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Preface by
Podemos: In the Name of the People
In memory of Ernesto Laclau
Podemos: In the Name
of the People

igo Errejn and Chantal Mouffe

A Soundings Publication

Lawrence & Wishart, London 2016

A Soundings publication

Lawrence and Wishart Limited

99a Wallis Road
E9 5LN

igo Errejn Galvn and Chantal Mouffe 2016

Translated by Sirio Cans Donnay

Foreword Owen Jones

We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the Barry Amiel and

Norman Melburn Trust for funding this translation.

Sections six and seven were initially translated by Javier Gomez Arribas

First published in Spanish in 2015 by Icaria as Construir Pueblo.

The authors have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Design and
Patents Act, 1998 to be identified as the authors of this work.

study, research, criticism or review, no part of this publication may be
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of
the copyright owner.

ISBN 9781910448
E-ISBN 809

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Foreword Owen Jones 7

1 The project of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy 15

2 Spain and the transition to democracy 24
3 Rethinking the political 36
4 Gramsci 39
5 Hegemony and the war of position 42
6 Carl Schmitt, antagonism and agonism 54
7 Consensus at the centre and right-wing populism 64
8 The 15 May Movement and the emergence of
Podemos 70
9 Latin America and experiences of the national-
popular 80
10 Understanding populism and populist situations 93
11 Charismatic leadership and the nature of
representation 108
12 Ideas of right and left 117
13 Towards a left-wing populism? 123
14 The people/casta confrontation 130
15 Chains of equivalence and the construction of
a people 143

Afterword igo Errejn 153


Doreen Massey played a central role in this book. She first

suggested that we publish an extract from the Spanish orig-
inal in Soundings (it appears in Soundings 62, April 2016),
and then, as she was working on it, the idea emerged that we
should publish a complete English translation as a Soundings
publication. When Doreen and I bumped into Sirio Cans at
a social event, the book came up in conversation, and Sirio
agreed to take on the translation. Doreen, who was fluent in
Spanish, then gave us a great deal of detailed useful advice on
the text. In discussing this book with Doreen I experienced
all the usual pleasures of working with her her enthusiasm
and optimism, her intellectual sharpness, her willingness to
get bogged down in technical detail, her pleasure at the emer-
gence of an exciting new political force, and the intertwining
of politics and friendship that was so characteristic of her
here with one of her oldest friends, Chantal Mouffe, and one
of her newest, Sirio Cans.

Sally Davison April 2016


Owen Jones

Discontent sweeps the Western world. Across the European

continent and the United States, growing numbers are
rejecting the existing political order. But this revolt finds two
very different political expressions. On the one hand, there
has been the growth of progressive movements committed
to challenging the concentration of wealth and power in tiny
elites, and rejecting policies that expect the majority to pay for
the crises of the powerful. On the other, this mass discontent
has been funnelled into an altogether more sinister political
direction. These political phenomena, unsurprisingly, reflect
the political, cultural and historical contexts of each country.
In the United States, for example, the progressive revolt
finds its home in the Democratic Party, with a grouchy septua-
genarian Senator, Bernie Sanders, becoming the unlikely icon
of politicised young people. In Scotland, it was the countrys
independence movement: when 45 per cent voted to become a
separate country in 2014, and the Scottish National Party all
but replaced the Scottish Labour Party in the general election a
few months later, it wasnt blood-and-soil nationalism at play,
but a rejection of a manifestly unjust status quo. In England
and Wales with no tradition, unlike other European nations,
of a mass party to the left of social democracy the Labour
Party has proved the vehicle: in the partys 2015 leadership


race, the grassroots overwhelmingly rejected the candidates

of the party establishment in favour of Jeremy Corbyn, an
obscure backbencher who had spent much of his previous
political career resisting Tony Blairs New Labour. In Greece,
Syriza standing in the tradition of a Greek left forged in
the countrys civil war in the 1940s has proved the benefi-
ciary. And in Spain, of course, Podemos a party built on
the political space created by the indignados, the millions of
Spaniards who protested against the old political order from
2011 onwards is the product of mass political disaffection.
In contrast to all this, in the United States, businessman and
reality TV star Donald Trump has become the Republican
frontrunner with a platform of toxic demagoguery: banning
Muslims from entering the country, and building a wall to keep
out Mexican immigrants. His base consists, in part at least,
of struggling American workers whose living standards have
been squeezed. In Britain, the hard-right UK Independence
Party headed by charismatic former commodity broker
Nigel Farage has surged in support in large part because
of its opposition to immigration. Frances National Front
similarly blames Muslims and immigrants for the countrys
multiple ills while cynically appropriating the economic rhet-
oric of the left: and it has achieved record levels of support.
Across the Nordic world, far-right anti-immigrant parties like
the Swedish Democrats and the Danish Peoples Party surge.
In Greece a nation ruined by foreign-imposed austerity the
neo-Nazi Golden Dawn have become a political force.
This is the background to the conversation in this book,
which explores the political spaces opened up for the left in
this new situation.
In part, a crisis in traditional social democracy lies at the root
of this polarisation, leaving a vacuum that is being filled by


new movements of left and right. Social democracy relied on an

alliance of the industrial working class and progressive middle-
class people. But this base has fragmented: not least because
of a shift towards a more precarious service sector in which
communities are not built around workplaces. In the case of
Spain, as igo Errejn puts it, this involved the dismantlement
of the industrial sector and the adaption of our economy to a
peripheral role services, tourism in the European economy.
A form of globalisation which seemed to curtail the power of
national governments, preventing even modest social reform,
was another factor. Chantal Mouffe holds parties ostensibly
of the left responsible for the great surrender to neoliberal
hegemony, arguing that they accepted the idea that there was
no alternative to neoliberal globalisation. The collapse of the
Soviet Union and its satellite states was portrayed as the end of
history, invalidating any alternative not just to capitalism, but
even to the most aggressive, unrestrained form of capitalism.
Whats noteworthy is that social democracy, which youd think
would have gained credibility as a result of this situation, was
also discredited, notes Mouffe. And along with it was discred-
ited anything related to the fight for equality, assimilated to
the Soviet egalitarianism. Robbed of a traditional base, and
with the state (it was argued), deprived of any realistic social-
democratic functions, and the end of the Cold War unleashing
rampant free-market triumphalism, social democracy shifted
dramatically to the right, accepting the essential principles
of its supposed neoliberal opponents: privatisation, deregu-
lation, reduced taxation on the rich, and so on. As Chantal
Mouffe puts it, the best example of the power of the neolib-
eral hegemony established by Thatcher in Great Britain is the
evolution of the Labour Party.
These factors alone are surely sufficient to plunge social


democracy into crisis: but the social-democratic parties

acceptance (and even implementation) of austerity since the
collapse of Lehman Brothers has deepened the malaise of
social democracy. If a social democrat no longer even believes
in public investment, what is left?
The new movements of the left filling the vacuum face a
diverse range of challenges. Class structures and relation-
ships are far more complicated than they once were. The great
British marxist historian E.P. Thompson suggested that class
wasnt a static concept, but a process: it was about lived expe-
riences, not least about coming into conflict with another class
with different interests. But the old industrial era has passed:
where communities were once based around factories and
mines, they are not typically based around todays supermar-
kets and call centres. In that male-dominated era, sons might
expect to do the same jobs as their father: such generational
continuity is far less frequent today. It is now perfectly normal
to do two, three, four different jobs in the space of a year;
workers may find themselves trapped in a cycle of unemploy-
ment and precarious work. Part-time, temporary work and
zero-hour contracts have all proliferated, and the phenomenon
of self-employment is far more widespread. The workforce
has become more fragmented, weakening the organic bonds
of solidarity.
But as Mouffe points out, politics depends on the crea-
tion of an us and that necessarily entails the distinction
from a them. To me, the democratic task is not to build
a completely inclusive us an us without a them but to
construct the us/them relationship in a way that is compatible
with pluralistic democracy. New Labour claimed that it was
capable of surpassing such divisions, its champions describing
it as the political wing of the British people, and in doing


so failed to address the grotesque inequality that scars and

indeed defines British society. Yet any political project that
wishes to transform society must unite the majority of the
population, emphasising that they have common, shared inter-
ests that are on a collision course with the interests of ruling
elites. That means emphasising that whatever differences exist
among the majority are far smaller than the differences sepa-
rating them from those at the top of society. This is by no
means straightforward. Across Europe, large swathes of the
media, political elites and the populist right have attempted to
exploit divisions and tensions. Low-paid workers are encour-
aged to resent unemployed people; private sector workers are
encouraged to resent public sector workers; native workers
are encouraged to resent immigrants. A failure to transcend
these divisions will simply mean that growing frustrations and
resentment will be directed at any target but those with power.
The curtailing of democracy is another challenge. Politicians
of centre-left and centre-right stripes have abdicated the
responsibilities of elected governments to the market. They
preach or plead the limited role of government, reducing the
potential power of democracy. The most important decisions
are taken by unelected powers in a remote sphere that is far
removed from any potential control by citizens, notes Errejn.
Rather than politics being a service, with politicians existing
to represent the interests of their constituents, the political
world has increasingly become professionalised. Political
representatives resemble each other more and more, and their
constituents less and less, as Errejn puts it. In a country such
as Britain, the numbers of politicians who have exclusively or
predominantly worked in the political world increases with
each election. The bad behaviour of politicians ranging from
the revolving door to outright corruption often perversely


undermines the political aspirations of those who believe in

far-reaching social change: a widespread response is often to
reject politics as a vehicle of change altogether. Politicians treat
their ministerial positions as launch pads for lucrative careers
in the private sector, cementing a sense of solidarity between
the political elite and the corporate world.
One of the other great dilemmas of the left is patriotism.
This is an uncomfortable topic for some, who believe it
contradicts the lefts essentially internationalist mission and
regard it as a concession to the right, and to chauvinism or
even outright bigotry. But that is not the case with the demo-
cratic, progressive and popular patriotism that Errejn refers
to; and, as Mouffe says, I find it a real problem that the left
has a very negative attitude towards the very idea of patri-
otism, as if patriotism could only manifest itself in reactionary
ways. Those who oppose the status quo are often slighted by
its defenders for being unpatriotic, as somehow hostile to
their own country and its traditions. When Jeremy Corbyn
became leader of the Labour Party, the Conservatives instantly
labelled the opposition a threat to our national security, our
economic security, and your familys security. If the left allows
itself to be labelled as such, it is doomed. But Podemos in
Spain have been far more savvy, frequently employing the
word patriotic. The left should surely argue that there is
nothing more patriotic than seeking to rid a country of injus-
tice; of defending the rights and freedoms that our ancestors
fought for; or of securing for working people a fair share of
the wealth they are creating.
These are disconcerting and uncertain times. The frus-
trations and insecurities now endemic in European and US
society show no signs of dissipating: whether or not there is
another economic crisis, they will surely grow. If the left fail to


develop an inspiring alternative, a vacuum will be left, and it

will be the Donald Trumps, Marine Le Pens and Nigel Farages
of the world who will fill it.
Political movements cannot be transplanted into different
cultural and political contexts. But Podemos are one of the
most intriguing political developments in Western Europe for
a long time. Any party that wins the support of millions of
people less than two years after being founded is worth stud-
ying. In the run-up to Spains general election in December
2015, I travelled across the country and witnessed rallies
of inspired, enthused supporters, brimming with optimism,
determined to transform their country. Having grown up in
an era of suffocating capitalist triumphalism, it was beyond
heartening to see. There are no easy answers for those of us
desperate for an alternative to the failed model that currently
prevails in the Western world. But Podemos offers clues, and
a compelling book such as this is an invaluable resource for
those of us determined to build a different society.

1 The project of Hegemony and Socialist

igo Errejn: Its been almost thirty years since, in 1985, you
and Ernesto Laclau wrote Hegemony and Socialist Strategy.
In it you undertake a critical revision of the way of under-
standing the logic of politics in Marxism and it is a rich
and original reading of Antonio Gramscis thought. This book
has already become, I think youll agree with me, a founda-
tional text for a school and a theoretical perspective that of
the theory of hegemony whose analytical fertility makes its
current revisiting pertinent. What were the political and intel-
lectual objectives behind its writing? What was your goal?
Why did you write it and what did you seek to achieve with it?

Chantal Mouffe: Hegemony and Socialist Strategy is a book

which is both theoretical and political. The driving force
behind it was a political question, at a time when both the
social-democratic left and traditional marxism seemed
incapable of understanding the specificity of the new move-
ments that had developed since 1968, such as feminism, the
environmental movement, anti-racist struggles, and against
discrimination on the grounds of sexuality. I was personally
involved at the time in the feminist movement in London. I
lived through the moment when we were trying to establish
connections with the left. The most open would say yes,


these struggles are very important but not a priority. First

we have to establish socialism. The fight against womens
subordination will come later. The least open would say
these are petty bourgeois demands that move us away from
the fundamental struggle. Therefore, in order to defend what
we were proposing as a socialist project, it was important
that such a project was defined in a way that could articulate
those new struggles.
So, the question was: why was there a disconnect between
those new movements and the traditional left? And in
discussing that lack of understanding, we realised that the
problem was of a theoretical nature: these new fights could
not be interpreted in terms of class. This meant that neither
marxists nor social democrats could understand them for
although the latter didnt think in terms of class in the marxist
way, they still thought in terms of workers interests. Thus,
despite the different theorisation, both currents understood
socialism in terms of working-class demands.
What was the obstacle that prevented these groups from
understanding the new struggles? In the case of social democ-
racy, it was because they hadnt sufficiently developed these
themes; as for marxism, this lack of understanding resulted
from their essentialist conception of political identities, which
saw them as preceding their discursive articulation. There
are many forms of essentialism, and in the case of marxism
it was a class essentialism, which saw political identities as
dependent on the social agents position in the relations of
production, which determined their consciousness.

E: Georg Lukcs tries to solve this question with the concepts

of class in itself and class for itself, by which he distin-
guishes between belonging and identification, but it is a very


unsatisfactory solution, and doesnt quite escape the issue of

false consciousness.

CM: Yes, we must acknowledge that there have been attempts

inside Marxism to deal with this issue, but they havent been
successful. We believed it was necessary to go beyond that
critique. Obviously, we had the advantage over Lukcs of living
in a time in which post-structuralism was already developing. It
was the time when the work of authors like Foucault, Lacan and
Derrida was important. We realised there were theoretical tools
in that kind of discourse that allowed us to question essentialism,
and to produce a notion of the social as a discursive space, the
product of contingent political articulations that werent at all
necessary, and could have always been something else.
An important part of the critique of essentialism in political
theory has been a questioning of the idea of the subject as a
transparent and rational identity, which, being the source of
its own actions, can impose a homogeneous meaning across all
of its behavioural spectrum. Psychoanalysis, for instance, has
demonstrated that, far from being organised around the trans-
parency of an ego, personality is structured at a variety of levels
that exist outside the agents consciousness and rationality. The
subjects self-control, a central topic in modern philosophy, is
precisely what, according to Freud, can never be achieved. It is
from this perspective that our critique of marxist essentialism

E: I find it interesting that you approach this topic from tradi-

tion, reviewing all the political thinkers from marxism. It seems
to me that there is in the book an uneasiness with the deter-
minist approach that sees politics as a reflection or derivative of
social or economic phenomena. You point towards the identifi-


cation of a particular logic of politics as a meaning-construction

activity; and you do so by tracing some of the most fertile ideas
within the Marxist tradition, but almost always at their limits,
or from, lets say, heterodox or even heretical positions.

CM: Yes, and we also saw how several marxists, for example
Rosa Luxemburg, had already attempted to escape that ortho-
doxy, but had not succeeded.

E: And for those who did succeed, it was by being heretical.

Because the best experiences, both theoretical and practical,
always ignore the rule books. And such experiences have
to be explained in historical terms, because in the end the
subject which has achieved a political change, or is in a posi-
tion to achieve it, is a mixed or amorphous subject that is,
amorphous in terms of class categories. The most productive
actions take place at the frontiers, or at the limit: the great
revolutions happen where the manuals say it is impossible;
and the subjects that lead them are always heterogeneous
and diverse blocks articulated around a set of ideas and iden-
tifications with an important national or local content.
Lets think about the popular blocs of decolonisation in
China, in Russia itself, or in the heterogeneous societies that
have a significant indigenous presence in Latin America, even
in Gramscis obsession with the so-called southern ques-
tion. There is always the need to build a unity that is not
given, either in the economy or in society. Its not question of
unveiling something already there, but of articulating differ-
ences and forging a collective will.

CM: I agree with you. Post-structuralism gave us a theoret-

ical approach for questioning the basis of essentialism: the


specificity of our position was to unite post-structuralism

and Gramsci. There were many other groups in the political
field who used post-structuralism: in the feminist field, for
instance, there was M/F journal, with which I collaborated,
and which was greatly influenced by the work of Foucault.
From such spaces people asserted the importance of feminist
and anti-racist struggles. We agreed with them, but also raised
something nobody else did: the importance of the concept
of hegemony in Gramsci. That led us to assert that it wasnt
enough to recognise the existence of a diverse range of strug-
gles, we also had to establish a form of articulation between all
those battles. It was an innovative proposal because at the time
post-structuralism was very influential, but Gramsci wasnt.
The difference with other approaches, such as those influenced
by Foucault, was that we argued that to act politically it was
necessary to articulate those different struggles with that of
the working class, in order to create a collective will. That is
Hegemony and Socialist Strategys theoretical specificity: to
have brought together Gramsci and post-structuralism.
At the theoretical level, the main categories of our approach
are the concepts of antagonism and hegemony, which to us
are the two necessary concepts for developing a theory of the
political. The concept of antagonism is absolutely central, as
it states that negativity is constitutive and can never be over-
come; and the idea of antagonism also reveals the existence
of conflicts for which there is no rational solution. While
the concept of hegemony is also key, because to think of the
political as an ever-present possibility of antagonism requires
acceptance that there is no ultimate foundation, as well as
a recognition of the dimension of UNDECIDABILITY and
contingency that permeates all order; it requires an acceptance
of the hegemonic nature of every social order, and of the fact


that all societies are the product of a series of practices aimed

at establishing an order in a context of contingency. These are
the practices we call hegemonic. All order is the temporary
and precarious articulation of contingent practices. Things
could have always have been otherwise, and all order is based
on the exclusion of other possibilities; it is always the expres-
sion of a particular configuration of power relations. What at
a given time is considered as the natural order, together with
the common sense that accompanies it, is always the result
of sedimented hegemonic practices; it is never the manifesta-
tion of a deeper objectivity external to the practices that make
its existence possible. Thats why we state that all hegemonic
orders can be transformed by counter-hegemonic practices
aimed at establishing a different form of hegemony.
At a political level, this analysis led us to a critique of the
Jacobin revolutionary model of politics, i.e. a critique of the
idea of revolution as a moment of total rupture. We must
remember that this was the time when Eurocommunism was
influenced by Gramscis notion that we couldnt think of
revolution in the West in the same way it was thought of in
the East. That idea was also very important to us, and thats
why we suggested visualising the struggle for hegemony in
terms of a war of position.
Our main standpoint was that we had to reformulate the
socialist project in terms of a radicalisation of democracy.
That enabled us to break simultaneously both with the Jacobin
tradition and with economic determinism; because you cannot
speak about the radicalisation of democracy without recog-
nising that there are different forms of subordination that
struggles cannot be viewed simply as the expression of capi-
talist exploitation. This is the thesis that is at the core of our


political approach in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy and it

caused a wide debate in the marxist left.

E: And now, three decades later, after so much has happened in

the political and intellectual terrain, when we look at that work
and the approach it founded, what evolution do you think it
has had, and what are the challenges or difficulties it presents?
because it was a book written to face certain political and
theoretical challenges, and today we face challenges of a very
different nature. How has that work aged and what revision
would you undertake today of the challenges of its approach?

CM: Well, I wouldnt talk about a need for revision. I think

the perspective is still valid. It may seem a bit presumptuous,
but I believe that events over these thirty years have demon-
strated that we were right in stating the need to conceptualise
emancipatory politics in a different way. When we published
the book we were viciously attacked by all traditional marx-
ists. Its interesting to note that, thirty years later, many
of them are no longer marxists, and some have abandoned
the fight altogether. There are very few traditional marx-
ists left and those that remain play a marginal role. But the
critique of essentialism is still entirely relevant for appre-
hending the nature of the new struggles that have emerged
with the transformations of capitalism and the application
of the post-Fordist model. In fact, we could say that the
hegemonic perspective is fundamental for understanding
what has happened over these thirty years, which have
witnessed the decline of social-democratic hegemony and
the rise of neoliberal hegemony. When we wrote the book,
we were still under a social-democratic hegemony. We were
critical of the limits of the welfare state, and of a number of


its institutions, but that did not prevent us from recognising

the advances it had brought. We argued it is was necessary
to go further, to radicalise those advances, and to extend
them to a growing number of social relations.
Thirty years later, as the result of neoliberal hegemony,
social democracy has now turned into what Stuart Hall called
a social-democratic variant of neoliberalism. In a way, we
could say that social democracy has self-destructed. Clearly
thats whats happened with the Third Way model theorised by
Anthony Giddens and put into practice by Tony Blair and New
Labour. The prevailing idea became that, with the collapse of the
Soviet model, antagonisms had disappeared and there was no
alternative to capitalism. Giddens in the UK and Ulrich Beck in
Germany defended the thesis that the phase of first modernity
and its model of adversarial politics was over; we had entered a
second modernity characterised by the disappearance of collec-
tive identities and the triumph of individualism. As Tony Blair
said, we are all middle class now. According to them, we had
to rethink progressive politics in terms of a radical centre.
In those thirty years, two things happened that are key to
understanding the current situation: at a political level, there
was the development of a vision which Ive called post-poli-
tics, according to which there are no longer antagonisms, so
that the adversarial model of politics had thus become obso-
lete; and, at an economic level, there was the development of
a new type of financial capitalism, which created new forms
of subordination.

E: And it has also further dislocated and fragmented the

social ground, making it even more difficult to think that
the political can ever be the faithful expression of something
that is already socially constructed.


CM: Yes, we already thought that theorisation in terms of

social class, in the marxist way, was inadequate, because
social classes are constructed social subjects. But in a way, at
the time we could still imagine there were social groups which
identified in terms of social classes. Since then, with the trans-
formation of capitalism, things have considerably changed.
I would also like to point out that there were many misun-
derstandings regarding the political project of Hegemony
and Socialist Strategy. For instance, a number of people
thought that the project of radical and plural democracy that
we defended meant a radical break with pluralist democ-
racy. Somehow those people still thought from a Jacobin
perspective. I clarified this question in a later book called
Dimensions of Radical Democracy, where I specified that
radical democracy, as we understood it, did not entail a total
rupture with pluralist democracy, that it was a radicalisa-
tion of the principles of freedom and equality which had
already been developed albeit in a limited and insufficient
way by social democracy.
Another point Id like to insist on is that I consider left-wing
political parties largely responsible for the great surrender to
neoliberal hegemony. They accepted the idea that there was
no alternative to neoliberal globalisation, that all they could
do when they got to power was to manage more humanely
the order created by neoliberalism with a bit more redistri-
bution, for instance. But the hegemony established through
neoliberalism was not to be questioned. In fact, the current
situation is far worse than it was when we wrote the book,
because in 1985 there was still a fundamentally social-demo-
cratic common sense that took social rights and the value of
equality for granted. With the victory of neoliberal hegemony,
that social-democratic common sense has been destroyed, new


forms of identity have been created, and people no longer have

the same values: there is a new individualism and widespread
consumerism. Furthermore, the privatisation policies carried
out by both centre-right and centre-left governments have
meant that most of the welfare state institutions have been
dismantled. Thus, ironically, nowadays we have to defend the
social-democratic institutions we previously criticised for not
being radical enough. We could have never imagined that the
working-class victories of social democracy and the welfare
state could be rolled back. In 1985 we said we need to radi-
calise democracy; now we first need to restore democracy, so
we can then radicalise it; the task is far more difficult. There
has been a clear regression. But Im thinking fundamentally
from England and France, the countries in which I lived. How
has that evolution taken place in Spain?

