It is clear that Kateb’s criticism points to the inescapable conceptual interconnection of politics and economy. However, in seeking this connection, Marxists do not differ from liberals, and liberals also try to find in which way politics affects the economy and vice versa. In my view, drawing this connection does not in itself prove the radicalism of a thinker, especially of one who desires to move beyond liberal logic. In other words, if one is to be radical, it is not enough merely to connect the different levels of human practice in an attempt to uncover their cohesion. By contrast, Marx’s radicalism lies in how the different levels of human practice are mediated, that is to say, how the different aspects of the same reality – the social relation that enables us to satisfy our basic needs – are mediated to each other. According to Marx’s dialectic, a radical political theorist tries to discover how modification of the essence affects and alters the different forms through which this essence is expressed.

Despite Wolin’s reference to this connection in his critical approach to Rawls’s Political Liberalism, he does not develop this theme further in his conception of fugitive democracy. His concern is not with exploring how we can productively connect democracy with the satisfaction of human needs, an issue that lies outside his purview, but with individual participation in the political. A thorough reading of Wolin’s fugitive democracy reveals this inconsistency, perhaps most notably in Politics and Vision, where the economic is entirely absent. In fugitive democracy, the permanent improvement of individuals’ material conditions is not a necessity. Wolin argues that ‘[t]he power of a democratic politics lies in … the ingenuity of ordinary people in inventing temporary forms to meet their needs’ (Wolin, 2004: 603). Moreover, ‘[l]ocalism does not mean that the … fugitive character of democracy stand[s] for a pent-up revolutionary fervor waiting for an opportunity to wreak havoc. Given the material condition of the demos, the actuality of democracy is necessarily episodic and circumstantial’ (Wolin, 2004: 603–4).

When Wolin does try to connect economy and politics, he is unable to abandon his liberal roots (Wood, 2000: 19).7 This conclusion is founded on Wolin’s simultaneous rejection of capitalism and his fervent critique of social democracy. Wolin’s project of fugitive democracy tries to resolve this apparent inconsistency; for Wolin, social democracy, in the form that it has taken in western societies, cannot resolve the problems of social inequalities, injustice and conflict because it has already incorporated the structural form and core mechanisms of capitalism itself. In other words, ‘social democrats have argued straightforwardly for a policy of helping to fatten the capitalist calf rather

than slaughtering it’ (Wolin, 1987: 493–4). Wolin’s solution is embodied in his concept of fugitive democracy, which he argues is more democratic than social democracy because it recognizes the inherent nature of the relationship between capitalist ownership of the means of production and the state. Thus, Wolin contends that if capitalism is the reality in which we live and social democracy is unable to fundamentally change this specific reality, then our daily democratic practice and participation should be organized independently of the conditions of capitalist development. This is the core argument of Democracy Incorporated (Wolin, 2008: 259–61).

Fugitive democracy therefore tries to dissociate democratic participation from the capitalist state and the capitalist mode of production. Unfortunately, this means that fugitive democracy cannot be viewed as a valid programme of social transformation based on a democratic mode of production of social wealth, since Wolin’s fugitive democracy inevitably separates democratic practice from a criticism of the mode of production. In other words, Wolin’s democratic politics, being fugitive in nature, must necessarily be practised outside of the economic. In a brief formulation, Wolin describes fugitive democracy simply as political involvement by ordinary citizens in a smaller political context (Wolin, 2008: 259, 267). It is clear, therefore, that by ultimately separating democratic practice from both the way in which our basic needs are fulfilled and from political authority, Wolin divides reality into multiple levels of experience, none of which is ultimately accessible or changeable, and democracy degenerates into a demotic moment that is incapable of fundamentally changing the socio-political environment (Wolin, 2008: 238–58). In my view, Wolin encounters particular difficulty when he sets out his perception of social reality. He fetishes one specific mode of existence of this reality, that of the capitalist mode of production, and regards this economic form as absolutely impervious to change because it has its own patterns and evolves through unaccountable periodicities and obscure economic laws.