2 Spain and the transition to democracy

E: In Spain were currently living through an intense polit-

ical moment, in which the balances that for over thirty years
have ordered a very stable political map are breaking down;
they are crumbling as the result of the intersection of a
number of different phenomena.
Firstly, I think we should speak of an oligarchic offensive
in Spain. That is to say, the thirty-year-old social settle-
ment is being attacked even broken and violated not
through the rise of popular and democratic forces, making
greater demands, but through an offensive from privileged
groups, who have been concentrating wealth and power
to a greater extent than in the preceding decades, and are


therefore disrupting a situation of certainty and settled

expectations. It is the elites who have liberated themselves
from the existing mechanisms of control, citizen trust, and
compromise between groups. They have led a de-constit-
uent drift from the 1978 settlement, which has seen ever
more power, income and influence concentrated at the top
of the pyramid.1
This has coincided with the financial crisis of Spains
precarious productive and social protection system, which
has severely hit working-class people, as well as destroying
middle-class hopes of social mobility, thus eroding middle-class
attachment to their subordinated role within the oligarchy. At
the same time, the gap between representatives and the repre-
sented has grown wider, leading to what political scientists call
disaffection which at a more popular level can be under-
stood as divorce. This is because political confrontation
has been replaced by electoral competition between political
machines that operate within the same frame of consensus
which is itself agreed outside the reach of popular sovereignty.
But it is also because of the role of corruption as a generalised
mechanism connecting the party system with the state and
show-business structure in Spain, ensuring the rule of those
who do not run for election through a series of networks
which have hijacked the institutions. Because of this double
phenomenon of ideological rapprochement and corruption,
groups within the elite are perceived as cousins, above any
of their supposed ideological differences which are rarely
displayed other than in campaign times.

1 1978 was the date of the new Spanish Constitution, and widely
regarded as a key milestone in the transition from Francoism to liberal
democracy, following on from the Moncloa Pacts signed in 1977.


CM: I would first like to know more about how democracy

was established in Spain, and the conditions in which it was
established. For instance, can we talk about a social-demo-
cratic moment in Spain?

E: It was weak, timid. I believe it came into existence

during the Transition in the Moncloa Pacts, and later in the
Constitutional Pact of 1978, which was the result of a specific
correlation of powers. Vzquez Montalbn described it as a
correlation of weaknesses marked on the one hand by the
inability of the Francoist oligarchy to continue as usual, and
the need to undertake substantive reforms; but on the other
hand also marked by the inability of the democratic forces
to precipitate a rupture with the previous regime.2 This inca-
pacity on both sides produced a sort of catastrophic tie,
as Garca Linera called it:3 the leadership of the transition
process from dictatorship to parliamentary monarchy was
largely comprised of the elites themselves or, rather, it was
drawn from the reformist part of the dictatorships elites, but
with very important participation by the main unions and
political organisations of the democratic opposition: unions
and left-wing organisations like the Communist Party and the
Socialist Party.
This can be understood as a manoeuvre that Gramsci
describes in terms of passive revolution and transformism.
This refers to a situation when a previously dominant
group, no longer capable of continuing with its normal

2 Montalbn was a well-known Spanish writer, a political prisoner

during the dictatorship, and a member of the Catalan Communist Party
3 Garca Linera is a Bolivian politician, vice-president of Bolivia since


handling of things, has to incorporate a large part of the

oppositions demands in order to regroup and continue its
rule in Spain essentially those of the workers, students
and neighbourhood movements, which had enough strength
to prevent continuity but not enough to precipitate change
and a new popular leadership. Change thus came from
adjustments in the ruling groups way of ruling, rather than
from a new ruling group taking power. In making this move
they deprived the opposition both of initiative and of its
best leaders and intellectuals, thus safeguarding those of the
old leading groups. This was not a matter of deception or
treason, but a manoeuvre of extended hegemony restoration
one that oxygenated pluralism and incorporated other
social groups to the power bloc, though in a subordinate
way. In this way it modified existing institutional and social
conditions incorporating new forms of mediation and
new counterbalances, and introducing popular guarantees
into the legal order and forged a narrative and an intel-
ligentsia that solidified the new order. In Spain, this was the
hegemony of the Transition.
This situation inaugurated a social and political settlement
that has been in place for the last thirty years, under which
the popular sectors have access to important benefits, but in
a subaltern role within the state. Thus, we reached our own
version of the welfare state, a Spanish version, late and weak
or a Mediterranean version, in terms of the analysis of Esping-
Andersen. In our case, the welfare state is not dependent on
the states capacity for tax collection: its redistribution mecha-
nism is largely based on European funds.
Clearly, this produced a mechanism for the incorporation
of the elites of the popular sectors, left-wing unions and intel-
lectual organisations into the new liberal democratic order. Id


say, however, that in no sense should this be seen as a deceitful

manoeuvre, it was compromise between elites a compromise
that left a large part of the previous regimes oligarchic powers
untouched, but which also consolidated important advances
in the rights of popular sectors. It must be said that this settle-
ment took place after the greatest surge in mobilisation and
struggle of Spanish history.
1976 saw the greatest number of strikes and neighbour-
hood and student mobilisations, as well as an increased
capacity for mobilisation and great popular pressure. This
mobilisation was strong enough to prevent the dictatorship
from continuing without modifications, and to open another
political cycle, but not strong enough to lead it and produce
a democratic rupture. The 1978 political regime results from
this equilibrium and its institutionalisation.

CM: I can see that these developments are very different from
those in the UK or France. What is the moment in which
neoliberal hegemony becomes established in Spain? In the UK
its very clear, with Thatcher as it is in France, with the
change in political direction of the Mitterrand government
from 1983. What was that moment in Spain?

E: Id say it was the Socialist Party, the PSOE, who to a large

extent oversaw the neoliberal shift. This was closely related
to Spanish integration into the European Union, and the
demands made by the EU at that time. This was the time, for
example, when the industrial sector was dismantled and our
economy began to adapt itself to a peripheral role services,
tourism in the European economy; there was a dismantle-
ment of a considerable part of its productive capacity both in
public enterprises and the private sector.


In cultural terms, I think two things happened in the 1980s:

on the one hand, there was the appearance of the notion,
defended by leaders of the Socialist Party, that its OK to get
rich a shift to the idea of individual social mobility, and the
erosion of traditional collective identities, mainly class iden-
tity. On the other hand, there was a rise in cultural cynicism,
a sort of individual cynicism: what was truly modern was for
each individual to mind their own business.

CM: Well, yes, in that sense there is a correspondence with

France and the UK

E: Yes, but in Spain it happened a few years later. And that

was a time of profound disaggregation, linked to a disenchant-
ment on the part of a large section of the progressive sector
with the ongoing transformations and with the leadership of
the Socialist Party a very unproductive political disenchant-
ment. Probably the last important political battle in which
you could see the extent of that disenchantment was in 1986,
with the referendum on Spanish membership of NATO, which
Felipe Gonzlez won, the Yes campaign won.4 Gonzlez was
first against joining, but then went on to champion the Yes
campaign. That was probably the last moment, the last gasp, of
a decade-long period of conflict and political disenchantment
in the 1990s that was almost entirely unproductive. The final
breakup between the PSOE and the unions took place during
the 1988 general strike, and this marked the beginning of the
PSOEs loss of hegemony among the working classes, though
it was not expressed electorally until 1993. During this period

4 Felipe Gonzlez was President of Spain from 1982 to 1996, and

General Secretary of PSOE from 1974 to 1997.


the reduction in expectations of social mobility, through work

for instance, was offset by the logic of easy money, or work in
the construction industry and the finance sector; and by the
logic of personal enrichment and a get-rich-quick mentality ,
according to which, yes, your father may have been a worker,
but you, in the late 1990s, even without any skill or profes-
sion, or any sense of community, have access to much more
credit for consumption, and a belief in the possibility of limit-
less social mobility and flexibility.
In the meantime, the countrys productive structures and
the states fiscal and economic capacities kept getting weaker.
This pattern of individual mobility and personal enrich-
ment became generalised, as the bubble grew, and it was also
symbolic, proclaiming we had finally reached Europe and
become a rich country.

CM: In a way, it seems to me that the Spanish case is closer

to the French case than to the British one, as you didnt have
a Thatcher.

E: But here, the tasks of economic modernisation, though

first initiated by late Francoism and the disarticulation of
the historical workers movement, were led by the Socialist
Party, together with that very same workers movement. This
is the process of transformation I was referring to before
the deindustrialisation, the disarticulation of low-income
communities, the processes of institutionalisation, patterns of
individual social mobility and the consensus culture. What
is paradoxical is that, through this operation, the centre-left
managed to undermine its own social and cultural bases,
giving them away to the paradigm of its former adversary
which is now increasingly less so.


CM: Well, something similar happened in France, for, even

though in the first two years of Mitterrands socialist govern-
ment there was an attempt to radicalise social democracy,
they ended up accepting neoliberalism.

E: It is also similar to the case of the Chilean Socialist Party

(PSCH). Sara Motta, in her article on the partys role in
constructing consent and disarticulating dissent to neolib-
eral hegemony in Chile, talks about the CSP as the real force
behind Chiles integration into neoliberalism. Moreover, our
transition was quite similar to the Chilean transition it was
supervised by a section of the dictatorships power apparatus.
I think the current situation results from the fact that the
economic crisis, the 2008 financial crisis, hit a society in which
political identifications were already very weak. People kept
voting, but the sense of belonging to traditional parties had
already eroded. Even when they maintained high voting rates,
votes no longer necessarily corresponded to identification and
loyalty: people voted, but they no longer were. Simultaneously,
there has also been a collapse of generational expectations. I
think that has played a key role for a whole generation who
had been told they were the generation that had everything,
the most prepared generation in history, a generation facing
much better conditions than its forebears. That had also justi-
fied the many sacrifices made by previous generations, with
arguments like Im giving things up now but Im leaving them
as legacy for the next generation. In reality, all that collapsed,
and as a result my generation now finds itself the first in three
that is going to be worse off than its parents.

CM: Going back to the previous discussion, I would like to

know if something similar happened here to what happened


in other parts of Europe after the collapse of communism.

If you think in terms of left-wing politics, the key events
between the publication of Hegemony in 1985 and today
have been the fall of the Berlin wall, the fall of the Soviet
Union, and the crisis of the Communist model. All of these
contributed to the expiry of the model they represented.
What is noteworthy about this is that social democracy,
which youd think would have gained credibility as a result
of this situation, was also discredited. And along with that,
anything related to the fight for equality was discredited it
was assimilated to Soviet egalitarianism. Theres no doubt
that the abandonment of the total rupture revolutionary
model was a positive thing, as it was totally unsuitable
for Europe; and it was necessary for the left to recognise
the importance of pluralist democracy. But the problem is
that many on the left then went completely to the opposite
extreme, and accepted a model of politics which is essentially
the liberal model. Any notion of antagonism was abandoned,
to be replaced by a conception of politics as taking place on a
neutral terrain: competitors fight to occupy positions within
the state, but once they succeed there is no intention of trans-
forming power relations. Any notion of the social order as
hegemonically constructed, as a configuration of power rela-
tions, was thus entirely eliminated.
Today there is an urgent need to rethink political struggles.
Because the models we currently have dont work. When we
think about what models there are on the left, we have either
the social-liberalism of the centre-left parties, which essen-
tially follow the liberal model, or a wide range of extreme left
groups that have no strategy for winning power. Thats why
the question of hegemony is so important, because it allows us
to think about an alternative to those models.


E: I think what youre saying is very true. There was a point

in which the reform-revolution opposition collapsed, as it only
worked as an opposition of ideal types. If one model collapses,
so does the other. And thus we have two categories which
are not helpful for thinking, because the reformists dont
reform, and the revolutionaries talk but never do revolutions.
So its an opposition that doesnt explain real phenomena. It
would seem that the collapse of one of the poles of this oppo-
sition also entails the collapse of any possibility of thinking
about the construction of collective interests. Thats what you
mentioned before in relation to the new challenges raised by
At the time, it was written to question those who thought
political positions were derived from social positions, and
you argued that this wasnt something that could be read
off directly, that politics was the construction of the public
interest, and therefore a cultural battle. Today, thirty years
later, the zeitgeist, or spirit of the age, has shifted so much that
the book can be used, from the opposite angle, to defend the
idea that there has to be a public interest, despite all the disper-
sion and fragmentation or maybe precisely because of them.
While its obvious that the universal doesnt pre-exist politics,
if living in a society entails the definition of shared problems,
adversaries, and goals, it is necessary to propound universality
in order to have a horizon of progress. Thirty years ago, the
argument was against essentialism and determinism; today its
against weak postmodernism.
To wind up this part of the discussion in Spain many
jokes have been made about the famous end of history, and
I believe that, although it is now discredited as a theory, this
doesnt mean it hasnt left a mark in the common sense of
the age, according to which we live in a period where we


can no longer expect great upheavals: it is a time for the

mere management of technicalities, and, as you said, elec-
toral competition.

CM: And no alternative

E: Sure, within a very closed framework. In other words, there

is electoral competition within that framework, but when
it comes to the key issues, these are decided in advance, in
forums beyond the reach of popular sovereignty; and precisely
inasmuch as they are presented as technical, they cannot be
argued with by ordinary people. For us, this end of history
was the story of the transition to democracy which is also
very generationally loaded.
Some people today get very nervous at the slightest mention
of the fact that we live in a regime that was born in 1978
with specific contours (democratic-liberal), but born, like any
other regime, from pressures, relinquishments and exclusions.
And notice Im not talking here about any proposed historio-
graphical revision, just about the possibility of brushing away
some of the cobwebs of praise for the impeccable democratic
lesson of the Spanish people as the official narrative goes in
order to ask questions about its current performance, its diffi-
culties, the blockages that prevent it from responding to some
of the needs and aspirations of todays Spain. I think there is a
very strong generational identification here, that not only has
become official history but has also attempted to close down
political development, and the possibility of innovation and
forward thinking.
Their story would go: We made history and that was the
time of great epics. Now thats already been done. Go back
home. Study a lot, get rich, and have fun on the weekends.


The time of collective feats is over. We did the best we could.

Weve already been heroes, we ran in front of Francos police.
The time of collective hopes is over. And yet, no society can
stay healthy without communal goals and hopes.

CM: To me democracy requires the existence of projects you

can identify yourself with, and the conviction that there are
alternatives worth fighting for.

E: Today I think this generational political imagination,

its actors, and its corresponding distribution of positions,
are in crisis in Spain. But they are not in crisis because
people have undertaken a critical revision of what happened
I dont think many people would be interested in such
critique, and is not very productive in political terms either.
(Quite possibly we will at some point have to start a histo-
riographical discussion, but I dont think revised forms of
nostalgia lets say, moving away from the melancholy of
the loser is ever productive.) They are in crisis because their
myths, actors and institutions are not sufficiently capable of
responding to the demands of a large part of the dissatisfied
sectors of Spanish society not because they were not useful
in their time, but because they cannot now incorporate this
discontent and provide institutional answers. To the extent
that this discontent has been building up outside the most
important and representative institutions, it has also been
building up outside existing political identities, and outside
the narrative channels that existed to integrate it, or to order
it. A large cache of unattached and fragmented discontent
gradually built up.


3. Rethinking the political

CM: Thats a question which we must discuss, as Im convinced

that it is only in that context that we can we understand the
growing success of right-wing populism. But before getting
to that, I think its worth emphasising the fact that we agree
that if we dont want to accept either social-liberalism or the
Jacobin model, we must rethink the political.

E: Or the other way round: without rethinking it there is

no alternative, because youre caught between cynicism and
nostalgia for the centrality of the lost class yesterday the
working class, today the multitude searching for a social
subject which is both pure and represents the possibility of
transformation. Between those two cliffs of determinism and
cynicism, the possibility of thinking a counter-hegemonic
construction dies. Either this possibility is killed off by a reli-
gious approach to politics, based on dividing the pure from
the traitors, while reciting revolutionary psalms; or subaltern
groups are condemned to impotence and dispersion because
they are conceptualised as a solitary individuals, without any
reference points celebrated as freedom.

CM: In Hegemony, we discussed that new form of politics,

and thats why I think the book is still relevant, even when
taking into account how much the situation has changed,
and that we are not facing the same context or the same
challenge. But the central tenet we defended in Hegemony,
that antagonism and hegemony are the two key concepts for
an understanding of the political, is still valid. Against the


current tendency to favour consensus, we must recognise

that society is divided.

E: Which is also a guarantee of freedom.

CM: Yes, you could say that. Thats what Machiavelli said.

E: That society is never completely closed is a guarantee that

everything can be questioned.

CM: Thats true, because the notion that we could reach a

rational agreement in politics is potentially totalitarian,
because it would mean that such an agreement could not be

E: Exactly that history would end. Also, the idea of antago-

nism is the basis of an idea that you have developed, of a strong
conception of democracy. Democracy is not about everybody
agreeing, but about building the procedures and mechanisms
which allow for a never-ending dispute over the broadest
possible range of topics. A never-ending dispute for establishing
the distribution of collective assets and positions. Im saying
this now because yesterday, partly joking, we talked about the
idea that in Spain weve reached a point at which democracy,
consensus and Constitution appear to be synonymous. When
in actuality, democracy is the possibility of choosing between
different options, and is strengthened, not weakened, by conflict.

CM: In relation to the question what is the political? there

are two fundamental conceptions: one which could be called
the associative approach, according to which the political
is a space of freedom and public deliberation where we act


jointly; while the other is the dissociative approach, in which

the political is a space of power, conflict and antagonism.
Depending on whether the departure point is an associative
or a dissociative approach, problems will be addressed differ-
ently. I, evidently, subscribe to the dissociative approach. Its
precisely to highlight this that I distinguish between the polit-
ical referring to the dimension of antagonism, inherent to
human societies and politics or the ensemble of practices
and institutions that attempt to establish an order, to organise
human coexistence in the context of the conflicts generated
by the political. What that distinction highlights is, firstly,
that the political cannot be reduced to a given place in society,
and is not limited to specific institutions, but is, rather, itself
a constitutive dimension of social order. And, secondly, that
such order is the result of power relations and always contin-
gent, given that it is riddled with antagonisms.

E: The position, typically liberal, that wants to see politics

as rational association and maximisation of individual gains,
has had to repeatedly face the resurgence of things it thought
it could write off as has been the case with nationalisms, or
ethnic identities, for instance, in the face of each capricious
revival of the communal. Thinking that differences, disputes
and conflicts could be eradicated, it built theories and institu-
tions that closed off channels for the expression of conflict;
but these, being ineradicable, have often then appeared
outside of, and against, the constituted powers. Whats more,
from an ethical point of view, only the pain that is named
can be confronted and solved. The privileged tend to label as
disorder anything that questions their privileges.
In fact, even in emancipatory thought, the most productive
ideas have lived in tension with this idea of politics as its own


logic and have recognised this more or less explicitly at

the boundaries or limits of the manuals. Thats why Im inter-
ested in post marxism, which isnt an anti, but a theoretical
perspective located inside an emancipatory matrix but not
bounded in its thinking.

CM: Yes, thats very important to us.

E: Its very important to reclaim that heretical tradition,

because all those who have been important in building power
for the impoverished or for mistreated majorities have done
so by breaking with dogma. Not for the sake of iconoclastic
posturing, but because the task is always to build a people,
a general will, from the pain of the subaltern groups, who
dont necessarily have a common essence sometimes its
just a question of common opposition to the status quo and
the dominators and the hope in a better future. It is never a
matter of expressing or revealing, its always one of weaving,
conversing, articulating, calling. We must remember that
the experience of the Russian revolution, for instance, was
an experience that challenged all the manuals. So are those
of Cuba, Vietnam, and China, to cite some of this schools

4. Gramsci

CM: Remember Gramsci talked about The Revolution against

Capital, seeing in the Russian revolution an act of innova-
tion and daring against the canons, including those of his own
school of thought. In relation to Gramsci, I have to admit that


the use we make of his ideas in Hegemony is slightly heter-

odox. For instance, we retrieve his idea of war of position,
about the struggle inside the institutions, which Gramsci saw
as the preparation for the war of manoeuvre, the time of
revolutionary rupture. But we left the war of manoeuvre one
out. Not in the sense that there wont be any kind of rupture,
but because the counter-hegemonic struggle is a process
involving a multiplicity of ruptures, to disarticulate the many
nodal points around which the existing hegemony is struc-
tured. Another example: Gramsci says that the central core of
a hegemony must always be a fundamental class, and thats
something else we dropped. Honestly, I dont think that in
doing so we were unfaithful to Gramsci. In fact Im convinced
that if Gramsci had lived in our times, he would have reached
a similar conception to ours.

E: He would have. Its impossible to prove, but Ive also

thought that many times.

CM: Because Gramsci paid a lot of attention to the plurality

of currents of thought.

E: His own discussion with Benedetto Croce shows the extent

to which he was hungry for traditions from other places.

CM: Yes, and his interest in pragmatism and William James, for
instance, shows he was an extremely open person. He thought
from a specific context, but I think we have developed Gramscis
thought rather than betrayed it, as some people claim.
Theres something which is both fundamental and very
heterodox in his approach: he says that the subjects are
collective wills, rather than social classes. Thats because he


is thinking from the Italian context: theres the workers in the

north, but also the popular classes and the peasants in the
south, and he is aware that a socialist project has to be the
articulation of a collective will for these different groups. He
talks about the need to think in terms of historical blocs, and
that I think is very important to us.
In politics there is a dimension of antagonism, which it is
impossible to eliminate, but there is also a need for forms of
consensus. In order to establish a hegemony it is necessary
to articulate these different groups and to create a collective
will among them. Politics has to do with collective subjects.
This is something liberals dont recognise and which I think is
Collective wills crystallise around a conception of the
common good around a definition of public interest, and this
is a very important dimension of democratic politics. This
could seem paradoxical, given that, according to the pluralist
approach Im defending, the common good doesnt exist
because there can be no such thing as the common good. But
it plays the role of a horizon. A people is built from a given
idea of the common good In other words, there will always be
a struggle around the definition of the common good. The fight
which I call agonistic is a fight for defining the common good.
Those capable of persuading the majority to identify itself
with their conception of the common good achieve hegemony.
Thats why the democratic struggle requires a reference to the
common good, while at the same time recognising that there
is no such thing as the common good.

E: That it isnt set.

CM: No, Id say rather that it cant be set.


E: Well, for a while it can, but in a precarious form.

CM: Yes, but it will always be a hegemonic conception.

E: Of course. It isnt natural. But for a while a group is capable

of establishing a general interest within a society.

CM: True, but its always a particular conception that has

managed to present itself as universal, and which can be ques-
tioned through a counter-hegemonic struggle.

5. Hegemony and the war of position

E: We now come to the concept of hegemony, which is at the

heart of this discussion and of this theoretical approach. Here
I would distinguish three elements or levels of definition: the
incarnation of the universal as the particular; the capacity for
persuasion and creation of consent; and the construction of
the very terrain on which the dispute takes place.
In the first instance, as you mentioned earlier, there is the
capacity of a particular sector to construct itself as the public
interest for a given period, in what is in a certain sense an arbi-
trary way, in the sense that it isnt predetermined.

CM: I would prefer to say contingent. Because its never really

arbitrary, it always exists within a particular context.

E: Yes, in your terms, contingent. It always involves an exclu-

sion: it could have been decided otherwise, but it has been
decided like this. That metonymic substitution, always precar-


ious and contested, makes it possible for a part to represent

the whole. For a while, the particular interest coincides with
the general development of society. The development of a
group appears to be in step with the general development of
society, which means that this group can speak in societys
name, attach its own labels to things, and define themes and
adversaries. This is the first element.
The second element addresses a key question for anybody
who wants to change things: why are those in power in power?
Our societies are ruled by those capable of constructing a
general consent for their leadership, and of making people
see the world through their eyes, and with their language and
concepts. This relationship of consent is very specific because
its unstable and always negotiated. In other words, it needs
to integrate some of the subordinates needs, while removing
their character of total contestation. That, I think, is key for
any possibility of thinking about change, for otherwise one
gets stuck in the impotence of thoughts like those in power
are in power, and thats it. We need to realise that those in
power are in power because they have the ability both to inte-
grate and exclude. The ways of thinking of the dominators
always include, in a subordinate form, those of the dominated:
they give them meaning, and some form of hope within their
order. Coercion is thus always the ultima ratio.
This always reminds me of a remark made by Nicos
Poulantzas, who said, in a different context, the capitalist
state always has the mission of aggregating at the top and
dispersing at the bottom, that is, to fragment and disperse
discontent. The state integrates some of the discontent, and
condemns the rest to resignation and marginality.
The third element to look at is the way in which hegemonic
power is the kind of power that, even when it is being defied by


its adversaries, must be defied in its own terms. In other words,

it is a power that constructs the playing field, that constructs
common sense, and that forces anybody attempting to defeat it
to do so in its own political ground. Jaime Guzmn, one of the
architects of the post-Pinochet Chilean Constitution, said: this
is about creating a Constitution such that, should an adver-
sary win, he would have to govern in a very similar way to
ours. Another extremely clear example is Margaret Thatchers
response when asked what she regarded as her greatest achieve-
ment. She replied, without hesitation: Tony Blair and New
Labour. We forced our opponents to change their minds.

CM: Unfortunately she was right. The best example of the

power of the neoliberal hegemony established by Thatcher
in Great Britain is the evolution of the Labour Party under
Tony Blair. When Labour reached power, they accepted the
neoliberal hegemony. Under the pretext of modernisation,
they rejected the Old Labour values, without any attempt
to undertake a counter-hegemonic fight to transform power
relations. Thats why neoliberalism is still hegemonic in Great

E: In this sense I think your approach is excellent, because

counter-hegemony is not a complete rejection, or a total exte-
riority. It accepts part of the hegemonic order and aims to
rearticulate it and give it a sense of contestation: it has one
foot in the existing common sense, and the other in the possi-
bility of change.

CM: Thats what Gramsci calls a war of position. Its a strategy

of disarticulation/re-articulation. This is an idea which I think
is crucial.


E: Its not a frontal collision but rather a system of warfare

based on a fortresses and earthworks, as he describes it.

CM: Gramsci insists on the importance of struggle in the field

of culture, because to a large extent thats where common
sense is built, and its also in the cultural field where one can
subvert it. Thats why Im interested in artistic and cultural
practices, and on how they could contribute to counter-
hegemonic struggles.

E: In the political experience of Podemos, here and now, we

have the example of our political intervention on TV, which,
while its not a comparable field, is one in which the same
logic operates. Its a field clearly built by the adversary, and
with the adversarys logic and ways of thinking and expres-
sion. I would prefer to face my adversaries in a format like the
conversation we are having now. I dont think its unreason-
able to say that I would do well in that kind of format. I would
much prefer that to having to shout, in very short and shallow
formats. Clearly, thats a playing field built by the opponent,
but at the same time, in order to maintain its legitimacy it has
to incorporate new voices like ours. It has had to incorporate
other voices because theres been a shift in attitudes that has
generated a hunger for new voices, and by incorporating them
it has also opened a space for dispute.
And its true, of course were fighting on a terrain built by
the adversary, because the opponent is hegemonic; but its
possible to fight in and against, or on the inside but trying to
cut across that setting to give it a different meaning. And I think
thats the crux of the matter, the key to counter-hegemony: to
be capable of operating from within and from outside at the
same time, or from within and cutting across.


CM: To be able to address the possibility of counter-hegemonic

struggle it is necessary to understand that there is no natural
order, that all orders are constructed by an articulation of
power relations; in other words, that they are the product of a
series of practices which in Hegemony we called hegemonic.
Thats why any order is hegemonic, because it excludes other
possible power configurations which could always be reacti-
vated through a counter-hegemonic struggle.

E: And all orders try to naturalise themselves. Even though

they are not natural, they try to erase their traces, their borders,
to appear as the only possibility, to make people forget that
at their birth there were, inevitably, decisions, exclusions and
violence; or that the existence of any order is always tempo-
rary and unstable, because to sustain itself it must negotiate its
contradictions and thus open cracks or include new contents.
That makes politics a risky and uncertain sport, but it also
makes it sometimes possible for the humble to win.

CM: Yes. In order to establish itself, any order has to leave

aside other alternatives. But there are always alternatives.
That philosophical-theoretical perspective is very important
for thinking about politics. If you accept that there are always
alternatives, that means those alternatives can be reactivated.
Thats what makes a counter-hegemonic struggle possible, the
strategy of disarticulation-rearticulation which characterises
the war of position we discussed earlier on.

E: Of course, there are always alternatives. Besides, the very

form in which ruling sectors build their hegemony always
opens cracks or loopholes which can be used for intervention
in a counter-hegemonic direction. It is not only a matter of


resolution, it cannot always be done, but there are situations

and well talk about that later as in the Spanish case, where
there is a hegemonic crisis: those in power still rule, but they
no longer convince. They are no longer capable of offering
a project for the country that includes the majority of the
population, not even in subordinate form; they can no longer
construct a public interest satisfactorily enough to bring every-
body together. That opens certain political possibilities that a
more static and essentialist view of politics cannot see or smell.
It seems to me that to see those possibilities its necessary to
embrace a form of understanding politics that recognises posi-
tions are not given but constructed.

CM: I completely agree. Thats why I always insist on the

importance of theoretical reflection for political praxis.
Over the years, Ive had several opportunities to argue about
this with Richard Rorty, who claimed politics was a banal
activity, a simple matter of implementing reforms which didnt
require any theory, only a good dose of tolerance.

E: After the European elections in May 2014, we were very

often asked: whats the magic formula by which, without
money or membership, so soon after being born, youve
obtained a 1.25 million votes?
And of course, this was hard to say as it could sound arro-
gant, but our response was that it was necessary to study. We
couldnt go on with an approach to politics that believed that
the graphs showing the distribution of MPs and seats defined
what was possible. A type of politics that at the most said
what I want is to unite the left, so if we look at this piece of
the pie here, which is 6 per cent, lets see if we can add in this
and add in that, and lump it all together to make 6 per cent.


An anti-essentialist and hegemonic view of politics allowed us

to understand that there were conditions which couldnt be
seen with the naked eye but nevertheless existed. These were
not certainties, but potentialities for an intervention that could
draw a border and start building a new popular majority for
rupture. The organic crisis of the 1978 regime not to be
mistaken for a state crisis and the rise of the 15M opened
new possibilities for counter-hegemony and the postulation of
a new people.

CM: Yes, precisely. If you hadnt had that alternative view, if

you had thought from a different theoretical perspective, you
couldnt even have considered such an intervention. Because if
youre limited to the liberal view of competition between inter-
ests, or to the Bolshevik view, you cant conceive a strategy
like that of Podemos.

E: And neither can you from the escaping the state view, the
idea of the autonomous area, a road along which some of us
have travelled. This view stated maybe it still does that the
social is the privileged site from which to build: it is primordial,
it precedes the institutional and of course the mercantile. It is
an unpolluted terrain from which the construction of popular
power should start. When we launched the idea of Podemos,
many people told us, based on this social determinism, that
we were putting the cart before the horse. As if an election,
or the dispute of institutional politics, could not build popular
identification. In our case, anyway, it was not an ideological
or static choice, but a strategic one: we took advantage of a
window of political opportunity, a situation which the trans-
formative sectors had arrived at with some options, but also
with many weaknesses and deficiencies after all, the tempo


is seldom to the taste of those who are defying the existing


CM: That exodus strategy is still in vogue amongst many

activist groups. It seems very radical, but actually can be seen
as a postmodern form of traditional marxism. In the end, what
Negri and Hardt defend is a new version, a more sophisticated
one, of the Second Internationals determinism, but now using
a vocabulary influenced by Deleuze and Guattari. They talk
about the multitude instead of the proletariat, but it is still a
sort of economic determinism. At the core of their reflection
is the thesis that the transformations of capitalism connected
to the transition to post-fordism have brought into being an
entirely new epoch. In cognitive capitalism, the central role
in the production of surplus value previously played by the
labour power of the industrial mass worker is now filled by
the power of immaterial work, of the intellectual and commu-
nicative type. Thats why they use a new term, the multitude,
to refer to the figure of the immaterial collective worker.
This multitude has to tackle the Empire of globalised and
de-territorialised capitalism, which has no territorial centre or
fixed borders. Hardt and Negri claim that with the develop-
ment of cognitive capitalism, the role of capitalists has become
parasitic, and that they will eventually disappear as a result
of the increase of the multitudes power. This optimistic view
explains why, from their perspective, its not necessary to
attempt to transform the existing institutions: they are bound
to disappear anyway. Thats why the exodus strategy they
propose is a desertion strategy, one of abandonment of the
traditional centres of power to establish places outside them,
where the multitude can self-organise and enjoy the exercise
of the common. They say that the multitudes democracy


expresses itself through a set of active minorities which never

aspire to turn into a majority, but instead develop a power that
rejects becoming a government. Their way of being consists in
acting in concert and refusing to become a state. Hardt says
there are three ways of approaching the concept of multitude:
at an economic level, the multitude opposes the working class;
at a philosophical one it opposes the People; and at the political
level it opposes the party. Its true that more recently theyve
slightly moderated their ideas. They now say, for instance, that
they are not against the state. But I dont see how their recent
statements can be compatible with their general approach.

E: They also describe spaces which Ive seen in other socie-

ties but which dont exist in Western ones. They have a sort
of romantic fascination Im not sure if youll agree with me
here which is also a bit liberal, with that division between the
social and the political. They describe a social ground unpol-
luted by the market and the state, which I have never seen in
the so-called First World. There are no citizens of that world
living in spaces which havent been captured and regulated by
the logic of the market or the state. Yes, there were some in El
Alto, in Bolivia, or in micro-spaces like the Zapatista commu-
nities, but not in our case. Thus, there is no such thing as
the outside of the institutional; and that separation between
the social and the political which to me has always seemed
liberal does not exist either.
This takes us to a question which was very controversial
when we launched Podemos. Amongst a substantial part of
the transformative or progressive sectors theres the idea
now I think on the wane that the social comes before the
political, and that to start with a political construction, even
more so if its an electoral one, is to put the cart before the


horse. You first have to build a social force, and only then
can you run for election, if you wish to do so. Like the person
that goes to the casino counter to exchange money for chips
or chips for money. Look, I have this many chips of social
force, how many votes or seats does that give me? And they
exchange them for you.
This is connected to a mistaken reading of the Latin-
American experiences, according to which there has been a
linear accumulation of power by social movements that has
then gone to the polls. This has led to the formation of govern-
ments, which of course, like all governments, have betrayed
the movement, always more beautiful in its never realised
In actuality, this is not true: in the majority of cases, the
mobilisations were either receding or had not accumulated
enough power or if they had, it was more destituent than
constituent.5 As I think is the case with us, it was electoral
competition which started to produce a bond and a new polit-
ical identity, around new leaders and symbols, thus defying
first social determinism, and then political. There is no social
which hasnt been built by the political.

CM: I agree, the social is always built through the political.

One of the theses we developed in Hegemony is that all soci-
eties are the product of a series of practices attempting to
establish order in a contingent context. These acts of hegem-
onic institution are of a political nature. It is in that sense that
we can distinguish the social from the political. The social

5 Destituent is a term more commonly used in Spanish and Italian than

in English. According to Giorgio Agamben: Whereas constituent power
seeks to resume and reform the law, destituent power seeks to render
it inoperable. In other words destituent is the opposite of constituent.


is the field of sedimented practices; that is to say, practices

that obscure the original acts of their contingent political
institution and are taken for granted, as if they substantiated
themselves. We insist that power is constitutive of the social,
because the social could not exist without the power relations
that give shape to it. That which at any given time is consid-
ered as natural together with the common sense that goes
with it is always the result of sedimented hegemonic prac-
tices, never a manifestation of a deeper objectivity, external
to the practices that produce it. Thats why society shouldnt
be perceived in terms of the deployment of a logic which is
external to it, regardless of the supposed origin of this logic:
whether its Marxs productive forces, Hegels development of
the Absolute Spirit, or the laws of history of the several posi-
tivist currents.
This conception of the social is fundamental, as it makes it
possible to imagine how a given order can be transformed. But
there is another question which is important for understanding
the hegemonic struggle, and on which I think we agree. Its
the fact that political identities are always collective identi-
ties. Thats something marxism does understand, but it thinks
about it only in terms of class. Marxism also understands the
idea of antagonism, but the problem is that it thinks there is
only one form of antagonism, class, which cannot be elimi-
nated. We, on the other hand, maintain that there are several
types of antagonism, and that there cannot be a society where
the possibility of antagonism has been eradicated. There is a
radical negativity, which can never be overcome, and society is
thus always divided.
We must recognise that marxism at least acknowledges
antagonism and collective identities. In the case of liberalism,
you cannot find any sense either of antagonism or collective


identities. But neither perspective allows us to understand the

nature of politics.

E: It is true that in marxism collective identities have an impor-

tant weight, but they can still be true or false depending on
whether they reveal or obscure the reality of the subjects in the
productive system. This makes it possible to classify identifi-
cations morally, but not to explain or modify them. Solidarity
and the ties constructed in an identification appear as the
result of other forces, instead resulting from conscious and
changing activity, and as the crucial moment of the political.

CM: Yes, the famous theory of false consciousness.

E: Exactly the false consciousness that sometimes also

manifests itself in national constructions. In Spain, for
instance, in the dominant national story the Spanish one
peripheral national identities, whether Basque or Catalan,
are often accused of being false. Well, lets see: if you have
millions of citizens on the streets identifying themselves as
belonging to the same nation, thats precisely the definition
of a nation. There was an old trade unionist here in Spain,
a social democrat, who said: there is nothing more foolish
than a right-wing worker. Saying this is morally reassuring
but it doesnt explain why it happens, and why it happens to
so many millions. Why does this happen? To say they have
false consciousness is to condemn them from an aristocratic
position. Its like saying they havent understood a thing,
unlike me, thats why they dont pay attention to what I say.
These reflections do not explain what sort of cultural warfare
has been able to produce the identifications by means of
which somebody with a workers salary votes as if they were


the owner of a second home, for instance. Or votes against

the migrant, rather than against the owner of a business. Of
course, the idea of false consciousness can give moral validity
or invalidity, but it doesnt explain anything. It doesnt help us
to understand why. Eppur si muove [And yet it moves]. In
politics, the positions and the ground are not given; they are
the result of the battle for meaning.

6. Carl Schmitt, antagonism and agonism

CM: To me, a decisive element for thinking democratic poli-

tics is the recognition that while antagonism is ineradicable,
the existence of a pluralist democracy is possible. Somebody
who it would be interesting to introduce into the discussion
here is Carl Schmitt, who to me has been both a source of
inspiration and a constant challenge.

E: Yes, I discovered him thanks to you.

CM: Schmitt insists on the importance of antagonism. Thats

why his critique of liberalism is so powerful. He says that in
denying the ineradicable character of antagonism, liberalism is
incapable of apprehending the nature of the political, which
is characterised by the discrimination between friend and
enemy which requires the formation of an us as opposed
to a them, both of which are always collective subjects. This
is something that necessarily escapes liberalism and its indi-
vidualist perspective. The dimension of the political has to
do with conflict and antagonism, and constitutes therefore a
sphere of decision, not one of free discussion. If there is politics


in society, it is because of the dimension of conflict that exists

in all human societies. On that point I find a convergence with
Freuds reflection on Eros and Thanatos, and the impossibility
of a final harmony. Freud and Schmitt come from different
traditions though theres a common reference to Hobbes
but both are important to my thinking.
In the case of Schmitt, Ive said that to me he represents a
challenge because, while I agree with his conception of the
political as discrimination between friend and enemy, I dont
accept his rejection of pluralist liberal democracy. He says its
an unviable regime because liberalism denies democracy and
democracy denies liberalism. Its not possible to acknowledge
pluralism, and to accept conflict, inside a political association,
because that would take us, he says, to civil war, and thus its a
type of conflict which cannot be considered legitimate.

E: Or at least not all the time there are always foundational

moments characterised by this rise of passion and the resort to
the ultima ratio of politics, which is warfare; and it is precisely
to channel those conflicts that we build institutional pluralist

CM: Yes, but in the normal development of democracy we

cannot accept as legitimate parties whose goal is to eradicate
their opponents. Thats why, if one believes, as is the case with
Schmitt, that the only way antagonism manifests itself is in
the friend/enemy form, one must conclude that the recognition
of antagonism isnt compatible with pluralist democracy. This
idea is actually quite similar to some found on the liberal side.
They agree with Schmitt on the fact that antagonism cannot
coexist with pluralist democracy and thats why they deny the
existence of truly antagonistic conflicts, i.e. those without a


rational solution. Im thinking for instance of Habermas, who

claims that the recognition of antagonism undermines democ-
racy. So if we are to accept that antagonism is an ineradicable
dimension, but also want to defend the possibility of a plural-
istic democracy, we must find a way of responding to Schmitt.
Thats what Ive been trying to do in my work, and that has
led me to think with Schmitt, as well as against him, as I base
myself on Schmittian premises to reach an approach contrary
to his in terms of the possibility of a pluralist democracy.

E: The best part of what youve rescued from Schmitts

thought is, in my view, the understanding of politics as encom-
passing an intensity that can inhere in any type of relation and
any subject that involves the establishment of a friend-enemy
relationship. This intensity and friend-enemy relationship are
always a political matter, and this provides an approach to
politics which I think is both flexible and agile. It doesnt view
politics only through institutions or elections, but also as an
activity that chooses, from among many options, the axes
and topics that define a societys alignments and positions.
Because these can greatly vary, politics cannot be seen as an
already defined chessboard, where you start with one oppo-
nent on each side and advance from there. No, you can redraw
the board, not freely, but you can try. The raw materials to
build meaning and political aggregation are given by a sum
of present and sedimented factors. But the meaning that these
might take on, and the direction of their policitisation the
conflict that might be created around them is not.

CM: Yes, for Schmitt the political isnt located in a partic-

ular area of society, its something that can manifest itself in a
multiplicity of social relations.


E: We caused quite an uproar here when we said we wanted

to occupy the centre of the board. There was a general inter-
pretation that led many to think: these people have become
centrists. But we said no, not at all, what were saying is that
its possible to reorder and redraw the existing positions by
establishing new borders, and redefining who occupies what
position: so is it centrist to evict families? Because politics
is the production of identities, a grouping together around
shared interests and projects, a disaggregated and fragmented
discontent like the one we had here opened the door to the
creation of a different border, capable of producing new
identities identities which, like the ones youve worked on,
always express an us and them. Theres always the denomi-
nation of a them against which the us is constituted. This
has been crucial for the possibility of aggregating the existing
discontent-resignation into an incipient desire for a different
type of power, for change. Something that has been decisive
in the construction of a people and its political direction is
the anti-people, the adversary that marks the impossibility
of what is currently perceived as legitimate. In our case, that
meant pointing to the evident oligarchic evolution: the casta,
the privileged.6

CM: Its crucial to understand that politics consists of the

creation of an us, and that necessarily entails the distinc-
tion from a them. To me, the democratic task is not to build
a completely inclusive us an us without a them but to
construct the us/them relationship in a way that is compat-
ible with pluralistic democracy. That us/them relation is not

6 Casta is Spanish for caste, and it has become a key part of the
vocabulary of Podemos.


the expression of something already existing, of an essentialist

nature, but always results from a discursive construction. I
think some of those constructions go against pluralist democ-
racy, but there are others which, on the contrary, can be key
to reinvigorating it.
All of this depends on how you build the frontier, and thats
precisely what Ive tried to explore in my proposal of agonistic
My proposal is based on the acknowledgement of antago-
nism and its ineradicability, but I also state that antagonism
can manifest itself in two ways: in friend-enemy form, or as
what I call agonism, which takes place between adversaries.
The latter is a sublimated form of the antagonistic relation, in
which the opponents know there is no rational solution to their
conflict and that theyll never be able to agree, but accept the
legitimacy of the adversaries in defending their position. This
requires the availability of institutions capable of channelling
conflict into an agonistic, rather than antagonistic form. In
both cases there is a frontier, but its constructed differently.

E: There is a very common criticism to this, vaguely drawing

from liberalism, which says: why such need to divide? why do
you want to divide people between us and them? isnt it easier
to be all part of the same thing? I think this is a critique that
forgets, firstly, that there is an asymmetrical distribution of
wealth and social benefits; and secondly, that the pain does
not disappear if its not named. To name it is the best way
of facilitating its incorporation into the public agenda. The
majority of those who see aggressiveness in naming the pain,
tend to forget there is actual pain behind the numbers.
In any case, this criticism always forgets that all identifica-
tions that motivate people always have a constitutive outside.


Nobody ever displays with euphoria the flag of the United

Nations or the white flag, because they dont represent some-
thing with an outside; and since they represent something
without an outside, they cannot define an inside. All identities
need a difference that is postulated as paramount, and politics
feeds from the mobilised affection of the us/them clash.

CM: I have a philosophical response to that point, but it might

be too complex to be explained in detail here. When I claim
that an us cannot be built without a them, I draw from a
poststructuralist reflection. Its a reflection which is heavily
influenced by Saussure and by the idea of the relational
character of identities, which is at the core of the critique of
essentialism. What I do is highlight the consequences of such
reflection for the field of politics, and point out its relevance
for the constitution of political identities.
I believe that once weve understood that all identities are
relational and that the affirmation of a difference is the precon-
dition for the existence of any identity, we can understand
why politics (which always deals with collective identities)
has to do with the constitution of an us that requires as its
very condition of existence the demarcation of a them. Those
who oppose this might say: Why cant we create a completely
inclusive us? The answer is that its not possible, because to
have an us we need a them. The same applies to the idea of
a consensus without exclusion; to have a consensus you must
have an outside to the consensus, because a consensus which
doesnt have an outside is empty.
I think its important to introduce, even if in a simplified
way, these philosophical elements which are at the base of our
reflection, in order to highlight the fact that all reflections take
place within a philosophical perspective. Any attempt to think


about the political has to be based on ontological presupposi-

tions which cannot be proven. Evidently other people might
not accept those philosophical premises because, as Derrida
pointed out, any form of theoretical reflection is based on
ethical-theoretical decisions that serve as its point of depar-
ture, and those departure points can never have an ultimate
foundation. Its not about proving the truth of the conception
one is defending, but about demonstrating how it allows us to
understand many phenomena that other conceptions cannot
apprehend. Thats why, in a way, my justifications are always
of a pragmatic nature. I dont claim to know the truth, because
I dont think the truth exists in such matters. But I can argue
for my conception in a pragmatic way showing, for instance,
how from the premise that identities are always class-based,
there are many phenomena which cant be understood, while
a discursive perspective allows you to understand them. Thats
why, for instance, liberalism has always been incapable of
understanding a phenomenon like nationalism, as it has to do
with collective subjects.
This takes us the question of the passions, which we
havent discussed yet. In all my books, I have insisted on
the importance of the passions for politics, because I think
in the creation of an us there is a crucial element which is
connected to the affective dimension. By passions I mean
common affects, the kind of affects that are mobilised in
the political arena in the constitution of us/them forms of
identification. We tend to talk about identities but in reality
they are always identifications, since, according to the anti-
essentialist perspective, identity is never given and therefore
always a form of identification. I think psychoanalysis is key
to addressing these forms of identification. To Freud, the
social bond is of libidinal nature, and he highlights the crucial


role played by libidinal affective bonds in collective identifi-

cation processes. As he pointed out in Group Psychology and
the Analysis of the Ego, the group is kept together by virtue of
the power of Eros. Thus, acknowledging that affects provide
the foundations for an us is key to understanding the crucial
role they play both in the establishment of a hegemony and in
the counter-hegemonic struggle.
Sometimes people ask me why I talk about passions rather
than emotions. Its because emotions doesnt seem adequate
for my type of reflection as my work is in the political arena,
which, as Ive repeatedly highlighted, is a sphere character-
ised by collective identities. Thats something which the
term emotions doesnt evoke, since emotions are generally
conceived of in individual terms.
Undoubtedly, passions can also be of individual nature but
I prefer to use that term with its slightly more violent conno-
tations because it allows me to emphasise the dimension of
conflict, and to suggest a confrontation between collective
political identities, something which I consider to be constitu-
tive of politics. In the case of Podemos it seems you are fully
aware of the affective dimension of politics?