I contend, therefore, that the contradictions in Wolin’s work are due to his inability to appreciate the connection between capitalism and its historical foundation, traditional liberalism. Wolin disregards a fundamental principle underpinning the growth of capitalism, that is, the continuous and unlimited satisfaction of selfish interests. He seemingly rejects the proposition that classical liberalism has led inexorably to our modern political ethics, and he settles on a romantic version of liberalism that would inevitably bring about the same inescapable class conflicts.

In this regard, I believe that Wolin fails to discern that political liberalism and the capitalistic form of social production are two different aspects of the same reality. They are two different modes of existence of the same essence, that is, the means by which we achieve our daily preservation in an antagonistic way. Since the liberal mode of democratic participation does not presuppose the abolition of competition in our social relations, it merely tries to find ways to correct the inconsistencies inside this antagonistic context. Therefore, the prospect of a different means of organizing our time in order to satisfy our elementary needs and thus protect our dignity is not raised in the context of liberal democracy, and if we merely choose to adopt an ideal form of democracy (such as that of Tocqueville as developed by Wolin), the question of how our basic needs are to be satisfied outside that of the capitalist logic, outside the logic of private property, is not posed.

By contrast, I believe that by following a Marxist perspective, the prospect of organizing our daily social relations in a different way is absolutely feasible. This is the pivotal element of Marxist dialectics, that is, the confidence that our daily practice can be organized in a very different way than today, that we can secure our preservation on a collective and communal basis, mutually acknowledging the demand for dignity of every other. In other words, we can organize our doing outside the logic of capital and of the subjection of our practice to the logic of abstract labour, which creates commodities to be exchanged in a competitive market rather than products to satisfy our fundamental needs (Holloway, 2010b: 250–2).

It seems clear that a consistent and radical elaboration of politics must always identify the connection between the exercise of democracy and the abolition of wage slavery and ownership of the means of production, an identification that is distinctly absent from Wolin’s theory. At this point, Wolin’s misconception of Marx’s theory of politics, democracy and political economy should be underlined, a more accurate appreciation of which might help to transform his theory into a radical democratic programme. While rejecting the capitalist forms of economy that are followed by the modern megastates, Wolin also rejects the form of political economy that could ensure the participation of the masses in political affairs through the development of their own class interests. It should be noted that Wolin rejects the existence of class interests and instead supports the heterogeneity of anti-totality politics (Wolin, 2004: 603), which I contend is, at least in part, a result of Wolin’s assertion that prosperity is not always economic in content.

The term ‘political economy’ leads to another aspect of Wolin’s position that reveals the less than radical nature of his democratic theory: his unwillingness to draw an explicit connection between the issue of social reform and a deficiency of democracy. In short, Wolin does not regard social inequalities, injustices and exploitation as of primary importance. In describing fugitive democracy, Wolin seems convinced that the abolition of social inequalities is not a prerequisite for democratic politics, since democracy is fugitive by nature – local, ephemeral and impermanent. This implies that interests must also be ephemeral. In other words, Wolin’s democracy is a kind of exercise in which all people should participate, regardless of whether they are slum-dwellers or hold senior corporate positions. In my view, this is controversial. Once again, it is clear that Wolin separates reality into different and independent levels, thinking that is symptomatic of capitalist logic. Since capital itself means the ‘rupture of doing’, or in other words, ‘the rupture of the social flow of doing, which turns the done against the doing and the doer’ (Holloway, 2010a: 43), any fragmentation of reality into separated parts is consistent with the logic of capital, that is, the separation of the product from its doer.

Wolin categorizes individuals according to the different roles they play in their day-to-day experience. He does not consider them members of a specific class, since he maintains that the fugitive nature of democracy means that it is practised within a constantly changing environment. This kind of democracy is shaped not by the interests of the proletariat, but by individuals’ different experiences occurring within temporary political forms. I contend, therefore, that Wolin expounds a democratic theory that contains no critical approach to social emancipation and inequalities, and instead consistently bypasses these issues.