E: Yes we are. The slogan of the initial campaign for the

European elections in May 2014 was: When was the last
time you were excited about voting? something no tradi-
tional party could have afforded to say. Affective involvement
as an engine of mobilisation has been key to us: the recovery
of the joy of being together, the solidarity between strangers
so present in our rallies and events the belief in victory
and its fearless affirmation. From the very first day we said
were here to win, weve had enough of resignation and
complaints. And finally, a certain spirit of plebeian venge-


ance non-violent has emerged from the perception that

those at the top have for too long been taking us for fools,
and that now, as they experience the first tiny tremor, they
are showing clear signs of unease. This democratic levelling
energy is an indispensable ingredient of all progressive and
emancipatory changes.
At a theoretical level, as you say, its necessary to confront
the idea that in politics, emotions or passions are the oppo-
site of reason that the immature societies of the South have
passion in their politics, while in the mature societies of the
North, rational individuals decide their vote after dispassion-
ately reading the brochure and the elements of each political
option: that one suits me better than the other. In reality,
there has never been any research demonstrating that things
work that way. The affective dimension of politics has nothing
to do with people being more or less clever; what is evident,
rather, is that our choice of stance, of collective loyalties,
always includes the feeling of solidarity that is created when
people who do not know each other personally feel part of
the same thing. Such feelings, if denied, escape politics to go
elsewhere. For instance, in the phenomenon of football teams:
the passion present in those contexts, even among people
who dont particularly like football, is the friend-foe passion,
feeling part of the same collective. The excitement in a football
match comes from the eagerness to defeat the opponents, from
striving for victory. The match might end in a draw, but that
results from being unable to win, not from a friendly National

CM: Well, as for that friend-enemy passion you talk about, I

would prefer to refer to its agonistic form of battle between


E: Well, its friend-enemy because supporters occasionally kill

each other. Its undesirable, but violence constitutes the ulti-
mate possibility, it is part of the clash.

CM: They may kill each other, yes, but luckily its not usual.
And one tries to avoid it.

E: But thats where the intensity comes from. Passion comes

from the intensity of the clash. I feel part of the same thing, of
an us, along with many people who chant like me.

CM: But igo, in agonistic battles there is also passion

between the adversaries.

E: Yes, but I think that passion always entails the possibility

of antagonism. Agonism among opponents is an antagonism
between enemies that has been institutionalised.

CM: True, but the goal is for that confrontation to be an

agonistic one between adversaries, rather than a friend/enemy
antagonistic one. Id like to insist on the fact that agonism
does not eliminate antagonism; it sublimates it. Clearly, there
is always the possibility of antagonism suddenly resurging.
Precisely because agonism doesnt cancel out antagonism,
there can be no guarantee.

E: In our case, the March for Change on 31 January in Madrid

was a quantum leap in the sort of affections and subjectivity
being created. It was no longer about people saying No to
things, rejecting antipopular and damaging measures against
peoples interests; it was fundamentally about people saying
Yes. Saying Yes with a kind of hope, of affection, that comes


from that shared passion of feeling that together we can make

a difference. That seems to set in motion a collective energy
which is always at the heart of all movements of democratic
political change. That plebeian energy, of common people
saying: this time it might be me, this time we might win.

7. Consensus at the centre and right-wing


CM: Feeling that your vote could actually contribute to

bringing about change is crucial. Believing that your vote will
make a real difference this is fundamental. This is interesting
because the current post-political model of consensus at the
centre removes from politics one of its constitutive elements
its partisan nature. As we have seen, in order to belong to
an us there needs to be a them, and what them means in
the field of democratic politics is an adversary. I think that
in many countries one of the reasons that fewer and fewer
people are interested in politics, and there are increasing levels
of abstention, is that the difference between centre-right and
centre-left is so miniscule that people feel that there is actually
nothing at stake. Let me remind you of a staggering electoral
episode. In the very first round of the 2002 French presiden-
tial elections, Jean-Marie Le Pen eliminated the Socialist
candidate, Lionel Jospin. I used to joke with my students that
the difference between Jospin and Chirac was the same as that
between Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Jospin who, incidentally, is
a very decent person had the very bad idea of proclaiming
during the campaign against Chirac: I am not a socialist.
Thereafter, most of my friends told me that they would not


vote for Jospin in the first round, only in the second. People
did not get mobilised for Jospin because there was no passion
involved. And so Le Pen got through to the second round,
leaving the Socialists out in the cold.

E: This is because nothing of any substance was in dispute. The

most important decisions are taken by unelected powers in a
remote sphere that is far removed from any potential control by
citizens. Meanwhile political representatives come to resemble
each other more and more, and their constituents less and less.
In the absence of any contestation over ideas and projects,
democracy languishes and resignation spreads; and disaffection
also breeds, as the crisis of representation deepens and institu-
tions are increasingly under the sway of powerful minorities.

CM: That is precisely what is needed in politics: something

substantial has to be at stake, with citizens having a choice
between clearly different projects.

E: In my opinion, with this post-political narrowing of

democracy, the majority of decisions and the most crucial
ones are being taken in places that are out of the reach of
popular sovereignty. And what is then left for popular sover-
eignty is merely to choose between variations on the same
consensus, not to decide between alternatives. That cannot
make a real difference to the lives of citizens! And it is certainly
unlikely to galvanise any kind of passion. It is unsurprising,
in these circumstances, that people abandon politics to the
experts or leave it at the mercy of the intricate machineries.

CM: I agree. This is why in many countries people are not inter-
ested in politics. And the development of right-wing populism


is one of the consequences of this. It has to be acknowledged

that right-wing populists, as is currently the case with Marine
Le Pen in France, often have a much better grasp of the nature
of the political struggle than progressives. For instance, they
understand the formation of collective identities, and recog-
nise that politics consists in building an us. Right-wing
populists also understand the role of common affects what I
call the passions in the construction of an us, as well as the
importance of symbols and the need to offer an alternative.
Obviously, the alternative they offer is not only illusory but
also completely unacceptable to progressives. But the problem
is that parties on the left tend to believe that the only response
is to appeal to reason. Trying to awaken passions is something
that the fascist right does.

E: That happens a lot in Spain, particularly among liberals

who call themselves progressive. They see every collective
passion as carrying within itself the germ of totalitarianism.
But this position means renouncing any form of collective
ideal; and, when coupled with the assumption that we are in
a sort of timelessness, at the end of history, it represents the
abandonment of any possibility of tackling injustice. For these
kinds of liberals, any attempt to mobilise passions through
forms of affective identification is potentially totalitarian for
them our mature, or contemporary, freedoms are the freedoms
of solitary individuals who make decisions dispassionately,
and preferably not in the streets but from the comfort of their
own sofas. Liberals of this kind have been horrified at our
emphasis on reclaiming emotion for politics and regaining the
joy of sharing collective forms of identification.
What you say about reactionary forms of populism or
right-wing populism is very interesting not only in terms of


the phenomenon itself, but for what it reveals about current

developments, and the possibilities that they open up in our
societies, including questions about who will occupy that
space if it is not occupied by democratic forces. Reactionary
populism has been able to recuperate the powerful idea of
community that we must build a spirit of community at
a time when there is more insecurity, more anxiety and fear,
more uncertainty about tomorrow. They have been able to
reconstruct the idea of community as a powerful and effi-
cient idea one that liberal-conservatives have been too
quick to discard as fantasy.

CM: And it wasnt difficult for them to reclaim that ideal of

community, given that the theorists of the Third Way were
proclaiming that collective identities had become obsolete and
that we had finally entered the era of individualism.

E: Then there is the issue of politically incorrect speech. A

bold anti-establishment discourse that unhesitatingly chal-
lenges the vocabularies and ways of thinking of the elite, and
willingly accepts the possibility of being attacked for this, is
crucial in times when traditional loyalties are breaking down.
Audacity is crucial, even if it involves accepting that the adver-
sary may hit you back all the harder. And if the democratic
and progressive forces do not adopt a bold stance, we can be
sure that the extreme right will do so.
For our part, Podemos was born fighting (with humility but
also with determination) a certain timidity that we perceived
within the existing left, which seemed to have forgotten
that it takes courage to demand democracy and rights to
restore respect for the underdog and this may well require
taking sides, and losing the sympathy of the privileged, even


forfeiting their pats on the back. When a measure is unjust,

we must dare to name it as such and challenge it. That is what
we have done, and we are paying for it. The reaction of all
the usual defenders of the status quo has been fierce. Perhaps
the difference between the diverse ways of building popular
identities is essentially this: who is the adversary, who do you

CM: Anti-establishment discourse can be articulated in

different ways, and that is why it is very important not to leave
it to the forces of the right. In the case of Greece it is clear that
if Syriza had not existed, the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn
would by now have been getting better results.

E: Yes, and this raises the question of how to combat right-

wing populism. There is a widespread but clearly mistaken
notion on the left that if we also adopt a popular approach
we could be paving the way for their ideas. On the contrary,
I think it helps them much more if we abandon all forms
of collective affects, and thus cede this space to them.
Another serious mistake is to relinquish to them the battle
for hegemony in the sphere of national identification. It is
a mistake to hand over to the most reactionary forces the
opportunity to put forward, uncontested, their own view
of what the country stands for their project for a strong
country will in reality be built against the weak, against
outsiders, against national minorities, or simply be based
on chauvinism. They will not be trying to rebuild a civic,
popular and democratic idea of the country, one that is
supportive and inclusive, and endowed with solid institutions
and democratic safeguards in other words a democratic,
progressive and popular patriotism.


CM: I find it a real problem that the left largely has a very
negative attitude towards the very idea of patriotism, as if
patriotism could only manifest itself in reactionary ways.

E: The struggle for hegemony, for national identification, is

key. And another important point is to try to understand how
the far right, which is not classist that is to say, does not
base its policy on social classes has managed to engage with
a diverse and wider array of sectors, and, potentially, to build
broader national-popular blocks.

CM: They are the true Gramscians!

E: Right-wing Gramscians.

CM: Yes, absolutely. Unfortunately they have understood

Gramsci better than most sectors of the left. I remember
when before writing Hegemony and Socialist Strategy
I published my first article on Gramsci, in which I tried to
defend a non-economistic reading of his concept of hegemony,
and my interpretation was criticised by Marxists like Perry
Anderson. It so happened that at that time we were both in
Caracas, holding seminars at the CENDES in Venezuela, and
we were both talking about Gramsci. The students were quite
perplexed because we were proposing divergent readings. At
the same time in France the New Right an intellectual
group directed by Alain Benoit was organising a sympo-
sium to promote a right-wing Gramscianism, insisting on
the importance of the struggle for hegemony. The left, mean-
while, could not understand the nature of this struggle for
hegemony, because they interpreted it in terms of the impo-
sition of the dominant ideology. And I am concerned that


Gramscis contribution has still not been really assimilated

by the left.

8. The 15 May Movement and the emergence

of Podemos

E: To understand why reactionary populism has not gained

much of a grip in Spain we need to look closely at the appear-
ance here of two democratic vaccines: on the one hand, the
role of the 15 May movement (known in Spain as 15M), and
on the other the emergence of Podemos. I think that 15M
served as a vaccine that prevented discontent from taking a
reactionary form, and instead helped to articulate a collec-
tive demand for a broadening of rights and an expansion
of democracy for more universality of rights and more
democracy, instead of more restrictions and less democracy.
15M did not change the balance of forces within the state,
but it did nevertheless successfully help sow the seeds of a
cultural shift.

CM: I have my reservations regarding this point. To some extent

I agree with you. However, I believe that 15M would have
come to nothing without Podemos, which finally managed to
capitalise on all that energy. Without Podemos, might there
have developed a dangerous form of scepticism and cynicism
that could have shifted things in a reactionary direction? I
think that could have been the case. That is the reason why its
very important to channel these protest movements in a direc-
tion that seeks to engage with existing institutions in order
to transform them. The explosion of protests is a first step,


but without a second moment of channelling a movement can

acquire a direction other than progressive.

E: Yes, absolutely. Here there are several issues worth

commenting on. 15M could be seen as a sort of horizontal
expansion of discontent. On the one hand, many people were
driven to gather together by a radical opposition to the status
quo, but, on the other, this position helped to politicise certain
issues that were previously seen as private grievances. If youve
had to leave your country to find work, or youre stuck at
home with your parents, or have to hold down several jobs to
make ends meet, or you feel that the privileged elite will always
have the upper hand and be in government no matter how you
vote these are not private problems, they are immediately
inscribed in the public sphere.
There was a very significant moment in the protests in
Puerta del Sol when many people affixed post-it notes
written in the first person, notes telling about their partic-
ular individual situation.7 That was an initial moment that
Gramsci would call economic-corporate. It was people
saying: I have this or that problem. But the sharing of these
problems helped establish them as problems of the public
agenda: they could no longer be ignored. This democratised
the public agenda and prevented the usual split between the
official-institutional agenda and the concerns of ordinary
people with less ability to influence the institutions. And this
in turn put the elites on the defensive. The elites aged quickly
after 15M; and although they continued to govern, 15M had
an overriding impact on the common sense of the time. It

7 Puerta del Sol is one of the main squares in Madrid, and is where the
Indignados/15M camped out in 2011.


did not transform anything, it did not constitute political

actors capable of leading a war of position within the state,
but it definitely created a climate, a state of perceptions, that
opened the possibility for political change. So whenever we
are questioned about the relationship between Podemos and
15M and abroad we are constantly asked this question
we say that Podemos is not the party of 15M.

CM: I think it is important that you clarify this issue because

for many people the relationship between Podemos and 15M
is unclear.

E: We are not the party of 15M mainly because any party

that claimed to be the party of 15M would be a fraud. It
is impossible to have a party of 15M, given that it is a
heterogeneous movement, a phenomenon which expands
horizontally by putting together very different grievances
and discontents, some with very weak links with each other,
articulated only by their common opposition to power. So
15M neither has nor can have a party yet not because it is
not desirable

CM: What is more, they did not want to have a relationship

with political parties.

E: Some of them didnt. I would say that by shouting they

do not represent us 15M participants wanted to express a
crisis of political representation tout-court, but that events
after 15M demonstrate that, for most of the people coming
out to protest, or just to show their sympathy, this did not
imply a rejection of all forms of representation. They were
not saying that they did not want to be represented. They


were, rather, throwing down a challenge to the elites who at

present monopolise representation. It may seem a paradox,
but in fact, as with many other movements that actually sow
the seeds of change in history, 15M was born as a conserva-
tive reaction: citizens coming out to protest against losing
already acquired or promised rights, demanding that the elite
is not placed above the law, and that the established frame-
work for coexistence is respected. This is why we say that, in
an exceptional time like this, as a result of the brazen offensive
of the oligarchy, ideas of change are by now well anchored
in common sense, because the elites have gone so far. That
suggests unprecedented political possibilities.
Thats why Podemos is not the expression or the elec-
toral translation of 15M. First, because there cannot be one;
and secondly because the project of Podemos was launched
without any previous consultation between movements, or
between assemblies, or among the indignados. It is an initia-
tive of activists and citizens who have resolved that there is
scope to convert a portion

CM: Of course, it would not have been possible if they had

decided to discuss the initiative with all movements.

E: Obviously. If we had subjected the project to discussion

of that sort it would have never been born. At this point
we need to remember how infrequent self-criticism is in
Spain: most sections of the movement, political parties, all
the forces that called themselves the left, everyone agreed
that the project made no sense at all and that it would be a
failure. Some of them even put it plainly in writing. If the
idea had undergone a process of assembly-based discussion,
it would have never come to anything. But maybe the differ-


ence between giving your opinion and acting as a militant

lies in accepting the challenge of putting your hypothesis to
the test.
We are still living a paradoxical situation in which you need
to do the opposite of what some sectors of activists recom-
mend in order to secure new arrangements and to achieve
broad popular recognition.
The electoral campaign conducted by Podemos consisted
of doing, step by step, precisely the opposite of what would
be recommended by the most militant groups. Everyone
predicted that it would go totally wrong. The truth is, however,
that we have experienced such a massive transformation that
the old certainties that are seen as stable and unquestionable
amongst the ghettos of radical militancy are now revealed for
what they are: a form of consensus that removes the possi-
bility of change, or any opportunity to make a successful
challenge to majority groups and turn outrage into power. For
all their diversity, these groups inhabit precisely the discursive
spaces that are left to them by the establishment, and they
are, essentially, satisfied with a trade-off between purity and
The closer you get to that consensus, the further away you
go from the possibility of a new consensus with a number
of popular sectors that are clearly unhappy but nonetheless
without political reference points.
All of the aforementioned allows us to say that Podemos
does not spring out of 15M. It is not its political or electoral
expression. In addition, a good portion of the discontent was
not part of 15M, although it sympathised with it, certainly.
Yet I must say, without the movement of 15M and without the
small changes in common sense that followed, the window of
opportunity that opened for something like Podemos to come


into existence would have not occurred. In that moment when,

although 70 to 80 per cent of Spaniards were sympathetic to
what you would identify as the main motives or claims of
15M, the Popular Party still obtained an absolute majority in
the ensuing elections.
The key to what happened is not how many people went
out to protest, or how many meetings and assemblies flour-
ished, though admittedly the numbers were very impressive,
with all the logistics that were involved and the demonstrative
aspect. The key is the subterranean, magmatic change, thanks
to which the cultural climate changes, in a manner that means
that issues that were not politicised before are today felt as
increasingly intolerable, and thus presented to the rulers as
such. Moreover, there is the growing perception that a polit-
ical cycle is running out, and as it comes to an end another
one must open. These adjustments to the common sense of the
time are precisely what allow people to imagine the building
of an exceptional political intervention.
That was the moment when we came to believe that a
different majority was possible, a transversal one, as well
as a consensus around a number of ideas that are already
common sense but actually run across the Spanish political
spectrum: this is the reason for the claim that Podemos
cannot be described in terms of left or right.8 It is not at all
a renunciation of ideology, because, as you know, ideologies

8 Transversal is another word that is more commonly used in Spanish

and Italian than English. The term gives expression to the idea of a
democratic practice that looks for commonalities without asserting uni-
versalism: notions of difference are seen as encompassing, not replac-
ing, equality. According to Cynthia Cockburn and Lynette Hunter,
Transversal politics is the practice of creatively crossing (and redraw-
ing) the borders that mark significant politicised differences.


are expressed and have been expressed in most of the planet

for most of history in different metaphors, on the left and
right alike. And it is not a marketing operation that window-
dresses the essence of things with different clothes to get the
vote, not at all; the crux of the matter is that the frontier
drawn by the new democratic majority cannot be described
with the usual left-right wording. This wording has fuelled
the Spanish political regime for the last thirty years whilst
keeping safe the interests of the privileged at the expense of
the majority of the people.

CM: This is an issue that we will have to discuss later on.

Now, going back to a previous question: what is the misper-
ception on the part of all these political activists that explains
their failure to understand the importance of the institutional
dimension? In the case of liberalism, as we discussed before,
they do not recognise the importance of collective movements;
neither do they recognise antagonism. Clearly, there is no
surprise here: they cannot understand politics. But in the case
of activists in these movements, what is preventing them from
making a proper analysis of the situation?

E: For a certain sector identified with the theories of the

multitude, a minority that was nevertheless intellectually
influential, 15M was the beginning of a victory. A victory
that would perhaps take some time. They kept on saying that
institutions were just zombies, that they were no more than
the walking dead. But some of us replied: For zombies they
are surprisingly lively, privatising and evicting like mad .
Let us say that theirs was an overly optimistic view: we
are winning. Besides, this view was indebted to a very
Zapatista vision, or neo-Zapatista, according to which we


go slowly because the road is long; or, for instance, we are

making changes at the micro level, molecular changes that
are perhaps not as visible as the institutional changes you
propose but are the true passport to a new world; in this
view also, this is a slower process, transforming everyday
life in summary, everything under this approach is always
an apology for the micro and an apology for procedure. Thus,
for them we are already winning, given that any attempt to
transform this potentiality into an effective political impact
on the state would give the state the ability to recapture it
or to integrate it; and that would be a mistake because it
would decapitate the truly democratic potentiality of the
Let me clarify my position. Many of the activists who
subscribe to the views I have just described have undoubtedly
invested a lot of energy and creativity into their movement,
but from my point of view their perception of things is
It seems to me that they are replacing the why with the how:
because we are not always sure what the target is, we have
discussions about procedures, and evade some of the difficult
questions, such as the construction of a will to power or the
question of the state.

CM: That is the view of the protest movements and, as you

see, the problem of part of the radical left.

E: For much of the more traditional left, 15M is an expres-

sion of downright naivety; and for the most mistaken among
them, it is something even worse, perhaps having been
nurtured within the murky corridors of power. According to
this section of the left, nothing changes after 15M; it does not


represent a cultural shift and is a profound mistake, because it

is nowhere to be found in the handbook: the protesters are not
dressed in blue overalls, they do not carry hammers and so on
and so forth; in summary, for these sectors of the traditional
left 15M is useless.
Then there is another perspective, a religious and aesthetic
position that, although it is not very sophisticated in theoret-
ical terms, I think is right. Put briefly, it says that daring to win
involves getting your hands dirty, assuming contradictions and
accepting small victories, because in the struggle you win some
and negotiate the rest, this is to say, you push forward and you
get stained. You have to roll up your sleeves and swallow the
messy reality, and this is definitely less comfortable than the
purity of defeat.
Moreover, some of the radical sectors seem to be enam-
oured with defeat. This romantic infatuation explains, for
example, why a Latin American president who transforms the
lives of his people is less attractive than, let us say, Salvador
Allende, who was killed in the Palacio de la Moneda; and I
say this with the utmost respect for Allende and the expe-
rience of Popular Unity in Chile. But on this view a slain
hero is greater hero a slain hero is fantastic because he
hasnt had the opportunity to get contaminated by reality.
Pure as an angel he dies, with his horn-rimmed glasses and
European look, a doctor and he becomes an icon. That
kind of infatuation is a form of maximalism, a refusal to
take a gamble and dare to win, with all the unavoidable
complications that entails.
Then there is the question, as we noted above, of the state.
If you understand the state as a machine rather than a field of
forces (a machine that can be besieged, or destroyed, or from
which you can escape), it can only be accepted or rejected as a


whole. This prevents an understanding of the state as a terrain

for struggle, a place within which there is a balance of forces
an always unstable balance, an ever-moving equilibrium; it
is fortified by existing institutions, but is also a battlefield in
a struggle that, especially when the weather is stormy for the
establishment, always remains unresolved.

CM: I agree with you. The question of the state is funda-

mental. On the one side are those who see it as a neutral
institution that requires no modification. On the other there
are those who see it as a pure form of domination that needs
to be destroyed. Yet few people actually realise that the state
is a site of contestation with which we must engage deeply in
order to transform it at the service of the popular forces. This
lack of understanding of the nature of the state is the origin of
many of the mistakes of the left in its various forms.

E: The refusal to understand the state also implies a refusal

to understand questions of representation and leadership. For
such a stance or theory these are just one-way phenomena;
representation is not for them a negotiation between the
represented and their representatives, but instead an almost
magical transfer.
From the same standpoint, leadership is not a relationship
of listening-proposing-listening, that is to say, a relationship
in which, in order to represent interests, you must also inter-
pret what is emerging from below. No. For leaders of that type,
below does not exist, and leadership is just an impersonation
of sovereignty. We have to acknowledge that we come from a
tradition of thirty years of cultural and intellectual defeat for
the left. The theoretical and intellectual ingredients that we
draw on in our discussions were, and still are, very weak. We


dont have many reference points for our thinking, or much

practical experience that could rejuvenate theory and debate.
For several decades we havent experienced a time like these
weeks of real movement that have taught us more than ten
treatises put together

9. Latin America and experiences of the


CM: What led you to think differently?

E: In my case, what was decisive for my political thinking

was exposure to the popular constituent processes of political
transformation and state reform in Latin America. Its impos-
sible to find out anything about these processes from Spain,
where all you hear about in the media is a continuous and
terrifying disaster, a process that infantilises its societies so
that they keep electing the same people. For some of us, its
been a great help to experience these processes that have been
capable of translating discontent into a collective, national-
popular will that can have an impact on the state. This politics
cannot do everything, but it brings about processes of state
reform and transition.
But saying that these developments help us to think and test
categories, doesnt mean they are simply models to imitate.
They are not reference points for our situation, because of
obvious major cultural, geopolitical, and economic differ-
ences. Our societies in the west are not broken, and they have
not experienced the brutal levels of impoverishment seen in
Latin America at the turn of the twentieth century. In our case,


progressive political practices dont have to face the challenge

of building a national state practically from scratch.
In Latin America, some of the popular forces have under-
taken historical tasks civic inclusion, the creation of public
services, fiscal reform similar to those social democracy
developed in Europe, though with more turbulence, because
of oligarchic resistance and the lack of a periphery that could
bear the costs. Political change in Spain and southern Europe
is necessary precisely to prevent a drift through a vicious
spiral of debt-cuts-poverty towards the kind of social frag-
mentation and institutional collapse that characterised the lost
decade of the 1990s in a number of Latin American countries.
But here, its not a question of bringing anything down, but
of preventing the selfishness and incapacity of those in power
from destroying the institutions and protective mechanisms
that are our societies collective heritage.

CM: Yes, you said previously that for you the decisive factor
was your experience in Latin America, which led you to see
things differently. That was in a way your road to Damascus.

E: Yes, Ive been involved in activism since I was 14, and

for a long time I had a very different approach and concep-
tion of politics. For some time, I was heavily influenced by
Italian theorists of autonomy, and by some of the practices
of Italian intellectuals, who fascinated us in their radicalism
and theoretical sophistication. Later, I started combining that
scaffolding with different authors in a disorderly manner
with some Gramsci from early on. But then I landed in Latin
America, and I soon realised that the categories I had brought
with me were insufficient; they didnt help me to understand
what was happening around me. Not because there was


some sort of different cultural essence or through the experi-

ence of a post-colonial new age, but because I encountered
phenomena that made me think about the national, the state,
power, hegemony, though I was coming largely from a politics
of resistance.

CM: In a way something similar happened to me. I was a

fairly orthodox Althusserian, and it was the years I spent in
Colombia teaching philosophy in Bogots National University
that made me change my perspective. Thats why I decided to
come back to Europe to specialise in political science, and to
start working on Gramsci.

E: For my part, when I arrived in Bolivia in 2006 I was

heavily influenced by my experiences in the anti-globali-
sation movement, during which a great deal of my first
political socialisation took place, and by the European
reception of Zapatism; and I had also been influenced by
the waves of protests in Argentina on 19 and 20 December
2001, the Brazilian Landless Rural Workers Movement,
and the water and gas war in Bolivia but not by the subse-
quent electoral process, which was of less interest to me at
that time.
Soon after arriving in Bolivia I discovered the idea of the
national-popular, not yet as a theoretical construction, but as
something I experienced, touched and read. Not through those
who theorised about it, but through those who developed it,
the theorists of the national popular experiences across the
continent. I was already interested in the phenomenon of
national construction, starting with the Catalan case, but in
Latin America, with popular nationalism, I discovered a whole
new dimension.


I encountered the national-popular phenomenon, which I

found fascinating, both in its ambivalence and in the vigour of
its political identifications, which, while far from loose, didnt
articulate on the left/right axis. I was interested in the popular
and its construction.
I also started to think about the state as an object of study
and serious activism, because I lived through, worked and
advised on, and was present at, the processes though which
plebeian or subaltern coalitions were gaining access to the
state, coalitions that had entered into a part of the state, the
government, but were surrounded by conservative powers
intent on limiting the scope of the changes. I thus lived
through a war of position inside the state, which I witnessed
from within. I experienced the difficulties of trying out new
ideas, but, far from this being discouraging, it opened up a
whole new field of research which I found fascinating. I also
learned to appreciate how much effort conquests take, and
how to build in irreversibility, which from then on would
become a central object of intellectual preoccupation for me.
I remember discovering a statistic in Bolivia that showed that,
since the beginning of the process of political change, and
as a result of a better access to milk, children now weighed
more. And I remember thinking that perhaps this wasnt quite
socialism, but that only a fool would dismiss an achievement
like that, after all the effort it had taken to consolidate this
precarious popular advance.
Thinking back on it now, I find it surprising that nobody
has yet undertaken a critical analysis of the events, actors and
strategies embraced during the crisis of the neoliberal model
in Latin America. The Zapatistas, the MST, the que se vayan
todos [out with them all] and picketing assemblies, and all the
theoretical constructions that saw in these protests a matrix


of practices that were capable of changing their countries in

favour of the many, building counterpowers outside the state:
changing the world without taking power.9
Seen from todays perspective, the outcome is heart-
breaking: where there wasnt an electoral victory and access
to the state, so as to be able to wage a war of position between
emancipatory and conservative or oligarchic forces from the
inside, there was regression as soon as social mobilisations
died down and they always die down. As a result, today the
living standards of ordinary people are much worse.

CM: For some on the left in Europe, the influence of the experi-
ences of Latin America has taken a very different form from the
one you and I have taken. It seems strange to me, for instance,
to see how certain sections of the European left still present
the experience of the piqueteros in Argentina as a model to
follow. In the literature promoting the exodus strategy, it is
common to find a celebration of this movement of the unem-
ployed which, towards the end of the 1990s, started organising
street blockades to protest against the neoliberal policies of
President Carlos Menem and these were, incidentally, the
groups which also organised in cooperatives during the
2001-02 economic crisis, and were very active in the popular
protests that brought down Fernando de la Ruas government.
With their que se vayan todos slogan they proclaimed their
rejection of all politicians and called for a self-organisation of
popular sectors. The exodus theorists see in these piqueteros a
paradigmatic example of the political expression of the multi-
tude, and present their refusal to collaborate with political

9 Que se vayan todos was the main slogan of the protests of December
2001 in Argentina.


parties as a model for the desertion strategy. They dont seem

to realise that what the piquetero movement shows is precisely
the limits of that strategy. They undoubtedly contributed to the
overthrow of a president, but when the time came to offer an
alternative, their refusal to participate in elections made them
incapable of influencing the course of events that followed. If
it wasnt for the fact that Nstor Kirchner won the elections
and started to implement progressive measures to restore the
Argentinian economy and improve the situation of the poor, the
result of the popular protests would have been very different.
The democratic advances in Argentina under the governments
of Nstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernndez de Kirchner took
place thanks to the synergies established between the govern-
ment and a series of social movements with the goal of tackling
the social and socioeconomic challenges faced by the country.
Far from offering a successful example of the desertion
strategy, the Argentinian case reveals the limitations of such a
strategy. It highlights the importance of combining parliamen-
tary and extra-parliamentary struggles in a common battle to
transform the power configurations within the framework of
pluralist democracy.

E: That experience is important. Many of the people who ran

for election did not come from an already constituted force;
in other words, they didnt win because they already had
strength, but because they participated in an electoral process
that articulated a new identity so much so that Kirchnerism is
now a defined and relatively new political space in Argentina,
still with capacity for power. However, to fully assess the
impact of Kirchnerism it would be necessary to undertake an
evaluation of the living standards of the population today.
In many Latin American countries, neoliberal reforms and


the impoverishment they brought found themselves up against

deep political crises and waves of social contestation, some
strong enough to veto those reforms. In some of them, elec-
toral contests became plebiscites between the decaying order
and a new incipient popular will, which opened the door to
the formation of governments able to launch constituent or
state reform processes, and to develop transformative public
policies that have improved the lives of those at the bottom of
In the places where social contestation didnt have an
impact on the state, and social movements gave up the dispute
for power, the advances achieved by social mobilisations
were overturned as soon as the mobilisations died down, or
the situation of exceptionality calmed down. Conversely, in
places where the discontent produced a plebeian irruption
into the state with all the more or less unavoidable contra-
dictions and problems that brings the launch of transition
processes created a virtuous cycle that has taken millions
of people out of poverty while at the same time building
national and regional sovereignty. I think its obvious to
what experiences Im referring to here. It would be useful to
undertake a critical analysis of them, as some of them were
very beautiful, and very well-regarded by the European left,
but havent actually changed their countries and eventually
ended in impasse. Im not saying that it always has to be like
that, or that those examples express a paradigm. Im simply
talking about what happened during that specific period in
Latin America.
My final point here is that in our societies one kind of
political power is derived from the ability to convince and to
express that conviction, including in electoral battles; but the
other kind comes, as Mao Zedong said, from the barrel of


the gun from the capacity for coercion. These are of course
two ideal types, this is a simplification. But these are the two
extremes that mark the options in decisive situations, which
can settle the question of power. There are not that many
other options; in other words, there are no other paradigms of
access to, or construction of, political power.

CM: I find it really worrying that in the vast majority of coun-

tries in South America, many of the so-called left are against
the national-popular governments. In Argentina, the self-
proclaimed left is against Kirchnerism, in Ecuador its against
Correas government.

E: Yes, but thats because these national-popular governments

have also broken the rules of the traditional political game,
and the symbolic geographies of parliamentary politics. All
the popular experiences in Latin America have been heretical,
and as part of this heresy they have broken the rules of identi-
fication. They have built a national identification of a plebeian
and popular nature, which has displaced and confused both
liberal and conservative sectors, as well as a substantial part of
the cosmopolitan or Eurocentric left, which I think has tradi-
tionally misunderstood the situation in their own countries.
All the great moments of advance for the masses have
gone against the grain of history and against the rules of
the bibles of revolution. Theyve always had their own logic,
their own national traits, and defied the rules with regard to
among other things tactical decisions, modes of articula-
tion, demands for nodal points, and bonds between different
social sectors.
Naturally, all the manuals have been written in Europe
and if they have never worked here, how would you expect


them to work there? The appeal of the Peruvian writer Jos

Carlos Mariategui comes to mind for a socialism that
was neither a replica nor a copy of the European models.
One that is capable of taking into account, for instance, the
comprehension of, and appeal to, the indigenous, beyond the
narrowness of classist models. Ultimately, its a question of
asserting the importance of the particularities of each cultural
context and each political setting.
I think all the national-popular experiences have made many
people nervous: populist-type constructions have displaced
and confused both a great number of conservative groups, and
a substantial part of the left, not only in Latin America but
also in closer latitudes.
This is a shame because it deprives emancipatory thought
of an applied field of discussion, around which it could eluci-
date or test questions and options. It is as if those experiences
together with their difficulties, successes, and mistakes
dont deserve to be rigorously studied and discussed. And this
represents a failure to give due recognition to a region that is
currently, objectively-speaking, a progressive and democratic
pole in global geopolitics.

CM: The element that you identify as heretical in those expe-

riences is without doubt one of the reasons for the current
hostility to the progressive governments in South America
among part of the left in Europe. In France, for instance,
Libration is terribly critical, as are others like Le Monde,
and in other countries The Guardian or El Pas. I dont
know a single so-called progressive newspaper in Europe that
presents what happens in South America in an even minimally
objective way. And if you ask these people on the left why
they reject these experiences, they say its because that is not


the left, that is populism. They contrast a good left with a

bad left. The good one would be that of Michelle Bachelets
Chilean socialism, which is of course the closest to the
European model, and the bad one would be that of Venezuela,
with Brazil and Argentina about half way between the two.
Its interesting to see how the Bolivian model, which initially
generated a lot of sympathy due to its indigenous character,
its exotic nature, has now become part of the bad left, after
Evo Morales got closer to Hugo Chvez.
In trying to find an explanation for this attitude, I reached the
conclusion that it has to do with the way pluralist democracy is
understood here, and with the attempt to impose a specific inter-
pretation that which is currently hegemonic in Europe as the
only legitimate one. This shows the European left cannot accept
the legitimacy of democratic institutions different from those
found in Europe. In The Democratic Paradox, which studies the
nature of the Western model of democracy, pluralist democracy,
I describe it as consisting of the articulation of two different
traditions: the tradition of political liberalism, with its idea of
the rule of law, of individual freedom and human rights; and the
democratic tradition of equality and popular sovereignty.
Unlike those who claim there is a necessary union between
those two traditions, I agree with the Canadian philosopher
C.B. Macpherson that it is a contingent historical articula-
tion, established in the nineteenth century as a result of the
joint participation of liberals and democrats in struggles
against absolutism. Through that articulation, liberalism was
democratised and democracy was liberalised. Thats why the
ethical-political principles of pluralist liberal democracy are
freedom and equality for all.
That is, however, a contingent articulation rather than a
necessary co-originality as Habermas claims. Carl Schmitt is


right when he says these two logics are ultimately incompat-

ible, as perfect freedom and perfect equality can never coexist.
Schmitt claims there is therefore a contradiction between liberal
and democratic principles, and thats why he considers liberal
democracy an unviable regime. I, on the other hand, maintain
that we need to see that impossibility of reconciliation as a
tension rather than as a contradiction a productive tension
that creates the necessary space for pluralism. I think its very
important for that tension to stay alive, being constantly nego-
tiated and renegotiated, to make sure that no element becomes
ever entirely dominant which is precisely what happened
with the hegemony of neoliberalism.

E: Absolutely, thats right. Ive also often wondered where that

hostility from European progressives to the so-called populist
experiences in Latin America came from.

CM: Nowadays, in our post-democratic societies, anything

connected with democracy understood as equality and
popular sovereignty has been dismissed by the neoliberal
hegemony. Any dimension of popular sovereignty is seen as
something archaic. This has now become a fundamental part
of the common sense of the European left, which has come
to accept that democracy is just about elections, multi-party
systems, and the recognition of human rights.
What happened in South America which I think is rele-
vant to the experiences of progressive governments in Europe
as well is that they recalibrated the relation between freedom
and equality, putting popular sovereignty and equality back in
the driving seat, but without eliminating the liberal dimension.
That is why the European left, which thinks its post-demo-
cratic model is the only legitimate one, on seeing the Latin


American models says: thats not democracy, thats populism.

Why populism? Because theyve reinvigorated the democratic

E: I think in Latin America that contingent conjunction of

liberalism and democracy never happened, or did so to a lesser

CM: Thats true. Theyve often had liberal governments which

were not democratic or democratic governments which were
not liberal, as was the case in Argentina.

E: This convergence happened to a lesser extent in Latin

America than in Europe. As a result, some liberal princi-
ples are now being used by the traditional elites as a defence
against the advance of popular sovereignty institutions
used as defensive trenches against the masses. For them its
as if any institution, simply on account of being one even
when it doesnt respond to peoples needs or isnt very demo-
cratic is preferable to the constituent irruption of the people.
Or even worse, as if it is impossible for a regime to be both
popular and republican in the sense of fostering vigorous
institutions, equilibrium, and the accountability of power, in
a pluralist sphere. That is arguably the challenge facing the
most advanced state reform processes.
This situation cannot be apprehended from within the frame-
work of a liberal paradigm that, after decades of cynicism, now
believes that individual freedoms are being threatened, not by
the oligarchical powers of a minority, but by the construc-
tion of new majorities and the return of passion and big ideas
to politics. To this prejudiced way of thinking, any collective
ideal is always suspected of totalitarianism, and cynicism is


presented as the only vaccine for it. But in reality, it is the priv-
ileged minority who are in the habit of excluding the people
from their concept of democracy and putting the imprint of
oligarchy onto our democratic-liberal political systems.
That fear of the popular especially when its outside a
known frame or in its wildest or most ambivalent forms is
clearly rooted in Europe. This might be due to our history of
fascist experiences, leading many to think that fascism repre-
sents the totality of populist phenomena or, worse, that they
are their ultimate hidden truth. Thus, any identification of
homeland and people crystallised into an affective identifica-
tion in which leadership plays a role, and involving a tense
relationship with opposing forces or existing institutions, is
seen as necessarily carrying within its entrails a reactionary
danger. This view persists even though in other latitudes popu-
list movements have had the opposite political character, and
been based on democratisation and wealth redistribution.
This not only blocks any possibility of thinking about change
beyond the model of alternation within the pregiven institu-
tions and thus beyond a frozen balance of power; it also
forgets the substantial part of European, and most certainly
Latin American, history, in which the experience of the masses
being included into the state were of national-popular nature.

CM: Without a doubt.

E: I think this view also has a touch of epistemological colo-

nialism: those are malformations because pure phenomena
take place here. An intellectually and politically aged Europe
looks down on, with contempt even, these new experiences
of collective will construction and transformation. Of course
these experiences are always contradictory, and include many


problems and mistakes like any real experience but they

are often analysed and belittled by Europeans from a position
of cynical and colonial arrogance.

CM: This is also closely related to the influence of the hegemony

of neoliberalism and the common sense that has been created
as a result a common sense which conceives democracy in a
strictly liberal sense, which tries to disqualify any attempt to
question this situation by accusing it of populism.

10. Understanding populism and populist


E: We reach here another key point of our discussion: the

issue of populism and the difficulties in understanding the
Latin American national-popular experiences, even among
progressive sectors in Europe. Interestingly enough, this is
a discussion a set of terms and a type of debate that
has returned to Europe over the last few years. I think their
initial return was because of the rise of reactionary populism,
the extreme-right populism that has showed us that if the
people isnt constructed by the left, it will be constructed
against the left.
These notions have now also returned, at least in southern
Europe, as a result of what Ive been analysing in somehow
provocative terms as a Latin-Americanisation of the polit-
ical landscape in these countries. By this I mean a situation of
progressive divorce between representatives and represented,
collapse in the capacity of existing institutional models to
meet citizens demands, and increasing middle-class impover-


ishment. The result has been an accumulation of discontent,

and a transfer of sovereignty that has made national elites
look like the colonial intermediaries of unelected powers. All
of this has generated a situation that has been characterised
by a degree of political Latin-Americanisation, which, despite
the many differences from the original in terms of economics,
culture and state form, has brought the people to the fore of
political discussion. In Spain its very noticeable that, since our
first impact on the political arena, weve been accused of being
populist. In Greece, Syriza has been accused of something
similar. So has Mlenchon in France, as well as an increasing
number of other new actors questioning the order of the elites.
Whats behind that accusation, that vulgar use of the term as
something vague but pejorative, a term that reviles your oppo-
nent? Why is it so commonly used by the powerful and their
allied sectors in the intelligentsia and the media? The term is
clearly in widespread circulation, so I think its worth taking
some time to clarify it, and to ask ourselves whether were in
fact currently living a populist situation, and if so why.

CM: I think the best way to examine the nature of populism

is through Ernesto Laclaus analysis in On Populist Reason,
where he develops a formal concept of populism. He argues
that populism is a way of constructing the political; that it
isnt linked to a specific ideological content or the practices
of a particular group. Its just a mode of demand articulation
that can take a wide range of different forms. It is a mode of
articulation that operates following a logic of equivalence that
results in the creation of a people, through a chain of equiva-
lence linking a multiplicity of heterogeneous demands.
Laclau notes that for popular identities to exist, it is neces-
sary to establish an internal frontier that expresses the division


of the social. I dont want to go into more detail here, as its a

highly sophisticated and complex theory, but I think with this
we already have a starting point for approaching the topic of
populism in an analytical way that allows us to escape the
shallow perspective from which it is generally approached.

E: I agree with both the approach and the definition. But

before we discuss it further, I would like to briefly reflect on
the reasons behind the use of the term populism by the elite,
who can never define it other than as a denigrating weapon
against their opponents. Its dominant use, both intellectual
and in the media, associates it with demagogy, a resource used
by political entrepreneurs to appeal to the lower passions of
the poorly educated, who are willing to vote irresponsibly in
times of desperation or frustration. Underlying this use is, I
think, an aristocratic prejudice which would ultimately take
us back to a form of census suffrage linked to the old conserv-
ative fear of the tumultuous character of the plebs in politics,
and its supposed animal or infantile, and easily manipulated,
instincts, especially in southern countries. Additionally and
here lies the key this is a phenomenon that doesnt appear to
affect elites or rational individuals: its only the masses who
have these demagogically excitable lower passions. And some-
thing else that underlies this old conservative utopia is the
notion of a democracy without people, without collective will
or conflict; as merely the dispassionate and technical manage-
ment of things that have already been decided; as limited to a
competition between dignitaries for audiences and electorates.
This illusion which you call post-politics has its highest
expression in a religious faith in economics as a science
capable of deciding whats best for a society, regardless of that
societys opinion.


CM: It is very convenient for the parties of the centrist consensus

to use the term populist to disqualify their opponents. The
populism accusation is particularly useful for the so-called
left-wing parties, as it allows them to avoid self-criticism,
and any recognition that, having abandoned the defence of
the popular classes, they are to a large extent responsible for
the crisis of representation that is the underlying cause of the
emergence of a wide range of anti-establishment parties.
They thus limit themselves to a moralising critique instead of
undertaking a political analysis.

E: In a recent article in the New Left Review, Populism

and the New Oligarchy, Marco dEramo argues that were
living in a situation characterised by a paradox: the greater
the disappearance of the people, the more common the nega-
tive use of the term populism becomes. The more absent the
people is from the dominant discourse as a gathering of the
unentitled, an entity that goes beyond the mere aggregation
of individuals, voters, or consumers and the more popular
sovereignty is squeezed by the powers of privileged minorities,
the more frequent become the elites accusations of populism
towards any actors or movements questioning the established
order, or maintaining that things could be different, or that
theres nothing natural about the growth of inequality.

CM: I think the populism accusation reveals something impor-

tant about the kind of politics that is promoted by those who
use the term to dismiss the parties that question the status
quo. It reveals their inability to understand the political in
its antagonist dimension, and the dynamics of democratic


E: When we organised the Podemos Conference at the Palacio

Vistalegre in Madrid, in autumn 2014, we were widely
commended for it, as it was seen as the right thing to do for a
responsible party it fitted the conventional institutional way
of doing politics. A few months later, however, we decided to
call people citizens from across Spain onto the streets, to
the Puerta del Sol for the March of Change.
This mobilisation marked a qualitative leap, as its aim was
not to protest, but to affirm the construction of a popular iden-
tity around a will for political change something that had
become possible in the fast-paced 2015 electoral cycle. The
march was a success, both politically and attendance-wise, but
it attracted criticism and incomprehension from traditional
political and media voices. Why were we doing that? Some
even questioned our democratic nature, comparing the March
of Change with Mussolinis March on Rome. Again we saw
a quasi-aesthetic rejection, a mistrust of the masses and their
passions in politics which had also been a central feature of
the Puerta del Sol on 31 January.

CM: That incomprehension doesnt surprise me. Its a conse-

quence of their inability to understand the process of political
identity formation, and the role that passions play in the crea-
tion of us/them-type identifications.

E: Going back to your definition of populism, I completely

agree. Ive been working for some time now from Ernesto
Laclaus approach, understanding populism more as form
than as a content: an identity construction praxis which can
then take very different ideological directions.
To understand this position it is necessary to accept a
premise: that in politics, loyalties, and the positions on the


board, are not fixed or predetermined by any social condition.