Wolin regards the masses’ interests as essentially time-limited. Activist movements such as those concerning ‘rent control, utility rates and service, environmental concerns, health care, education, nuclear power, legal aid, workers’ ownership of plants and much more’ (Wolin, 1992: 252) are more genuinely representative of fugitive democracy but are incapable of effecting class struggle in the capitalist form of economic production. While these mass movements move in the right direction, encouraging people to take decisions collectively and cultivating sentiments of solidarity and communality, they do not question the essence of social existence, that is, the logic of private property. In contrast to Wolin’s conceptualization, a far more radical formulation of democracy is evident in Marx’s Critical Notes on the Article: ‘The King of Prussia and Social Reform, by a Prussian’, where Marx eloquently argues that democracy is only radical when its aim is to achieve social transformation, or more specifically, that only when democracy is linked to the social reformation of the productive forces can democracy reflect the interests of the proletariat and thereby be achieved (Marx, 1975a: 190).

From Marx’s perspective, the goal of democracy must be to attain a different means of producing wealth. It is not, as Wolin proposes, the mere practice of democratic mores. This pivotal difference

is clearly evident in Wolin’s and Marx’s formulations. While Wolin advances an ephemeral, periodic and fugitive democracy (Wolin, 2004: 603), Marx proposes a fundamental transformation of the organization of our daily activities (Marx, 1975a: 204–5). Finally, Wolin does not address the main target of Marx’s critique, which is the mediation of the state with the organization of our time. In this regard, Marx argues that ‘the contradiction between the vocation and the good intention of the administration on the one hand and the means and powers at its disposal on the other cannot be eliminated by the state, except by abolishing itself; for the state is based on this contradiction. It is based on the contradiction between public and private life, between universal and particular interests’ (Marx, 1975a: 199–200).

On the other hand, Marx’s perception of reality is based on the mediation of form/appearance and essence/content. In this regard, only the alteration of essence/content brings about true changes in the form/appearance of this content. By drawing this distinction between form and essence, Marx points to the mediation that exists between the basic social relationship under which man satisfies his basic human needs and the forms in which this social relationship appear in a specific historic period, such as the state. Therefore, demanding changes to the way in which democracy functions is of little consequence if the essence, the way in which we satisfy our basic needs, remains unaltered. In other words, the bourgeois form of democracy is a form that directly corresponds to the way in which we attain our present means of survival, that is, capital. A genuinely democratic change can take place only if we change the mode of organizing our daily existence, only if we transcend capitalism, the logic of abstract time, which creates commodities alienated from their doers.

Fugitive Democracy, Democratic Politics and the Question of Revolution

Among the issues that occupy a political society, Wolin views democratic politics as core notion in his theory. In his elaboration on the concept of democracy, he is explicit in his assertion that democracy must not be viewed simply as a form of administration, or in other words, a ‘form of government’ (Wolin, 1996b: 31), but rather as a ‘project concerned with the political potentialities of ordinary citizens, that is, with their possibilities for becoming political beings through the selfdiscovery of common concerns and of modes of action for realizing them’ (Wolin, 1996b: 31).

In the same way as described in the previous section devoted to the liberal megastate, the separation between politics and the political directly concerns democratic politics. While politics is associated with the institutional democratic procedures that are supported by the liberal megastate (Wolin, 1996b: 36), Wolin equates ‘real’ democracy with the political, maintaining that is ‘episodic and rare’ (Wolin, 1996b: 31).

Why does Wolin regard democracy as episodic and rare? In his view, democracy must contain an ‘experimentalist’ element, an experimentalism that necessarily leads to democracy being episodic and rare. This experimentalism refers to the direct participation of the masses in the political affairs of their own political societies. In other words, Wolin’s democracy refers to a form of direct democratic politics that enables every citizen to take part in an open political process, make decisions about political problems, and have equal access to the decision-making process.

It seems clear, therefore, that Wolin embraces a progressive approach to democracy and regards it as essential. Moreover, the fact that Wolin is inspired by the revolutionary moments of political and democratic history, despite the extremely conservative context of the liberal megastate, further points to his radicalism. He observes that ‘democracy is not about where the political is located but about how it is experienced’ (Wolin, 1996b: 38) and goes on to state that ‘revolutions activate the

demos’ (Wolin 1996b: 38). According to Wolin, what revolution offers to democratic politics is ‘the very idea of equality’, which is precluded by the context of the modern megastate through the social and political boundaries that the megastate itself creates.

A revolution is the ideal moment in which to exercise democratic politics. A revolution enables every citizen to take part immediately in the decision-making process and to decide on any given political issue. In Wolin’s political thought, therefore, revolution is connected to democracy through the direct political participation of every citizen, and democracy is revolutionary in itself because it provides the possibility for every citizen to make decisions regardless of their social or economic condition. However, it is clear that Wolin’s concept of revolution does not have a materialistic character, or in other words, the primary goal of revolution should not be social transition or transformation. Moreover, his conception of autonomy is also lacking in materialistic character and merely points to active participation in the common affairs of a political society.

In the same vein, Wolin unfortunately discards the possibility of a permanent revolutionary democracy in which the entire political body endeavours to achieve a lasting radicalization of political practice. In Wolin’s political thought, the revolutionary instant is the outcome of a long period of democratic deficiency. The evolutionary process of democratic politics, therefore, degenerates into an unending chain of momentary ‘real’, participatory democracy and the institutionalization of politics, a chain within which political subjects enjoy only brief moments of democracy rather than continuous democracy with conspicuous social aspects (Wolin, 1996b: 39). It should also be noted that there is an apparent change in Wolin’s views about the prospects for democracy in his works between 1996 and 2008; his view becomes increasingly negative. Whereas in 1996 he describes democracy in terms of ‘democratic moments’, by 2008, and particularly in the pages of Democracy Incorporated, democracy has degenerated into ‘demotic moments’.8 In other words, Wolin contends that democracy has deteriorated from something ephemeral and elusive into something demotic and not democratic at all.

When the above is taken into consideration, the conclusion must be reached that Wolin misconceives, or at least disregards, the social content of democracy. Wolin’s democracy, as has been argued elsewhere in this paper, is nothing more than an instance of democratic practice by political subjects bound by convention and immediacy. Wolin’s schema cannot hope to address the social content of democracy, which clearly comprises citizens’ economic and material well-being.

From the above discussion, it is evident that Wolin’s position has a number of shortcomings. But why should Wolin’s political and democratic project, his concept of fugitive democracy, be critiqued from a Marxist perspective? Firstly, the analysis of democracy is a cornerstone of Marxist philosophy. A Marxist perspective aims to examine to what extent a democratic project promotes equality in a material sense. For Marx and Engels, democracy cannot be other than material in form: it must involve the material condition of citizens. In other words, democracy cannot be attained without the simultaneous material well-being of individuals as subjects of democratic and social practice.

With this in mind, it can be argued that Wolin holds two inconsistent positions when he examines the nature of reality. It can be argued that Wolin simultaneously adopts two contradictory positions towards reality. On the one hand, Wolin’s fugitive democracy does not actually confront the various social problems faced by the masses. On the other hand, Wolin contends that democracy most counts when social conditions are at their most difficult and oppressive for the masses. He supports his argument through the observation that the debate on democracy, as with that of political philosophy, comes to the fore in times of crisis and that we are currently living in such a period. Of course, Wolin recognizes that the socio-political situation of the masses is genuinely oppressive, but on the other hand, his democratic project does not advocate a transformation of the

most important relation in society, the way we communicate to each other in order to satisfy our basic needs.

For this reason, we are obliged to face the issue of revolution. From a radical point of view, Wolin’s understanding of the prospects for and meaning of revolution is limited. For Wolin, revolution is merely a moment that punctuates long-lasting periods of ‘constitutional politics’, implying that the demos experiences only a few opportunities to enjoy moments of democracy. Needless to say, this view is fundamentally pessimistic, especially for a Marxist. Moreover, Wolin’s notion of revolution is intimately connected with the representative government that the liberal megastate imposes on citizens. Wolin’s pessimistic view of political representation, due to its suppression of citizens’ active participation in their common political affairs, is in contrast to his support of revolutionary impulses, which in his analysis refer to the ways in which citizens find feasible means of organizing their political participation in more active ways.