On the contrary, they are discursively constructed through
friend/foe type groupings, and are permanently subject to
negotiation. This being so, a populist discourse is that which
is capable of unifying very diverse positions and social sectors
through a dichotomisation of the political arena based on the
opposition of the traditional elites and the people or some
other name designating the same kind of opposition: citizens,
country, and so on. Its a construction that allows subal-
tern sectors to successfully demand the representation of a
forgotten or betrayed general interest. Its important, however,
to bear in mind that these are names and concepts, not statis-
tical data. That is, they are symbolic constructions. They are
not lies, they are real, in the sense that they group positions
and generate new balances of power and new institutions. The
populist moment thus obscures internal differences through
its articulation of a people differences which re-emerge later,
when, following the rupture, it is time for the institutionalisa-
tion of the new equilibriums and agreements,

CM: Following Laclaus conception of populism as an equiv-

alential articulation of heterogeneous demands, we must try
to understand why were seeing the emergence of parties with
populist characteristics in so many European countries. As
Ive already pointed out, I think the key to this is the multi-
plication of demands that cannot find an expression through
the traditional political channels. I think this is taking place
for two reasons.
The first one has to do with the centrist consensus weve
already discussed. In many European countries, this consensus
has led to the implementation of a type of democracy that
eliminates anything to do with peoples power, the very


constituent dimension of the democratic idea. When theres

no longer a fundamental difference between the programmes
of right and left-wing parties, citizens think their vote wont
make a difference. They feel excluded by the elites in power,
and that creates a fertile ground for parties that present them-
selves as the voice of the people against the Establishment.
This is what characterises the current situation, and thats why
we can say were living in the time of post-politics in post-
democratic societies.
The second thing to take into account in attempting to
understand this post-political situation that deprives citi-
zens of any possibility of political alternatives are the new
forms of subordination that are connected to the develop-
ment of globalised financial capitalism. This capitalism exerts
its domination in a way that some call biopolitics, and it
elicits resistances which can rarely be channelled through the
existing institutions.
These transformations have created the conditions for a
populist situation, characterised by a profound crisis of the
system of representation. In that sense I agree with what you
said about some degree of Latin-Americanisation of Europe.
This crisis manifests itself in a growing polarisation of the
social arena, and in the appearance of protest movements that
in some cases even question representative democracy itself.
Under certain conditions, these demands can find a form of
anti-system populist articulation, which in Europe can be both
right- and left-wing.

E: I would add that populist-type constructions appear in

situations marked by two factors. The first one is the ruling
groups inability to maintain consent and integrate discon-
tent by offering guarantees and trust to subordinate groups,


as a way of broadening and reinforcing the traditional power

bloc, which thus starts to erode and disaggregate. This is
accompanied by a blocking of institutional channels, which
are no longer able to respond to the petitions and demands
they receive because of a lack of either resources, willing-
ness or political capacity. This opens the way for a horizontal
grouping of discontent against the status quo, collapsing
together the internal differences that exist within the regime.
All in all, this is what we would call an organic crisis.
The second factor is that this expansion of unrest or will for
change takes place in a dislocated and fragmented social arena,
with no single set of unifying points of reference, narratives or
group allegiances that could naturally frame and guide it.
If these two conditions are met, the context is favour-
able for the construction of a popular identity that is able to
bring together into one group all the pain and frustration, by
means of a symbolic polarisation: and through this it becomes
possible to construct a popular will around new or re-signified
reference points, benchmarks, names and symbols, which act
as its catalysts.
It is in such moments that populist ruptures can take place,
able to produce political change and new hegemonies. These
ruptures are not, however, inevitable, as they depend on both
the luck and skill of those who are defending the existing
order, and on the ingenuity of those who are defying it.

CM: I also think that its possible to speak of an organic

crisis in many cases, but that this in no way a guarantee
of a progressive outcome to such crises. Theres always the
possibility that the outcome might be what you described
earlier in relation to the Spanish Transition, what Gramsci
calls a passive revolution or hegemony by neutralisation:


when those in power manage to re-establish their hegemony,

reclaiming and neutralising their opponents demands.

E: Why have populist situations appeared in European coun-

tries that have such obvious differences? Because there has
been, I think, a collapse of the narratives and institutions of
the elite groups that have until recently been distributing posi-
tions and ordering loyalties. That way of doing things has now
in many cases collapsed. But it hasnt collapsed because people
are out on the streets protesting against the existing order;
it is because they are at home, resigned and passive, having
lost all faith in representation. There has been a divorce, a
separation, between representatives and represented, and
an accumulation of discontent. In southern Europe and
Im not sure if youll agree with me here this discontent
has to do chiefly with unjust and brutal cuts and austerity
measures; whereas in northern countries it is perhaps more
closely related to a lack of alternatives in the political system,
even when social conditions have not deteriorated to such an
extent. Nevertheless and this is a crucial point if we are to
avoid a mistaken diagnosis we are not talking here about
situations of state crisis, but of regime crisis: we are at the end
of a cycle, in a period that is characterised by the breakdown
of the established consensus, actors and power equilibrium.
This, however, has in in no way compromised the states
ability to guarantee order, or to maintain territorial control,
certainty and the monopoly of violence. Understanding this is
decisive for analysis, but also for political hypotheses.

CM: The conditions are different in southern and northern

Europe, but I think there are nevertheless common traits that
have to do with a deep crisis of representative democracy


in all European countries. There has been an accumulation

of demands which cannot express themselves through the
existing channels.
I first noticed this crisis of representation when I became
interested in the Freedom Party (FP) in Austria, Jrg Haiders
party. The Austrian case is particularly interesting because the
ground for populism was established by the Grand Coalition
between the conservatives (VP) and social-democrats (SP)
at a time before the development of the Third Way. To have
any access to a public post it was necessary to be a member of
one of those parties, and many people started to feel excluded
from the system. This allowed Haider to present himself as
the one who could give voice to the people and reinvigorate
democracy. Evidently, the parties in power accused him of

E: I dont think populist situations arise just anywhere,

only in contexts that are heavily marked by dislocation, by
the collapse of traditional identities. People feel angry and
abandoned, and lack any reference points that could articu-
late their anger. And in the absence of such reference points,
a polarisation of the political field takes place, between an
ever-growing potential majority, unsatisfied with the current
state of things, and the elite groups, which are perceived as
being increasingly similar to each other: Well, there are some
differences between those of you up there, but they are in the
small print. The most important difference is not between
different elite groups, but between you as a group the
casta, as we say here and normal citizens. This produces
a polarisation, a dichotomisation, between common citizens
the people and the elite. This situation isnt necessarily
productive on its own, but it is potentially populist, in that


there is a widespread feeling of abandonment, and discon-

tent is fragmented; it is not represented in the institutions
by the available political discourses. Whats still missing in
that situation is, I think, that moment in the chain of equiva-
lences when the different dissatisfactions gradually federate.
Its good to remember here what you said before, that these
dissatisfactions might not have anything in common, but that
they initially join forces through their shared frustration,
because theyve all been blocked by the power system. The
moment of bringing together all the demands or dissatisfac-
tions is followed by the construction of a national collective
popular will.

CM: From the point of view of our discussion on populism,

how do you see 15M?

E: I think there were clearly populist traits in 15M, in

the oppositionalist or destituent part, and in the bringing
together of different demands.10 All of a sudden, it seemed
clear that there was an above and a below which were
more important than the traditional two-party identifica-
tion. Suddenly, a plethora of social themes and problems
came to be lived as political, and attributed to the state of
affairs we were living in, and the incapacity or selfishness
of those in power who inevitably began to age and to look
defensive about the new issues that had been placed in the
agenda by the mobilisations.
However, the next step never took place: the coming
together of unsatisfied demands didnt crystallise into a
new popular will, or didnt crystallise such popular will

10 See note 6 for discussion of the term destituent.


into consistent enduring forms, despite having created the

right cultural climate for it. It didnt produce any vertical
moment, or result in new political alternatives, leaderships or
programmes, but there was clearly an initial moment when
it produced a new primary political opposition. On one
side were the citizens, and on the other the politicians and
the bankers, to use the initial 15 May terms. This moment
did take place, and we have since made advances in the
construction of a popular identity in the non-institutional
sense, which is not represented in the institutions as they are
now a new popular force. It is therefore possible to say
that were currently living with populist situations in several
places in Europe, and definitely so in Spain. The crisis of the
political regime of 1978, and the growth of an ambivalent
and inorganic discontent, is today being articulated in a new
and not-yet-represented direction, and this makes it possible
to speak of a populist moment.

CM: Youd therefore agree that this populist situation in

several European countries is connected to the crisis of tradi-
tional parties and their incapacity to give expression to the
new antagonisms produced by neoliberalism.

E: In the South its not just the parties. The institutions too
have been incapable of responding to the wide range of very
urgent social demands coming from the population and
perhaps this is the most important thing. This discontent
only started to pile up when institutions were no longer
able to provide an answer. The replacement of politics by
what is regarded as merely a system of technical manage-
ment is, I think, behind the crisis of representation emerging
all across Europe. But additionally, in the case of southern


Europe, in the midst of what is a severe social crisis, many

people are not finding an answer in the institutions. I think
our European states, as well-functioning states, managed to
individualise social relations and to split civil society from
political society to guide and domesticate it and to offer
certainties and comfort. This generated a social composition
of citizens rather than a people, which was reflected in
political behaviour. If citizens had a problem, they were sent
to counter number one for an solution; if they had a type-
two problem they were sent to counter number two, and
if was a type-three problem to counter number three. But
then counter number one closed, and so did counters two
and three, and that meant that discontent started to become
politicised, to receive an expression which was more popular
than institutional. While it is not inevitable that this expres-
sion of discontent should produce anything in political terms,
or take a particular direction, it does enable a new division
of the political field into, on the one hand, what is now seen
as the old and on the other, those who offer the possibility
of overcoming the old ways. However, neither the delinea-
tion of this new frontier nor the outcome of this struggle are
pre-given. This is what has been happening in Spain, albeit
with some traits of its own, derived from our specific polit-
ical regime, its deficiencies, the social coalition on which it
rests, and the democratic expansion possibilities opened by
the 15M Movement. Elsewhere in Europe the coordinates of
these processes might be very different.
It is possible that this type of situation might be spreading
across southern Europe, although taking different forms. For
instance, it might have partially manifested itself in the Five
Star movement in Italy, with whom we have nothing to do
ideologically, but which has also modelled a construction


a representation, lets say of a supposed common man or

common citizen, not represented by the traditional elites.

CM: Now you mention the Five Star movement, Id like you to
clarify the differences between Beppe Grillos movement and
Podemos, because Ive noticed many people somehow equate
the two.

E: Weve been frequently asked about those supposed similar-

ities. Im not an expert on Five Star, but Id say we share with
them a general political context, which we express and react
to, as well as some forms of political identification construc-
tion. But, contrary to what some might think, in our case
internet organisation and participation do not substitute for
work on the ground or the fundamental dimension of street
Another difference is the more plebeian content of our
discourse as when we denounce the political elites, the
casta, who have liberated themselves from the citizens they
should be representing. We question them not just because
of their incapacity or moral turpitude, but because they put
themselves at the service of the privileged: butlers of the rich
instead of messengers of the citizens. We subvert the left/
right symbolic dimension, but replace it not with some sort
of moral frontier, but with a politics of clear national-popular
content: the real country, that of the majority, of those below,
as opposed to those at the top; or of democracy/oligarchy in
more analytical terms.
In any case, and going back to the original discussion, this
return of the popular in its different forms has been confusing
for many, as it has been relatively absent from European politics
for a long time. This situation probably indicates the path that


European politics will follow, at least during the crisis years:

either there will be a victory for the liberal elites, resulting from
some degree of success in reordering the political map; or there
will be the construction of a new popular will which may take
a progressive direction if there are political powers capable of
realising it, or a reactionary one if there arent.

CM: To me democracy necessarily has to have a partisan

character. When theres no possibility of choosing between
real alternatives in the ballot box, a period of substantial
political apathy ensues. But this also creates the space for
the emergence of parties that present themselves as capable
of giving a voice to those who cannot identify with the tradi-
tional parties, and which claim to defend the interests of
those excluded by the elites in power. Since On the political,
I have insisted that the success of right-wing populist parties
is due to the post-political situation. Admittedly, this situ-
ation could also favour left-wing populism, but its notable
that the latter has largely been of phenomenon of southern
Europe, while elsewhere in Europe populist parties are

E: Yes, and this has to do with the centrality of social issues,

with the hijacking of democracy, and the increasingly rapid
deterioration of living standards. Populist mobilisations and
constructions here are heavily marked by impoverishment.
They are not just a reaction to a lack of representation; they
also result from the fact that the vast majority of the population
are living through a time of extremely rapid impoverishment,
and people are in greater debt than ever. This kind of popular
will construction has wealth redistribution at its heart,
because it is wealth redistribution that has split our societies,


and has generated this crisis the feeling that the privileged
have ignored the social contract, put themselves above the
law, and accumulated more wealth than ever.

CM: But to a certain extent that has happened all across

Europe: its a consequence of the neoliberal model. Its just
that the economic conditions are much more severe in the
south, and peoples suffering has been greater there than in
northern Europe.
I would like to draw attention to the fact that this emer-
gence in Europe of parties that construct the political frontier
in populist terms as a confrontation between the people
and the establishment proves the relevance of Laclaus
model for our societies. Those who claim that referencing his
theoretical approach and adopting its categories entails the
imposition of a Chavism model onto European politics, do
so because they are incapable of distinguishing between the
analytical level that characterises political theory and the
multiplicity of specific cases which those categories illuminate.

11. Charismatic leadership and the nature of


E: An element which I think is both interesting and contro-

versial is the issue of leadership the need to crystallise
politics into symbols, into a project for a new country, into
leaderships, myths, popular expressions, songs, anniversa-
ries and literature. All that symbolic arsenal which takes us
from opposition to the construction of a new general interest,
to becoming a force capable of disputing hegemony. I have a


keen interest in this cultural and symbolic arsenal, which can

act as the indispensable intellectual, moral, and affective glue
of a new people.

CM: To turn heterogeneous demands into a collective will

its necessary to have a figure that can represent that unity,
and I dont think there can be a populist moment without
leadership, thats for sure. To many people, the idea of
charismatic leadership seems problematic, and doubtless
it can have negative effects. But that shouldnt blind us to
its importance. It all depends on the type of relation that is
established between the leader and the people. In the case
of right-wing populism, its a very authoritarian relation,
where everything comes from the top, without real grass-
roots participation. Thats clearly the case with Marine Le
Pen. But it doesnt have to be that way, and the way I see it,
its perfectly possible to establish a different type of rela-
tionship, less vertical, between the leader and the different
groups that constitute the movement.

E: I agree, and Id even go further: its quite possible that there

could never be a construction of a general will that didnt crys-
tallise, in one way or other, into some kind of representation
involving an affective bond with a charismatic leader. In fact,
Id say and Im not sure if youll agree with me here that the
level of a societys institutionalisation is negatively correlated
with the importance within it of charismatic-type leaderships,
because in more institutionalised societies there are more, and
more efficient, institutional mediations.

CM: I would agree with that. But in highly institutionalised

societies there are no populist situations.


E: Agreed. But its interesting to observe that some form of

leadership phenomenon always emerges, across very different
situations and political cultures. I often quote an example
from Spains anarcho-syndicalist movement, a more hori-
zontal and therefore in principle more hostile to leadership
political tradition: during our Civil War, hundreds of thou-
sands of workers paid their final farewells to the anarchist
leader Buenaventura Durruti at his funeral. Did they say their
farewell because he had special powers, because he was magic,
the Messiah, the ruler? No, they did so because his name,
Durruti, had become a common name, a name that repre-
sented far more people than just himself. And this happened
in a horizontal political culture, one that in principle is very
hostile to representation. I think this is something we should
discuss that leadership is not a relationship of substitution,
but one of representation. Because while its true that leader-
ship expresses a collective will that also serves as catalyst for
change, it also needs to incorporate some of the desires of
the represented: if it stops incorporating them, it stops being
a leadership; it stops leading. So the relationship is always
mainly one of representation.
This doesnt mean, however, that as I have observed in
other examples of political change leadership doesnt entail
the risk of decisionism or of crystallisation into forms (for
example being closed off by entourages and minders) that can
be detrimental to democracy, or to picking the best ideas. But
overall, I dont think there are any forms of organisation that
are exempt from those risks and deficiencies.

CM: The issue of representation seems crucial to me. Id like

to approach it through a critique of the proposition that repre-
sentative democracy is an oxymoron because a true democracy


can never be representative. This is a common position among

those who interpret the movement of the indignados in anti-
representative terms, as the manifestation of a presentist
democracy. To me it is evident that there can be no democracy
without representation. If one accepts the theoretical approach
according to which identities are never given in an essentialist
manner, but always produced through a discursive construc-
tion, one must also recognise that this process of construction
is a process of representation. Political subjects dont already
exist, they are created through representation. Any affirma-
tion of a political identity is therefore internal, not external,
to the process of representation.

E: And, in more empirical terms, there can never be a perma-

nent direct democracy or a total continuous mobilisation
or participation. Any political theory that relies on peoples
constant participation or mobilisation is doomed to nostalgia,
to melancholy, because it never happens people always go
home. I think its necessary to recognise that popular mobili-
sation has moments of ebb and flow, and that one must always
build a project with the assumption that the ebb will eventu-
ally come, and an assessment of how much will have been
sedimented by then, so that the advances of your time leave
at least some foundations. This is the idea of relative irreversi-
bility, on which Ive been working for a while now. How can a
political power create a set of conditions in economic struc-
ture, institutions, common sense, political culture that have
to be accepted even by its opponents? And I say relative irre-
versibility because, luckily, theres nothing fixed or permanent
in politics which is a guarantee of freedom. The advances
made in periods of more intense activity are only consolidated
when they are dug in and entrenched institutionalised and


made part of a new everyday, a new way of being in common.

Thats what the conservative neoliberal counter-revolution did
in Europe hence the difficulty of overturning it and that
was also, in a different direction, the challenge of the Latin-
American popular governments.
Another time of flow will come, perhaps in three decades
time, but we always need to work on the premise that were
transitory, that conquests must be consolidated and expanded,
which requires management, efficacy, and moral and intellec-
tual reform. Otherwise, conquests depend on popular fervour
and constant heroism, but that never lasts forever. Thats what
activist fantasies envisage, but it never happens. Any model of
operation, representation and organisation that relies entirely
on peoples permanent participation is thus bound to disap-
pointment or to regret, after the inevitable appearance on
to the scene of a tradition that diverts the true revolutionary
potential. This is a problem which is more moral than political:
after the rupture which is never total and always inherits
more from the past than at first seems to be the case comes
the recomposition, the construction of a different order. You
storm the Winter Palace, but a few days or years later people
always go home. The key is finding a way to ensure there is no
regression, and to reconcile that with pluralism.

CM: Whats important is that the mobilisation is used by

people to build an identity; the fact that identities are always
constructed is to me a fundamental point. The way in which
the idea of representation is generally understood, as a repre-
sentation of already existing identities, is completely wrong,
because representation is also a process of identity constitu-
tion. In other words, there are no given identities that the
party can simply represent. Politics is also about the construc-


tion of identities. There is therefore a double movement, from

the represented to the representative, and from the representa-
tive to the represented.

E: It represents and in doing so it constructs.

CM: Besides, in a democratic society that doesnt conceive

of pluralism in a harmonious anti-political way one in
which the ever-present possibility of antagonism is taken into
account representative institutions, in giving form to social
divisions, play a crucial role in the institutionalisation of this
conflictual dimension. That is why representation is a condi-
tion of democratic politics, and why the idea of a presentist
democracy beyond representation must be abandoned. Such
a conception generally goes together with the illusion that
its possible to achieve an absolute democracy, in which all
demands are satisfied.
How do you think we should deal with the idea that
demands can ever one day be satisfied or, more generally, with
the messianic dimension that sometimes characterises politics?
What can we do, for instance, when, as you said before, people
come up to you and say you brother, dont fail us?

E: I think there we need to move along two tracks. The

first one is that of the present of the media discussion in
which we have to play by a set of rules, and within a political
culture, that have essentially been built by the adversary, and
which require the production of hopes and passions. But there
is also a second, parallel, track we use the mantra short
step and long gaze to describe this, and the necessary concili-
ation between the two cycles. The first one, the short step, is
necessary for taking advantage of the window of opportunity,


narrow and deep, offered by the regime crisis. That window

wont be open forever: powerful forces are working to narrow
it, or close it off through a restoration from above. To have any
influence within that window of opportunity we have to move
according to the tempos and rules of the opponent theres no
point in complaining about that. But there is also the project
of the longer cycle, the necessary task of popular, community,
and cultural reconstruction, so as to be in a position to restore
what has been destroyed by decades of neoliberal fragmenta-
tion an effort of intellectual and moral reform, in Gramscis
terms. But the immediate political dispute runs at a faster
pace, under the dictatorship of the immediate moment.
Its easy for armchair theorists to be dismissive of the terms
of the immediate dispute, but, in our context, if we fail to
dispute this ground, and stop the restoration, well have lost
a crucial opportunity, and then well have to fight the longer
battle in terrible conditions.
However, the limits of this immediate, lets say political-
electoral, battle are evident. Whether were dealing with the
shaping of a new consensus or the opening of a new horizon,
not all problems can be solved or sometimes even tackled
in accordance with the tempos of official politics.
Sometimes, when were asked to defend certain demands,
we say, yes, but civil society also needs to construct a majority
opinion that is supportive of that demand that is not some-
thing we can do within the tempo of the immediate battle
for political power. Some things are built at a slower pace,
through the work of intellectual reform that can start to shape
societys perception.
And when it comes to that Messianic requirement dont
fail us? Well, as I was saying, this is something people repeat
a lot, its one of the most common sentences we hear. And


we have an ambivalent attitude towards it. On the one hand,

we understand the message and the responsibility, and we all
work as hard as we can to rise to the challenge. But, on the
other, we can also see the work of cultural and educational
transformation that still needs to be done if we are to create
the conditions in which that dont fail us becomes a lets not
fail ourselves to construct a popular will and an organisa-
tion capable of recovering sovereignty.
I think our political initiative must move between these two
tracks, which have different paces, and two rationales that
dont always coincide. On the one hand, popular articulation,
and all the pressing tasks of the moment, in conditions which
we havent chosen; on the other, in parallel, a more molecular
process of education and construction. Without the first, we
risk missing this historical moment for our country, we live
in the world of ideas. Without the second, it will be difficult
to resist the powerful forces ranged against us in an enduring
way. But if we win in the first set of tasks, it will be easier to
create good conditions for our work towards the construction
of a people.

CM: Yes, thats true. I agree with this idea of two tracks. But
its also necessary to fight against that messianic dimension
that leads to the notion that there might be a final reconcilia-
tion although it might sometimes be difficult to resist.

E: We dont say that. We say we want to restore democracy

which has been hijacked by the elite and the power of finance
and that involves the battle of ideas, a never-ending struggle.
We dont promise an end to all problems and conflicts, only
the construction of a framework that puts them under popular


In terms of your theoretical question about the possibility

of final resolution, its interesting how very different roads
marxism, liberalism lead to that same idea. Why? Because
liberalism also incorporates, to some extent, the possibility of
cancelling politics, or of having societies which are as empty
of politics as possible. If politics means conflict, lets suspend
politics. As for marxism, it envisages that there will be a time
when, having abolished the fundamental contradiction that
between capital and wage labour well be able to have socie-
ties which are free of politics.

CM: Its for this reason that weve insisted that our notion of
the radicalisation of democracy also implies recognising the
impossibility of the final realisation of democracy. A pluralist
democracy requires always being able to question a given state
of democratic institutions. Otherwise its the end of politics
and pluralism. In this sense, its very important to recognise
that well never be the 100 per cent. Thats precisely what
my model of agonistic democracy highlights, that democracy
exists only inasmuch as there is confrontation between adver-
saries. In that sense, even though I recognised its capacity for
mobilisation, I had issues with Occupys we are the 99 per
cent slogan, because it didnt recognise the important divi-
sions that exist in society, and the need to provide democratic
channels of expression for them.