In Wolin’s thought, revolution refers to the way in which citizens discover new patterns for organizing their political participation outside the limits imposed by social and economic factors. This means that if a poor person depends upon the support provided by the liberal state, she must find ways to transcend her dependence on this arrangement so as to better participate in deciding upon the common affairs of the society in which she lives. In other words, the compensation provided by the liberal state forms a substantial part of the limits imposed by the liberal megastate in that it binds the poor to the liberal political arrangement. Therefore, in order to reinvent political participation, we must endeavour to think beyond the limits imposed by liberal representative politics, of which social compensation and minor redistribution of wealth are a part. In this regard, I feel that no Marxist would oppose Wolin’s position in that he appears to express a strong aversion to the capitalist social reality and endeavours to envisage a different social reality based on a different pattern under which wealth would be produced.

However, nowhere does Wolin advance a real or practicable alternative to capitalism or a substantial challenge to the current social reality. Nowhere in his work does socialism appear as a possible system for satisfying human needs. He directly challenges neither capitalism nor the satisfaction of human needs on the basis of the expansion of capital, an arrangement that ultimately intensifies inequalities among men. In my view, the revolutionary perspective advanced within this limited context of the right to invent new political patterns and institutions expresses merely a vague democratic conception of collective life (Wolin, 1992: 249). In this regard, Wolin displays his misunderstanding of Marx’s conception of revolution by claiming that

Democrats need a new conception of revolution. Its text should be John Locke not Karl Marx [because] Locke is best remembered for the argument that when those who rule seem bent on acquiring Absolute Power over the Lives, Liberties and Estates of the people, their power, which they hold on trust from the people, reverts, and the people are free to fashion new institutions … The right to revolution is the right to create new forms. (Wolin, 1992: 249)

It is clear from the above that Wolin’s view on the Marxist notion of revolution is not only limited but also fundamentally mistaken, a conclusion that is emphasized when he observes that ‘Marx is customarily cast as the antithesis to modern liberalism, yet his ideas were as much an extension of liberalism as an attempt to remedy certain of its deficiencies, such as the subordination of science and technology to the dictates of the market and the moral and aesthetic values of money’ (Wolin, 2001: 17).

In my reading of the Marxist perspective, revolution is an ongoing process that constantly adjusts to the social and political circumstances of a given historical period, or as Holloway puts it,

‘struggle is to speak of the openness of social development’ (1993: 76). In other words, it is an ever-present process without end. Moreover, for the tradition of open Marxism, since fetishism is an ongoing process, also known as fetishization, communism is not an unspecified moment somewhere in the future but an ever-present process, a process that starts here and now.

On this point, it is useful to clarify how the notion of revolution is connected to Marx’s perception of reality and history as an evolutionary process. The dialectical movement of history and the ways in which man changes the way that he organizes to satisfy his needs means that the revolutionary process involves the de-fetishization of the topsy-turvy, perverted world that we create and in which we subjugate our social doing to the maximization of profit.

Holloway underlines this when he writes, ‘to say of revolution is to say that the existence of capitalism is constantly at issue’ (2005: 272). Put differently, capitalism was not ‘made’ one or two centuries ago in the period of so-called primitive accumulation but is an open and ongoing process in the present. We are revolutionary subjects when we choose not to ‘make’ capitalism, meaning that we do not subjugate our creative practice to the logic of abstract labour and socially necessary time.

Above all, Wolin’s conception of revolution can be considered un-dialectic because fugitive democracy does not call for a change in the way that we satisfy our needs. Wolin’s concept therefore degenerates into fugitive revolution, since its scope is limited to an indefinable political participation affecting merely one aspect of the entire capitalist system – a system that enslaves every part of our lives on a daily basis – and it does not aim to alter how our communal life is organized to satisfy our needs in a more collective way.

A Marxist critique of Wolin’s fugitive democracy can also be directed against its notably absent materialistic aspect. As has already been mentioned, Wolin’s account of fugitive democracy does not demand the overthrow of the logic of private property. According to Wolin, the liberal megastate and the dominant social groups control the production of social wealth absolutely and also control the distribution of social labour and wealth, yet historical materialism is completely abandoned in Wolin’s analysis. This system described by Wolin serves very specific class interests, which can be understood only through the vocabulary of the class struggle and historical materialism. Wolin does not appear to appreciate that, first and foremost, democracy must mean democracy in the process of production of wealth. The main question for a radical democrat to consider is whether democracy from below is possible, and if so, under what circumstances. If workers are unable to take the initiative to defend their own living standards without resorting to protectionism, concessionary bargaining and other forms of collaboration with capital, then how can democracy from below occur? Without the revolutionary class struggle, how are workers to acquire ownership of the means of production? Since fugitive democracy has no class element and does not promote the class interest of the masses, fugitive democracy could only evolve in a world outside that of Wolin’s own Superpower, multinational corporations and the liberal megastate.

At this point, a careful reading of Wolin’s elaboration of fugitive democracy can serve to lessen the sense that Wolin fundamentally disregards the material aspects of the notion of autonomy. Although Wolin’s attitude towards the characteristics of, and prospects for, democracy have certainly undergone changes between 1996 and 2008, it should be noted that Wolin observed in 1996 that in a democratic context of commonality, ‘ordinary individuals are capable of creating new cultural patterns of commonality at any moment’ and that ‘[i]ndividuals who concert their powers for low income housing, worker ownership of factories, better schools, better health care, safer water, controls over toxic waste disposals, and a thousand other common concerns of ordinary lives are experiencing a democratic moment and contributing to the discovery, care and tending of a commonality of shared concerns’ (Wolin 1996b: 43). In my view, however, it would be

misleading to read too much into this statement. As far as I can recall from Wolin’s extensive work, this is the only reference he makes to the issue of the abolition of private property and organization of the production of wealth in a communal and collectivist manner. Nowhere else does Wolin connect democratic politics with its materialistic presuppositions.

Moreover, by 2008, these apparently progressive, social demands are absent from the pages of Democracy Incorporated; indeed, Wolin appears to have withdrawn them even earlier than this, as evidenced in the expanded edition of Politics and Vision published in 2004. By this time, his concept of democracy has no materialistic character whatsoever. Instead, autonomy must be practised outside the area of production of social wealth, which is controlled by multinational corporations worldwide. In other words, for Wolin, people must find different levels of democratic practice: democracy can be exercised everywhere except within the sphere of the satisfaction of elementary needs. On this point, it is useful to recall Stanley Aronowitz’s view that Wolin has truly retreated to more conservative political and social positions, marking his turn to post-modern politics (Aronowitz, 2006: the first chapter in particular). From Aronowitz’s perspective, Wolin omits criticism of the leading elements of the capitalist mode of production, such as the market and the private ownership of the means of production.

Aronowitz accurately notes that Wolin ‘is unconcerned to explore the question of capitalism as a system of social relations or the real processes by which capital is produced’ (Aronowitz, 2006: 40) and observes that ‘his focus on politics and power leads to a bleak conclusion about the uses that Marx’s analysis of capitalist social relations might provide for democratic social transformation’ (2006: 40).

Conclusion

Wolin is a prominent political theorist and historian of political thought. His work on the issue of the so-called end, or death, of political philosophy has placed him at the head of a radical approach to the political phenomenon (Wolin, 2004: 3–26). His methodology for the study of political philosophy elevates it from being a ‘museum of ideas’ and instead makes it an arena for prolific elaboration. By reuniting political philosophy with its history, it ceases to be an external method of analysis and becomes a cohesive framework for the study of the political phenomenon.

Wolin appears to confront consistently the issue of social inequalities and injustices. In this context, he criticizes modern political liberalism through his critique of John Rawls and the modern liberal megastate. This effort appears to indicate that at the centre of Wolin’s thought is the promotion of a levelling social ideal. In endeavouring to reformulate and redefine the issue of democracy, Wolin places at its centre the individual as a political actor.

However, I believe that crucial questions need to be posed: why is Wolin’s attempt to radicalize the political phenomenon not as radical as it could be? Despite his forceful criticism of modern political liberalism as a philosophy that tries to disconnect politics from the economy, Wolin’s argument is not entirely convincing. Even more importantly, why does he not relate the question of democracy to the pivotal issue of class struggle? Why does he not relate the issue of social inequalities to that of class interests? Finally, why is he opposed to revolution as a permanent solution to the continuing growth of modern capitalist patterns of economic development and production?