E: I see this differently. I think the statement we are the 99

per cent doesnt have a statistical value but a performative
one: it appeals to a very heterogeneous majority united in
opposition to the super-rich 1 per cent.
In any case, thats why its so important to insist that what
has put our democracies at risk hasnt been our differences,


or the battle between conflicting ideas, but the gradual disap-

pearance of any sense of a dispute between substantially
different options the feeling that nothing decisive is at stake
in the competitions between elite groups, because everything
has already been decided, behind closed doors and beyond the
control of ordinary citizens. The privileged tend to dismiss as
unrest or polarisation anything that signals the opening of a
horizon that asks: could things be different? Its not confron-
tation that is dangerous, but rather the impossibility of finding
a political voice that can express peoples pain.

CM: Yes, to me theres no doubt that the lack of an agonistic

public sphere is the origin of the post-democratic situation in
which our democracies find themselves.

12. Ideas of right and left

E: I think it would be interesting to introduce a topic which I

know is very controversial, and which might provoke a mixed
response in Europe: the pertinence of the metaphors of left
and right.

CM: Its definitely a topic we need to address, because many

people dont understand the position of Podemos in that
respect. It would be good if you could explain why you reject
the left-right distinction, and why you dont want to position
yourselves on that axis.

E: Its not that we reject it. It exists in many societies. Its the
main frontier that explains peoples identifications in many


parts of Europe. But we think thats not the case in Spain

now. It may become so again, but currently it isnt. Anybody
who believes that that division is the key for understanding
whats happening in our country wouldnt understand why it
is that, all of a sudden, within the space of a year, the electoral
map has changed so much. What has happened? Has the lefts
territory greatly expanded? No, thats not whats happened.
Then why has the Spanish political map changed so much?
Because, by changing the questions, the answers have also
changed. A change in the frontiers that order the political
arena has brought about a potential change in the balance of
forces, the possibility of a new vote, defined in patriotic, civic
and democratic terms. Thats why the elites feel such longing
for the old questions, the set of ideas around which they could
organise their distribution of positions, and which they could
use to deactivate the formation of a potential popular alliance
that could form a majority against them. Im not talking here
about a marketing operation, designed to obscure what we
are, or about a renunciation of conflict. On the contrary, Im
talking about a battle over meaning which no longer confronts
the old order in its own terms.
It is of course undeniable that we come, biographically,
familially and personally, from the tradition and commitment
of the left. I come, for instance, from a family persecuted by
Francoism, my father was a political prisoner. Yet we still say
that left and right are not the main frontier for producing
political change in Spain. But thats not because of an elec-
toral public relations exercise, or political pragmatism. We are
not keeping something secret, or putting forward a new story
in order to hide our true essence, disguising it as something
else in order to run for election. In conservative circles they
believe that they can discover the hidden truth of Podemos


by delving into our past they havent understood a thing

about whats going on in Spain. Its not about that at all. Its
about recognising, firstly, that political positions are not given,
that political identities are not stable: there is nothing natural
about people identifying as right or left; that is something that
is historically and geographically contingent. And secondly,
its about recognising that there have been transformations in
our country that in our view have produced a hijacking of
democracy by the oligarchy. This allows for the postulation
of a frontier that is defined in theoretical terms as democracy/
oligarchy, and in more tangible terms as citizens/privileged or
casta. This is better able to explain the crisis we and the 1978
political map are undergoing. In these terms it is no longer
the elite that determines our political vocabulary or the distri-
bution of positions: they have to move defensively, having lost
public respect, and become separated from citizens.

CM: I completely agree that in recent years there has been an

oligarchic hijack of democracy. It has happened across Europe,
not just in Spain, but it has taken different forms. Its a sign of
the Latin-Americanisation of Europe we were talking about
before. To me its a consequence of neoliberalism, and that is
why its accurate to say that we are living in post-democratic
societies. Furthermore, the consensus at the centre that we
discussed previously has contributed to the discrediting of
left-wing politics. How has that manifested itself in Spain?

E: I think it manifested itself in the lack of any alternatives to

the Socialist Party that had hegemonic capacity or intention.
For a long time, the Socialist Party was capable of capturing
the significant forces of the left, to the extent that the erosion
of each of them has gone hand in hand. To be left-wing in


Spain was to support the Socialist Party, and the decline of

the Socialist Party has been the decline of the left. At a certain
point, part of the left decided they had to fight for the truth of
the word left: were the true left. But from the beginning we
said you can keep it, we hand it over to you. Were interested
in constructing a people, not in constructing the left.

CM: I understand that position and I agree with the idea

that we must establish the frontier in a different way. I also
think its necessary to build a citizen collective will, a people.
But I think we need to clarify how we want to build it. Its
not enough to oppose the people to the casta. You could not
approach things in the same way if you were in France, where
there is a right-wing populist movement that also constructs a
cross-cutting frontier of people/elites, albeit differently. If you
were facing a Marine Le Pen, you couldnt just say, we are
the people.

E: We dont say it directly either, because the people dont

have a legitimate representative, precisely because theyre
neither homogeneous nor pre-exist their construction, which
is always new. Its a rhetorical battle. But, clearly, we do appeal
to a wider constituency because current conditions allow us
to do so, and because we have hegemonic and state aspira-
tions. There is today a majority of citizens, non-homogeneous
but relatively transversal, which as a group feels cheated and
unrepresented, and wants to reclaim the institutions and
now has the means to do so. We aspire to be that means, while
also knowing that the road ahead is difficult, and most often
its the powerful who win. That approach has certainly been
controversial, and Im not sure how its read and interpreted
from abroad. But the progressive and democratic character


of our popular construction derives from who it is that we

identify as adversary, and precisely from the recognition of the
contingency and the pluralism of the people.

CM: Outside of Spain you are seen as a left party, and even
though I think asking whether you are right- or left-wing is
not the most pertinent question for understanding Podemos,
I dont see why you have such difficulties in accepting that
label. I know its not your position, but there is a risk that
the rejection of any reference to the right/left frontier might
be interpreted as an acceptance of the Third Way position,
according to which politics must be thought beyond right
and left.

E: Its true that saying we must subvert the left and right
frontier has generated much mistrust amongst progres-
sive groups. Its been understood as if we were saying that
ideologies were no longer valid, or as some sort of extreme
pragmatism. One can agree or disagree with our hypothesis,
but that interpretation is wrong. Weve said that if identi-
ties are constructed, and if that construction is always done
through frontiers, a different frontier can draw a new alter-
native popular majority which wasnt there before. The elite
were very comfortable with the left-right axis. They located
themselves at the centre-right/centre-left, and placed the
challengers those who defied them at the margins. But if
we draw a cross-cutting citizens-casta frontier, all of a sudden
they are confused; they are out of their comfort zone, finding
themselves in a very uncomfortable political and symbolic
arena. In fact and thereby nicely demonstrating a certain
exhaustion of their capacity for political imagination the
people who have traditionally monopolised politics have had


to accept there is something called casta: their best defence

has not been to shake off the accusation, but to attempt to
smear us as well as if they recognise that they can never be
likeable, but hope that, for them to stay in power, it will be
enough to extend that mistrust to us to discourage change
and reinstall cynicism. That is a symptom of an intellectual
crisis, but in no way a negligible strategy, especially if we
take into account the powerful media and many resources
in their hands.

CM: Its true that with the rise of the Third Way weve reached
a situation where the traditional right/left axis no longer
constitutes a frontier. The question now is to know whether
we need to reactivate it or should abandon it altogether to
construct a new one.

E: The Third Way has that consensual call of theres no

longer any frontiers, theres only management and technical
differences. We dont say there arent any differences, or that
there are no ideologies. We replace one frontier with another
one, above/below, which I think is in fact more radical in the
best sense of the term. With the left-right frontier, the cards
are comfortably dealt by the traditional actors, who place
themselves at the centre of the distribution of positions. With
a citizenry-casta frontier, however, they are suddenly forced to
play on a very difficult terrain. I think its important to explain
this to other Europeans, so it doesnt seem as if there has been
some sort of renunciation of ideological confrontation, or a
belief that there can be a democracy without differences.
An anti-essentialist view allows us to understand that to
aspire to subvert or cut across the metaphors of right and
left is not a renunciation of ideologies, but a different way of


presenting a dispute for meaning. That allows us to construct

a different set of political meanings, directed towards the
formation of a different general will. There is nothing essen-
tial, nothing necessary, in the terms right and left as metaphors
around which to structure the political arena. In my opinion,
they are useful or not depending on whether or not they can
be used to construct a balance of power that is more favour-
able to the subaltern.

13. Towards a left-wing populism?

CM: I agree, but to build a collective will that is capable of real-

ising a progressive agenda it is not enough to build a people/
casta frontier, as if the people were necessarily in favour of
promoting equality. The success of right-wing populism
demonstrates that is not the case. To me, the crucial question
here is how to propound a form of politics aimed at the radi-
calisation of democracy. I imagine that you might not agree
with me on this point, but my position is that a contemporary
project for the radicalisation of democracy requires the devel-
opment of a left-wing populism. For a long time I thought
that in order to fight the post-political trend and create the
conditions for an agonistic confrontation that would enable us
to radicalise democracy, it was necessary to give new validity
to the right/left frontier. But then I started to realise that in
the current conditions this wasnt the appropriate path, and
that it was necessary to establish the frontier in a different
way through the construction of a collective will that is
transversal and progressive, and capable of defying the new
oligarchic forms that have resulted from neoliberalism. Thats


what I call left-wing populism. I reached this conclusion for

the following reasons.
Firstly, I realised that most centre-left parties had been too
closely involved in neoliberal hegemony to be reformable
having in many cases even contributed to its installation.
From the time of the crisis of 2008 it became evident that they
were accomplices in the austerity policies that were imposed
to defend that order, and that it was illusory to think they
could ever change their line to the point of defying the neolib-
eral order. The consensus at the centre would not allow the
reactivation of an agonistic confrontation along the right/left
axis. In a way, its something Beck and Giddens already saw,
but to them it represented progress. Their conclusion was that
there were no longer any antagonisms and they celebrated the
advent of politics without frontiers.
But there is another reason why the traditional right/left
frontier cannot be used to radicalise democracy, and it has
to do with the transformations resulting from the new mode
of regulation of capitalism. In the era of neoliberal globalisa-
tion and the financialisation of capitalism, new antagonisms
have emerged, derived from the subjugation of all social life
to the empire of the market. Today one is not subject to capi-
talist logic only through labour; its requirements affect the
life of the individual in all its aspects. Furthermore, levels of
inequality between the oligarchic financial powers and the
rest of society have greatly increased. The usual categories
of left politics cannot account for this wide range of forms
of subordination, or for the new oligarchy of the super-rich.
Its necessary to conceive the struggle in different terms from
those used by both social democracy and marxism. This is
something that theorists of the multitude like Hardt and
Negri to a certain extent recognise, but they do so based on


an analysis of the evolution of capitalism which I find prob-

lematic. Furthermore, whats missing from their approach
is any acknowledgement of the need to articulate the multi-
plicity of heterogeneous struggles into a collective will, into a
people; or the need to work with institutions to achieve the
establishment of a new hegemony.
I think that when one takes into account all these polit-
ical and economic changes, it becomes clear that if we are
to create the conditions for an agonistic hegemonic struggle
against the neoliberal order and bring an end to post-politics
in Europe, we must implement a type of politics capable of
giving form to those new kinds of conflict. The goal must be
to establish a chain of equivalences between the multiplicity of
democratic demands, and an alliance that is able to question
the existing order and build a new hegemony. That requires
establishing a dialogue with a variety of struggles and institu-
tional forms. We need a synergy between electoral competition
and the wide range of struggles that take place in the social
arena. Its clear that the democratic demands that exist in our
societies cannot find an expression solely through the vertical
party form, that they also need horizontal forms of expres-
sion. A new form of political organisation that articulates
the two modes thats how I conceive left-wing populism.
Clearly, however, that response will have to be concretised in
different ways depending on the specific circumstances of the
different European countries this is not about imposing a
single modality.

E: It all depends on the arena were working in. In the intel-

lectual arena, there is now a form of political construction in
Spain that could be described as populist (provided we strip
the term of the pejorative and anti-democratic connotations


that are characteristic of the loose way it is used in the domi-

nant discourse). But at the same time, were also intervening
politically, and to do so we cannot use a term that has been
cursed by the media. Nobody with any pretension to win at
some point can accept a definition which in the collective
imaginary immediately is taken to mean demagogy.

CM: I understand, but we shouldnt accept the semantic

field the adversaries try to impose on us. We must defend a
different view of populism, like the one we discussed earlier
in relation to Ernesto Laclaus analytical conception in On
Populist Reason. When I talk about left-wing populism I
refer to a form of politics conceived as war of position, and
the construction of collective popular will through chains of
equivalence and the mobilisation of passions. Thus conceived,
left-wing populism allows the establishment of a difference
with the centre-left or far-left, as well as with right-wing
populist parties.

E: I agree but try to explain those theories in a TV studio,

in three minutes and with seven people shouting at you. Its
impossible. Thus, its a valid concept for reflective analysis,
for intellectual analysis, but it is not so useful in the front line
of media discussion.
I wrote an article for the French edition of Le Monde
Diplomatique that uses the term. In that context, you can
qualify it, you can explain it, it can be used. But when you
only have the chance to say one sentence, its not useful. Not
because of any attempt to hide something, but because the
term has two usages. In Spains media language it has become
synonymous with lying and demagogy: so who is going to
willingly adopt such a label?


CM: Its precisely because of this that I insist on the impor-

tance of re-appropriating the term populism. That it is being
used in a derogatory way by parties who defend the status
quo is no reason to abandon it. Its necessary to reclaim it, to
resignify it, and to give it a positive meaning with the notion
of left-wing populism.

E: Thats for the medium term. It cannot be done in three

months. But yes, it is possible. The most useful thing here,
however, is to think about why the word has come back.
Why is it now being used by the elite? You said the other
day, anything that defies the notion that there is no alterna-
tive is immediately dismissed as populist. At a time of the
greatest ever concentration of power and wealth at the top of
the pyramid, and when popular sovereignty is least discern-
ible, any alternative that questions the status quo is branded
as populist. This can be seen as a mirror a mirror reflecting
the elite: the less they can tolerate the people, the more they
define you as populist.

CM: The answer should be: Yes were populist because we are
democrats, and theres necessarily a populist dimension in any
democracy that aims to build a demos, a people. And were
also left-wing populists because our objective is to radicalise
democracy. Is there anything wrong with that? You said just
now that the future path of European politics will depend on
the elites capacity to redraw the map, and on the constitution
of popular wills whether progressive or a reactionary. I agree
with that, and Im convinced that the fundamental political
struggle in Europe in the coming years will be between right-
wing and left-wing populisms. The key issue here is how the
people is built, from what chain of equivalence. Is it going to


be a right-wing or a left-wing people? Its not enough to say

one will give voice to the people, as if its identity was already
given. Thats why we need to explain what sort of people we
want to build. In politics one always needs to choose sides.
You had to do it when you got to the European Parliament. By
the way, it could seem somehow inconsistent to refuse to iden-
tify with the left and at the same time be part of the radical left
group in the European Parliament, together with Die Linke,
the Front de Gauche, Syriza, and other radical organisations.
Syriza literally means party of the radical left and Tsipras has
no problems in identifying as left.

E: Thats because in Greece traditional organisations and

identities didnt collapse; they still have powerful unions and
political organisations. In Greece traditional political iden-
tities have not suffered the erosion that those in Spain have
suffered. When people have been hit by adjustment policies
that impoverish them, theyve become angry and have taken
the streets to protest. There they had traditional channels
capable of articulating the protest. The lefts narrative was
still available and not so eroded by the growing discontent.
As for the European Parliament: who could we be with other-
wise? Weve always defended the decision in patriotic terms.
In fact, were in the group with Tsipras and Syriza, which
are the only patriotic force that has defended the interests of
the people and citizens of their country against international
speculators. Its a left that has put together an inclusive project
for the country. This is not something new. In The Tailor of
Ulm, Lucio Magri describes well the best national-popular
streak of the PCI, but also its deficiencies and limitations. In
fact, if we look at the last Greek campaign, that which put
Syriza in government, we saw a lot more homeland and


Greek people than left, and they explicitly asked for the
vote of those coming from the defeated centre-right parties.
They didnt ask people to vote left, but to vote patriotically.
Thats why theyve been able to reach an understanding with
an anti-austerity party from the centre-right, because its a
patriotic agreement in defence of Greek sovereignty against
international financial powers. That is todays most relevant
political frontier in the semi-colonised countries of southern
Europe. If progressive forces dont hegemonise it, either the
reactionary forces will do it for us, or the liberal or social-
liberal will disperse them.
Other political experiences have been important to us.
We talked earlier on about Latin America experiences of
progressive advance that didnt express themselves through
the left-right axis. In fact, almost none of the great processes of
historical transformation have articulated around the rhetor-
ical poles of left/right.

CM: Yes, its true, but those Latin American experiences

cannot be directly transferred, because the historical contexts
and political experiences are different. The national-popular
governments in South America dont have to confront right-
wing populist parties. Their opponents are the oligarchies and
their allies, and, in a different way, the parties that advocate
a traditional conception of the left. In Europe the situation is
not the same, and its necessary to distinguish between right-
wing and left-wing populisms.
Another difference has to do with what weve called the
populist situation, which doesnt appear in the same way in
Europe and South America. For the national-popular regimes
in South America, the key question was how to integrate
the popular sectors, previously excluded from power by the


oligarchies, into the democratic project. With the exception

of Argentina where thanks to Peronism there had been a
first experience of popular integration the people had been
marginalised by the elites. In Europe, however, weve had
several experiences of bourgeois hegemony, in which govern-
ments somehow managed to integrate popular sectors into
politics. That integration is today in crisis, but there are still
loyalty bonds between parts of the people and the elites. That
requires a counter-hegemonic struggle able to disarticulate
those bonds and to construct a leftist people. I dont think
we can take for granted that people are naturally opposed to
the casta.

14. The people/casta confrontation

E: I completely agree, it has to be constructed. Again, were in

the domain of the performative rather than the descriptive. In
fact people only becomes meaningful when it has an outside
that politicises the term, if there is a them.
About the possibility of national-popular ideas in Spain or
southern Europe, its obvious were not talking about a Latin-
American context fortunately for us. Were talking about
very different economic, institutional and geopolitical contexts.
Perhaps the main difference is the existence of a state even
when its one under threat of appropriation by the privileged
and thus has withdrawn from some sectors as opposed to its
non-existence and the historical task of building it, as was the
case in Latin America. The degree of impoverishment and social
destruction caused by neoliberal policies is also, fortunately for
us, very different. In Spain, a great many of the social mobilisa-


tions are conservative in character, in the sense that they seek to

stop financial despotism from squandering our collective assets
and common wealth, and to defend our weak social state,
public services, and security for the working-class majority.
The political moment does, however, share with Latin
America the loss of credibility of those in power, and a crisis
of representation and bloc disaggregation, the blocking of
institutional channels, and the expansion of an inorganic
discontent. This is an identifiable set of political similarities,
even though it clearly operates with very different raw mate-
rials and contexts. Without the analysis of how exceptional
situations such as these open up unprecedented possibilities,
we would have never launched the Podemos hypothesis, and
wed still be at the impasse that currently characterises many
of the forces with transformative aspirations across Europe.
As you pointed out earlier, however, its crucial to recognise
that in the Spanish case there is a major current that is not so
much concerned with total breakup or disengagement from
the state, but which instead demands the fulfilment of the
promises and guarantees that formerly held us together as a
society. It has more a question of citizen dissatisfaction than of
a popular attack on established power. That means the imagi-
nable outcomes have less to do with a general contestation,
and more with an opening of an institutional transformation
process at the state level. This is a process which beyond the
vagaries of electoral fortune, and the possibilities they may or
may not offer will involve more a war of position than a
war of manoeuvre, in Gramscian terms.
Does this allow us to affirm the construction of a united
people, and the elimination of reactionary danger? That
is never guaranteed. But there is a greater threat in other
European countries than there is here. In our case, the only


potential authoritarianism is of the financial and technocratic

kind thats the real threat to democracy and rights in Spain.
In any case, in our denomination of the people weve always
defined a boundary which, while not agonistic, is definitely
antagonistic. To us, the enemy, the adversary that has hijacked
democracy, is those above, not those below, regardless of the
country they may have come from, or their skin colour and
with people who think in that way theres no negotiation or
discussion, thats an impassable frontier for us.

CM: Thats a point we need to discuss. When you talk about

an impassable frontier where is it located, exactly? I think
we need to clarify these notions of enemy and adversary. To
me the casta/people confrontation is agonistic inasmuch as
it takes place in the field of representative democracy, and it
doesnt seek to end with the casta through a revolution or a
coup dtat. That doesnt mean there isnt an antagonistic rela-
tionship between the opponents, it means its an antagonism
that expresses itself in an agonistic form. That is, it recognises
the opponents right to defend their point of view through
elections. Thats where the difference between enemy and
adversary lies. The adversary is a legitimate enemy which
one aims to defeat, but in a way that respects democratic insti-
tutions. The agonistic struggle is a battle for hegemony; thats
how I see the people/elites confrontation, which is central to
the way I conceive the leftist popular identity.

E: I was referring to antagonism of the friend/enemy kind

towards reactionary, racist, and anti-democratic forces.
Because, as you say, democracy also has an outside. But when
it comes to our political adversaries the traditional forces of
the regime and the oligarchic powers whove benefited from


their programme of pillage and impoverishment we seek to

defeat them in a political battle, which, ultimately, doesnt
have a definitive end. In this open, adversarial and pluralist
competition, we seek to seize from the privileged minority the
chance to embody the public interest, because we think they
are harming Spanish democracy and the living conditions of
the Spanish people, and leading us to a poorer, weaker, less
democratic and more unjust country.

CM: By the way, a moment ago, when you said those above
who are those above? Who is the casta?

E: The terms mobilising power comes precisely from its lack

of definition. Its like asking: whos the oligarchy? Whos
the people? They are statistically undefinable. I think these
are the poles with greatest performative capacity. The other
day, Oxfam announced that since the beginning of the crisis,
Spain has reached a situation we havent seen in thirty years,
in which 1 per cent of the Spanish population owns as much
as the bottom 70 per cent. Its not about choosing a statis-
tical marker and saying, you are casta, you are not; what
the term does is delineate a type of political construction and
identification which groups a new majority, one which until
then has been subaltern. There is clearly a privileged minority
who have done better than everybody else and benefited from
others doing worse people whove hijacked and privatised
the institutions for their own benefit, whove set up all the
institutional apparatus so that it works to the benefit of the
few and at the expense of the many. To reclaim democracy
is to politically defeat that adversary, the privileged. Its an
adversary that, despite being a social minority, has managed
to construct political identifications from which to govern.


The Popular Party in Spain, for instance, has for a long

time been able to speak as if it embodied the economic public
interest. Its a party that has openly handed over public
management and major national resources to a small group
of oligarchic families, and yet it has successfully managed to
present itself as being representative of the interests of small
and medium-size enterprises, as the party of the small business
owner. This is a hegemonic operation which were now trying
to disarticulate, so that we can articulate things differently.
This is an adversary that, despite being a privileged minority,
has for a long time managed to become a political majority. It
therefore has to be politically defeated, but its existence and
participation in the competition are, of course, legitimate.

CM: Agreed, but thats precisely why I say that the people/
casta confrontation is agonistic, not antagonistic, in nature.
Its a struggle for hegemony that takes place by means of a
war of position.
In relation to that people/casta confrontation, I must say
that I find slightly problematic when you speak of gente to
refer to the people.11 I understand it can be a comfortable
term in day-to-day language, but if one thinks in terms of the
formation of a collective will constituted through a chain of
equivalence, speaking of gente doesnt seem very appropriate.
I also find problematic your reference to peoples common
sense as if that wasnt the result of a discursive construction.
It smells of essentialism, and I think is in contradiction with
the theoretical perspective you defend.