A possible answer might be found in his adherence to a classical/traditional and romantic form of liberalism that presupposes notions such as liberty, pluralism and individual political activism and his disregarding of the political economy, the means by which individuals could participate in the production of social wealth. Put differently, Wolin repeats the error of traditional political liberalism, in which reality is fragmented into different and independent levels that affect each other

only in an external and parallel manner. For Wolin, then, the economy can affect politics, but these aspects are not mediated to each other. Therefore, Wolin should be considered a liberal philosopher because, although he aims to improve democratic politics through his advocacy of fugitive democracy, he ignores the evolution or the possible transformation of the way in which we spend our time in order to satisfy the means of our existence. Since, in his analysis, democracy can evolve independently of the other levels of social reality, Wolin must be regarded as having failed to be truly radical and should be regarded as part of the liberal tradition rather than the radical/socialist tradition. He also fails to challenge the logic of private property, instead disconnecting democracy from its materialistic basis. In other words, Wolin is not concerned with the abolition of the wage system, a crucial issue for a radical democrat. In his rejection of Marxism (as he notes, ‘Marxism is apolitical’), Wolin fails to be truly radical, arguing that democracy can function outside the restricting limits imposed by the distribution of social wealth.

Finally, Wolin’s democratic programme fundamentally underestimates the relevance and importance of Marxist political theory in a period when capitalism is increasing in strength. I believe, therefore, that while Wolin’s democratic theory should be seen as a valuable intellectual contribution to the ongoing political debate, especially in the specific political context of the United States, his radicalism should not be exaggerated. Crucial issues for a radical democrat, such as the materialistic basis of democracy, are entirely absent from his analysis. It should be stressed here that, in criticizing his conclusions, my aim has not been to attack Wolin for not being Marxist and not following the socialist logic of the abolition of private property. Rather, I have used the Marxist methodology of dialectical materialism to reveal the chief inconsistencies in his thought. As a result, if it is accepted that the paramount issue of our time is how to improve our daily lives in a communal and cooperative way, I have serious doubts that fugitive democracy can help to accomplish this.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the supervisor of my PhD thesis, Yannis Plangesis, who first introduced me to the idea of writing on Sheldon Wolin’s democratic theory. Moreover, I would like to thank Vasilis Grollios for his valuable comments and support during the writing of the article. Finally, I owe thanks to the anonymous reviewers of Critical Sociology for their corrections and constructive comments.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

1. One of the few attempts to connect dialectics to Marx’s understanding of democracy is made by Grollios (2011). See also Grollios (forthcoming).

2. The best elaboration of reality as a dialectic relation between form and essence has been made by the tradition of Open Marxism. See the three-volume work, Open Marxism (Bonefeld et al., 1995) where the mediation between essence and form is analysed in great detail.

3. The question of time as ‘time-as-which’ is of pivotal importance in Open Marxism analysis. This specific question is best analysed in Holloway’s 29th thesis in Crack Capitalism, where the issue of time is directly connected with the organization of revolutionary practice in our daily life. See Holloway (2010b: 227–42, especially 236–42).

4. Further to this, see Holloway (2010a: 118–23) and all of Chapter 7 of Change the World without Taking Power.

5. Wolin’s contention that the people themselves are the pivotal element of democracy is repeated in many places in his political works. See also Wolin (1987: 467–500, especially page 470).

6. Wolin’s insistence on diversity, plurality and difference can lead directly to liberal and post-Marxist positions, both of which abandon the issue of the antagonism that is created by the capitalistic mode of production and the fulfilment of our basic needs in the context of the expansion of profit. The postMarxist tradition accentuates the issue of differences among men, differences that exist only if we take for granted a system that in reality fragments the cohesion of our social doing. For more on this issue see Bonnet (2009).

7. Ellen Meiksins Wood notes that capitalism perpetuates the rigid conceptual separation of the ‘economic’ and the ‘political’, which has served its ideology.

8. For a comparison of Wolin’s modified position see Wolin (1996a: 31–45) and Wolin (2008: 238–58).

References

Aronowitz S (2006) Left Turn: Forging a New Political Future. London: Paradigm.

Backhaus HG (2005) Some aspects of Marx’s concept of critique in the context of his economic-philosophical theory. In: Bonefeld W and Psychopedis K (eds) Human Dignity: Social Autonomy and the Critique of Capitalism. London: Ashgate, 13–30.

Bonefeld W (undated) Social Form, Critique and Human Dignity. Available (consulted 22 October 2011) at: http://libcom.org/library/social-form-critique-and-human-dignity

Bonefeld W and Psychopedis K (2005) Human dignity: social autonomy and the critique of capitalism. In: Bonefeld W and Psychopedis K (eds) Human Dignity: Social Autonomy and the Critique of Capitalism. London: Ashgate, 1–12.

Bonefeld W, Holloway J, Psychopedis K (eds) (1995). Open Marxism. London: Pluto.

Bonnet A (2009) Antagonism and difference: negative dialectics and post-structuralism. In: Holloway J, Matamoros F, Tischler S (eds) Negativity and Revolution: Adorno and Political Activism. London: Pluto, 41–78.

Grollios V (2011) Marx and Engels’ critique on democracy: the materialist character of their concept of autonomy. Critique 39(1): 9–26.

Grollios V (forthcoming) Democracy and commodity fetishism in Marx: a response to Antonio Callari and David Ruccio. Rethinking Marxism

Holloway J (1993) Open Marxism, history and class struggle. Common Sense (13): 76–86.

Holloway J (2005) No. Historical Materialism 13(4): 265–284.

Holloway J (2010a) Change the World without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today. London: Pluto.

Holloway J (2010b) Crack Capitalism. London: Pluto.

Kateb G (2001) Wolin as a critic of democracy. In: Botwinick A and Connolly WE (eds) Democracy and Vision: Sheldon Wolin and the Vicissitudes of the Political. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 39–57.

Marx K (1962) Kapital, vol. I. Berlin: Dietz.

Marx K (1966) Capital, vol. III. London: Lawrence & Wishart.

Marx K (1972) Theories of Surplus Value, vol. III. London: Lawrence & Wishart.

Marx K (1975a) Critical marginal notes on the article ‘The King of Prussia and social reform, by a Prussian’. In: Collected Works, vol. 3. Moscow: Progress, 189–206.

Marx K (1975b) Contribution to the critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law; introduction. In: Collected Works, vol. 3. London: Lawrence & Wishart.

Wolin S (1983) On reading Marx politically. In: Chapman JW and Pennock JR (eds) Marxism, Nomos XXVI. New York, NY and London: New York University Press, 79–108.

Wolin S (1987) Democracy and welfare state: the political and theoretical connection between Staatsräson and Wohlfahrtsstaatsräson. Political Theory 15(4): 467–500.

Wolin S (1989) Democracy without the citizen. In: Wolin S (ed.) The Presence of the Past: Essays on the State and the Constitution. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 180–191.

Wolin S (1992) What revolutionary action means today. In: Mouffe C (ed.) Dimensions of Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship, Community. London: Verso, 240–253.

Wolin S (1993) Democracy, difference and re-cognition. Political Theory 21(3): 464–483.

Wolin S (1996a) The liberal/democratic divide: on Rawls’ political liberalism. Political Theory 24(1): 97–142.

Wolin S (1996b) Fugitive democracy. In: Benhabib S (ed.) Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 31–45.

Wolin S (1996c) Transgression, equality, and voice. In: Ober J and Hedrick C (eds) Demokratia: A Conversation on Democracies, Ancient and Modern. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 63–90.

Wolin S (2001) Tocqueville between Two Worlds: The Making of a Political and Theoretical Life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Wolin S (2004) Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Wolin S (2008) Democracy Incorporated: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Wood EM (2000) Democracy against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Xenos N (2007) Reading Wolin (on Marx) politically. Theory & Event 10(1). Available (consulted 15 August 2010) at: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v010/10.1xenos.html