11 In Spanish theres two separate words for the English term people:
gente, which means people in its day-to-day usage and pueblo, which
refers to the people in the political sense of the term.


E: In relation to the appeal to common sense its not done

from any essentialist illusion. Were perfectly aware that
such a thing doesnt exist, in fixed form, anywhere; that it
results from a contestation between different discourses, and
is always fluid and ambivalent; that its strength relies in its
flexible capacity to present certain ideas as self-evident. Its
a terrain of dispute, not a factual matter. Today, however, a
good deal of existing common sense is in contradiction with
the plans of the elite, and their acceptance of the adjustment
programmes imposed by the Troika and other acts of financial
despotism. This has placed those in power to a certain extent
outside the common sense of their time which incidentally
was positively modified by the cycle opened by 15M when
it comes to subjects such as working conditions, evictions or
public health. Thats something we need to take advantage of,
we need to reclaim the good sense of the people, for we may
be in an apparently paradoxical situation in which the contest
between these different kinds of common sense becomes a
frontier of change in a time in which radical politics are the
politics of common sense.
With respect to the terms that invest the us with hegem-
onic capacity, I think it all depends on what them they are
opposed to, as its in this clash that they become loaded with
meaning. Maybe we need to be less dogmatic with regards to
the terms that signify us.
As I told you the other day, one time when I was giving a
talk about Podemos at the University of Vienna, the translator
was struggling to translate pueblo and gente. This prompted a
very interesting discussion about their own problems with the
term volk in German, which, as you know better than me, is
very problematic. My response, in terms of political rather than
theoretical intervention, was that naming and the hegemonic


constituency can work through different words, as long as they

are not already securely pinned down by the powerful, and can
be used to designate a new popular will of universal reach.
While I dont know enough about the Austrian and German
political and cultural system to get involved in that theoretical
discussion, the bottom line is the same: the need for a careful
analysis of the cultural and semantic cracks in which you can
locate the counter-hegemonic project. I think its more impor-
tant to pay attention to the modes of articulation than to copy
words from one experience to another.

CM: Yes, I know in Germany and Austria they have a problem

with das Volk and many people try to use die Bevlkerung
the population instead. Ive had many discussions about that
there, but I always argue against it and insist that it doesnt
seem appropriate, because the population is not a political

E: The population is not a political concept?

CM: No, population is a sociological concept that refers to an

aggregation of individuals.

E: But if it had an outside, if it had a them, it would be one,

wouldnt it?

CM: I dont see how you could imagine an outside of popula-

tion. What would be the them? Its not a type of distinction
that can be used in a political way to establish a frontier.

E: I understand, but in Spain gente didnt use to be one

either and yet, now its operating as a political concept.


When we write on a sticker or poster es la hora de la gente

[Its the time of people] and its a successful appeal, which
says something to people and mobilises them: what makes it
a political concept? the fact that weve drawn an outside,
that it isnt all-embracing and empty. No, not everybody is
common people, unentitled, those who need be united to
change things. In that sense, and even though it might sound
harsh, the rhetorical construction establishes a difference:
theres gente and then theres casta. What I mean to say is
that it used to be an amorphous and empty term, but it has
now become part of a polarity, because weve defined it in
terms of an outside. This helps to understand the issue of
signifiers and how discourse constructs meaning and political

CM: Well, Im ready to accept that gente can work as a

political concept, but why dont you use terms like pueblo or
ciudadana [citizenry] instead?

E: We oscillate between ciudadana, pueblo, and gente.

Pueblo sounds somewhat archaic in Spanish political
language, and Francoism used it for a long time as a homo-
geneous will that doesnt need parties to represent it. Its
thus a term that comes out during mobilisations, in moments
of great political emotion, but its not commonly used.
Ciudadana works quite well but is softer; it certainly has
less epic connotations, and until recently although that
might be changing now it has been more anchored to the
institutional discourse. In any case, its a term in dispute, a
dispute which is by no means unimportant. I maintain that
ciudadana can be reclaimed as a central point in a repub-
lican discourse (republican in terms of political theory, not


just in relation to the Head of State), one that reconciles the

popular with the institutional and its responsibility in times
of change.

CM: I understand your point of view, but you can say the
Spanish pueblo but not the Spanish gente.

E: No, you would say la gente de este pas [the people of

this country]. Its high time the people of this country had
a government at their service and not at the service of the
privileged Ive said that thousands of times. Ciudadana
works when discussing strategy. For instance, in the strategy
document for the local elections, we said construir candida-
turas de unidad popular y ciudadana [building candidacies
of popular and citizen unity]; we united the two concepts, as
there is a popular and collective component to the campaign,
but also a component of outraged but more individualised
citizens. I think the modernisation and institutionalisa-
tion processes have been successful in creating citizens and
deconstructing the people. That is, it has created a society
of individualised citizens, and its probably those we address
the most. Thus, ciudadana is our most commonly used
term, the one thats seen as most normal, because it also
has a civic-democratic republican component (in the political
theory sense, not in terms of state form), which works very
well, but it only works because it has an outside. That is, the
point is not that the concept ciudadana works very well, the
point is that it works because it has casta or oligarchy on
the other side.
I think weve been very undogmatic in our use of terms:
weve tested them, and seen which terms could mobilise or
articulate which type of interests and desires. This all turns


on a crucial question for us: how to read particular cultural

contexts their consensuses, their cracks and how to elab-
orate strategies adapted to each specific condition. In this
case, it is through a careful consideration of the construction
of meanings on which hegemony and its floating signifiers

CM: In the hegemonic struggle to re-articulate the key signifiers

we must always take into account the adversarys response.
In the case of Podemos its clear that theyre not only doing
everything in their power to delegitimise and discredit you,
but they are also to trying to copy some of your proposals,
while draining them of their subversive character. Could you
say that they are, in a typically transformist way, trying to use
the emergence of Podemos to rejuvenate themselves? How do
you see that possibility?

E: We shouldnt underestimate the capacity of a well-settled

regime, even a worn-out one, for recovering the initiative and
restoring trust. We are speaking of a regime, that of 1978,
that is based on a generational story that still commands
important loyalties among the oldest sectors of the popula-
tion, especially in the less populated provinces (which, thanks
to an electoral system expressly designed for this purpose,
have more political weight). This is a regime that has built
intellectual and media structures that until recently have
defined what could or could not have a public existence, that
has a well-oiled civil society, and that has at its disposal the
plentiful resources of effective public administration and
economic power. Its not a good idea to underestimate the
adversary. In fact, it is rather exceptional for the powerful
to see their hegemony threatened like this. Their anxiety,


despite the modesty of the challenge, speaks clearly of how

unaccustomed they are to being challenged.
Theres certainly plenty of possibilities for a strategy that
seeks both to sustain the old actors, despite their weakening
power, and at the same time to revivify and broaden the party
of order as Gramsci called it through the incorporation
of new content and new faces. The traditional actors have
learnt that they must no longer look like themselves. In this
crisis of the party system, it may even be possible for some
proponents of conservative regeneration to gain traction, if
they present themselves as a replacement seeking to hegem-
onise the criticisms of politicians, while ignoring the role
of the privileged minority and the economic power that our
representatives have been serving. We wouldnt be facing a
hegemonic power if it simply rejected the new, if it didnt have
some capacity to listen, learn and adapt, and to incorporate-
deactivate criticisms.

CM: In relation to the monarchy, whats your position?

E: Well, it isnt as decisive a question in Spanish politics as

people abroad think. Its important, and weve said were
a democratic force, and therefore a democratic country

CM: But have you ever thought of holding a referendum?

E: Yes, of course. When the monarchic succession took

place, in June 2014 largely driven, I think, by the will to
reform in anticipation of an uncertain year we said were a
democratic force and that means that in a country of mature
citizens, the Head of State should be somebody elected by


citizens anything else is medieval.12 I dont think thats

a central issue for political change in Spain. But something
that might be is the potential role of the monarchy in safe-
guarding the old balance of power. In the discussion about
the succession, we clearly saw the need, the intention, of the
most conservative sections of elite to return to the framework
of the Republic-Monarchy debate. Why? Because that would
take the discussion back to the memory of the Spanish Civil
War a scenario which would allow the elite to block polit-
ical discussion. This is a scenario that scares the elderly, and
which doesnt mean so much to the young, as it happened a
long time ago. While were clear on what side wed take in
such an argument, we also know that nostalgia doesnt win
battles, but that defeats unfortunately do build defeat. This
is not an appeal to bury the whole subject, its an appeal to
fight within the terms of the time, and in the best conditions
for building a new majority that sees the current cycle as
closed though not as historically invalid with everything
that that involves.
The words which the adversary wants to use and the ones
we want to use are quite probably the most useful indicator of
where the battle lines of meaning, of political confrontation,
currently are. What the adversary wants, what it needs to talk
about, and conversely, what terms we want to discuss. That
we is not a party-based we, it refers to all those sectors that
havent felt represented. Its interesting to note that when 15M
started, in the first camps in Puerta del Sol, right-wing journal-
ists asked people there about their position on terrorism, and
people replied: what are you talking about, Im against it, but

12 King Juan Carlos, whose reign began in 1975 as part of the new con-
stitution, abdicated in June 2014 and was succeeded by his son Felipe.


what Im talking about here is how I want to have the right to

a home, and to have a decent job.
The old elites needed to take the political discussion back
to the topics they could still use to articulate a majority. Even
when those topics were no longer on the agenda, they had to
put them back on it, because only by doing so they could still
represent a broad majority. Thats something we constantly
have to confront: the need on the part of the regime and
its actors to take the topics that worry Spanish people the
most out of circulation; their need to move the discussion
into places where fear will allow them to deactivate the urge
for change.

CM: Is the monarchy a topic that doesnt particularly interest

people? Isnt there a debate about it?

E: Not much, I think. There is a part of the left that is very

interested in it, but its not the central topic. Its been a while
since people really discussed the institution. Opinion polls
make sure not to ask about it either. Thus, I am not sure. I
think they conducted a very good operation, and included
some components of passive revolution, in the sense that
they asked themselves: what are people asking for? renova-
tion? Good, then lets change the king to save and strengthen
the monarchy. Well install this king, who is young, and
not suspected of corruption. It was a relatively successful
operation that renovated the image without touching the
institution. In any case, its not something that is central to
Podemos discussion.


15. Chains of equivalence and the construction

of a people

CM: Going back to the issue of right/left, which I see as central

to our discussion, I wonder if we shouldnt distinguish between
different uses of that distinction. There is a use linked to the
existence of parties which can be expressed as a horizontal axis.
Its origin lies in a conception of politics as the representation
of the interests of relatively homogenous sociological groups
by different parties; from which one would expect a political
performance corresponding to those interests. This is a perspec-
tive which may prompt very essentialist interpretations, but
that doesnt necessarily have to be the case. For this horizontal-
axis distinction to be politically pertinent and allow an us/them
confrontation, it requires the existence of groups with relatively
homogeneous interests, and a real ideological confrontation
between right and left, which has virtually disappeared in a
time of consensus at the centre. Thats the reason why many
people feel increasingly less represented by those positions. In
that sense, I would agree that its a distinction which has lost its
validity to establish an agonistic political frontier.
But there is another sense of the notion of left which I
think is still relevant: that which corresponds to the axis
opposing those below and those above. Gente as opposed to
casta, as you say. Its a different type of frontier which can
be constructed in very different ways. In actuality, its much
more flexible than any conception based on socio-economic
interests. Thats why in this case its so important how the us,
the people, is constructed, because some constructions can be
clearly harmful to democracy.


Incidentally, any frontier entails forms of exclusion, and

seeing who is excluded is a key criterion for assessing the
progressive character of the us. To me, the fundamental
difference between right- and left-wing populisms lies in the
nature of the chains of equivalence by which the people is
constructed. Its because of these different ways of constructing
the people as a collective will that I think the reference to the
left cannot be abandoned, as it carries notions of social justice
and radicalisation of democracy. Sure, one could use another
word, but if we accept Norberto Bobbios view that the central
connotation of this notion of left is the idea of equality, I
think it remains central to the political struggle and should
be kept. Thus, instead of abandoning valuable terms for the
political struggle because you dont like the way in which
they are being used, I think you should be fighting to resig-
nify them. Its an important part of the hegemonic struggle of

E: Thats an intellectual doubt I always have, an ever present

tension: to build new terms and symbols or to resignify existing
ones? Ultimately, terms are always resignified, as there are no
virgin terms; what Im referring to is the balance between a
words sedimented meaning and its possibilities for alternative
I think its a tension that cannot be resolved in the abstract
or in a laboratory, outside any context; it is one that unfolds
through a trial-error dynamic, through people testing, consid-
ering and discarding terms, and proposing new ones as they
confirm their power to explain what is happening and to
aggregate people around that explanation.
I understand what youre saying about the value of the term
left, but the movement for the emancipation of the dispos-


sessed, through equality and democracy, so that nobody is seen

as being of more value than anybody else, or has to live with
fear, is much older than the term left, and also exists in soci-
eties where the symbolic axis of European parliamentarism
isnt the one that defines loyalties. I dont have any problem
in recognising a part of this tradition, its in my DNA, but
the plebeian red thread is more heterogeneous and has been
constructed with different names.

CM: Theres no doubt that the term left belongs to a partic-

ular tradition and that in other contexts other names are used
to refer to the emancipation of the dispossessed. But you live
in Spain and have to operate from the central signifiers of the
European tradition. Thats why I think the hegemonic struggle
to resignify the notion of left is important.
From that perspective, an issue which I think is crucial is
that of the chains of equivalence weve previously mentioned.
We agree that to constitute a people its necessary to articu-
late a wide range of heterogeneous demands which do not
necessarily coalesce, and which might even be in conflict
with one another. Thats the key difference between the idea
of people and that of multitude, for, according to Hardt
and Negri, the latter doesnt require a political articulation.
To establish a true collective will with hegemonic aspira-
tions its necessary to transform the identities of those who
are going to enter the chain of equivalence, to create new
Its a complex process that can have several stages. An
important step is to define a common adversary, a them
that ensures the unity of the us, but thats not enough in a
hegemonic perspective. As has been seen in many cases in the
countries of the ex-socialist bloc, for instance, but also in the


Arab revolutions once the enemy is defeated the fight starts

amongst the groups that initially united against it.
Admittedly, in those cases it was a friend/enemy type struggle,
rather than an agonistic one between adversaries. In agonistic
struggles, in order to ensure their success (their capacity to
not just bring down a government, but also establish a new
hegemony), its necessary to build a true collective will. That
requires what Gramsci calls a moral and intellectual reform,
which to him means a profound transformation of common
sense and of the forms of subjectivity. Only in this way will we
be able to secure the chain of equivalence between heteroge-
neous demands. What stage are you in? The first one, where
the movement is united by the common rejection of the casta?

E: I think were already one step beyond what you describe.

There is a certain chain of equivalence, born largely from the
cycle opened by 15M, and their they dont represent us
which, although not a new slogan, only became widespread
from then. There has been a crystallisation of that chain
into certain reference points mostly about leadership, but
also about symbols and milestones. The hope of victory has
played a key role in this after the impasse in the protest
cycle that could have led to demoralisation and this has
also made us leave behind certain discussions about the finer
points and sectarian differences. The frenzied reaction of the
powerful has also simplified the political field, making the
options clearer. All of this has already happened, but were
still a few steps away from becoming a general will, or a will
with hegemonic capacity, in a project for the country capable
of becoming a state. But were no longer talking about pure
rejection, weve gone beyond the bringing together of a range
of discontent and feelings of opposition.


CM: But is there a collective will, even in embryonic form?

E: Id say timidly so. It has reference points, leadership,

vocabulary; it has milestones or is starting to have them.
Its beginning to have a project for the country, though this
has to be strengthened with the incorporation of general and
group experiences from many civil and professional sectors.
All of that must happen simultaneously and in a hurry,
under the constant fire of the adversary. We need to build
ourselves organisationally, and through the aggregation of
crucial electoral contests quite a challenge in these vertigi-
nous times. When in May 2014 we had an unexpected result
in the European elections 1,250,000 votes and 5 MEPs
a new phase began. Until then we had struggled to make
ourselves visible, to become a block of contestation albeit
one with a clear will for victory as part of that hypothesis,
perhaps insolent, derived from our political analysis. But then
something new began: we rapidly became the receptor and
articulator of a wide range of popular hopes, with the respon-
sibility that brought of building ourselves as a political force
that had the capacity to rise to the challenge. At the same
time, however, a campaign of harassment and persecution by
the regimes forces began, of a kind that I dont think has been
seen at a national level for a very long time.
The establishment was slow to react, and tried out different
responses, finding out which ones had the greatest capacity to
contain our progress. They adopted delaying tactics, and tried
to force us into a battle of trenches and attrition, including
at the personal level, in an attempt to slow down or disperse
the impetus towards breaking down the existing order. Our
adversaries concentrated their hopes on containment, buying
themselves some time while they regrouped forces, in the


hope that inertia and the traditional power structure would

play into their hands, and they focused a great deal of their
efforts on creating demoralisation. For us, the main goal is
still to solidify the will for change; to articulate it into an
alternative national project; to respond to the trust placed in
us; and to keep reaching out, in alliances that cut across tradi-
tional divisions in the political arena because the popular
bloc and new majority need the support of those who still
trust the traditional actors. From the beginning weve faced
this challenge, this historical moment, with both humility and
audacity. Humility because David only occasionally defeats
Goliath. Audacity because he cannot defeat him without
daring to do so.
And in the meantime, there is a set of basic tasks for assem-
bling the raw material, the building blocks, of our project, at the
educational, organisational and cultural levels. One example
here is the need to remedy the dramatic absence of a flag for
the construction of the national-popular. Most people with a
desire for change dont have a flag that moves them or arent
sure if they have one, or what it would be if they did. This is
because of the difficulties around Spanish national identity,
which was hegemonised for many decades by the right, and
was built in opposition to our countrys pluri-nationality.

CM: What sort of flag do you think could represent that alter-
native national project?

E: I seriously doubt that the tricolour from the Second Spanish

Republic would work for a new democratic national-popular
identity. And I say this with the greatest respect for that histor-
ical experience. Its mostly a flag of nostalgia: the current
crisis of the regime results from its own exhaustion; it has not


resulted from a contestation of its past and founding narra-

tives. Today the republican flag doesnt serve that purpose.
One identifies with a flag because of the emotional load it
carries, and its capacity to gather around itself a political
will, a hope. Not because of nostalgia or its value as a piece
of collectible memorabilia. The issue in Spain is whether its
possible to build a national narrative at the service of subaltern
majorities that is also respectful of pluri-nationality and the
right to decide and what would be its symbolic expression.
This seems to me a first-order question, not at all incidental.
I think it will gradually be decided in a process of popular

CM: How do you imagine the months ahead, with all the
electoral battles youll have to face? What do you think are
the main obstacles Podemos will face if it is to be able to
successfully realise that project of popular constitution and
democratic rupture?

E: The nature, rhythm and priorities of the tasks and diffi-

culties of the emancipatory project will be determined during
the course of the dispute, by the way it develops, and by the
changes in the balance of forces between the advocates of
democratic rupture and those defending the restoration of the
elitist order. Podemos was born out of a politico-intellectual
hypothesis that allowed us to launch a risky project defying
the lineal logic of force accumulation. This hypothesis, as
weve already discussed, was based on an analysis of the legit-
imacy crisis of the traditional elite, and of the organic crisis of
the institutional system crises that had emerged not because
of revolutionary contestation, but because the system wasnt
capable of keeping its own promises and expectations. In that


context, there were elements in the common sense of the time

still largely presided over by the world view of those above
that could be rearticulated as a different popular majority for
change, one that prioritised peoples needs and gave a progres-
sive direction to feelings of exhaustion with the old . Such a
new discourse, needless to say, had to choose between navi-
gating the ambivalences of its time or resigning itself to a role
as an external spectator.
Podemos chose to take its hypothesis onto the immediately
less gratifying ground: that of its practical confirmation. We
chose to take full advantage of a deep but narrow window of
opportunity, characterised by the momentary paralysis of the
ruling intellectual and political sectors of the 1978 regime.
When Podemos faced its first milestone of internal construc-
tion, at Vistalegre, it took a risky political and organisational
decision: to set up an electoral war machine, an agile instru-
ment for a short cycle. This wasnt because we had a preference
for rushing things, but we had an explicit desire to take full
advantage of the possibilities of the moment of organic crisis
and indecision from those above. We wanted to avoiding
wishful thinking, but to act with audacity. Thats why we
chose an organisational model and strategy designed for an
electoral blitzkrieg, a rapidly constructed electoral organi-
sation before the existing large political machines could
reassert themselves over the general feeling of resignation.
It wasnt an aesthetic or an ideological choice, but a choice
informed by our aspiration for power, based on a conjunc-
tural national analysis. It didnt exclude long-term tasks, but,
equally, it didnt use them as a convenient excuse for inaction
in the short term; our priorities were swiftly fixed. The main
and long-term task was to build a people, but it is undeniable
that this is more easily done when some parts of the institu-


tions of the state are favourably disposed towards you. And

there are times in which whole months can elapse in days.
For many months, the irruption of Podemos has disrupted
all the settled plans of Spanish politics. Its caused anxiety
amongst the oligarchy; it has shown how fragile some suppos-
edly robust positions actually were; and its precipitated
processes of regeneration and renovation. It has opened a new
horizon, making change imaginable, tangible, thinkable, for
millions of Spaniards, in a wave of plebeian hope people like
me can win which is always a sine qua non for great change.
Politics has started moving again.
The battle lines will keep changing, and its possible that after
a phase of accelerated war of position, a war of manoeuvre
will follow. But conditions are already different, much more
advanced, thanks to these vertiginous months: the flow of
popular excitement, the growth of the organisation with its
inevitable ups and downs and specific lessons the new confi-
dence of those below, the rift opened in the party system and
the 1978 regime. Obviously, not all the contesting forces are in
place, and it is difficult to predict the next stages of the dispute
between democratic change and oligarchic restoration. From
now on, those working for popular sovereignty will also have
to adapt, defend and advance the institutional positions they
have conquered. At the same time, theyll also have to bed in
the ideas, projects and people that will be able to organise a
project for the country that puts its social majorities at the

Building the people
Afterword to the English edition

igo Errejn

This book defends a theoretical hypothesis, but also consti-

tutes a bold experiment: the presentation of that hypothesis
through the discussion of a specific and developing political
actor Podemos that draws from it. It would undoubtedly
have been easier to have had a theoretical discussion with
occasional links to political realities, or, at the other end of
the spectrum, a description of a political initiative with the
theoretical references confined to a few footnotes. That would
have resulted either in a book about the populist hypoth-
esis or one about the Podemos phenomenon. Instead we
decided without really thinking too much about it to walk
between two cliffs: abjuring both pure and abstract specula-
tion, removed from real conflicts (and their contradictions),
and a merely descriptive account of politicking and manage-
ment, topical issues and the current scenario. The result is a
militant and intellectual reflection on, and assertion of: (1)
a way of understanding politics from the point of view of
hegemony theory; (2) a proposal for the reconstruction of an
emancipatory and radically democratic project, which for us
entails understanding the importance of populist passions for
transformative politics; and (3) the political force that has so
shaken up the Spanish political scene, opening up the prospect


of change towards greater social justice, popular sovereignty

and the democratisation of the political system.
The book was published in Spain just before the summer of
2015 a year after the irruption of Podemos in the European
elections of 25 May 2014. During that year we had already
taken decisive, and often difficult, steps towards building
ourselves as a political organisation across the country, at
all levels of organisation. This process had a goal: to build
our organisation with great rapidity at a pace defined
by the adversary so that by the time of the general elec-
tions in December 2015 we would be ready to constitute an
alternative majority and an alternative power. That meant
prioritising certain tasks over others in particular overthose
of longer-term cultural construction, articulation of apopular
movement, or cadre politics in order to stage an accelerated
challenge within the short electoral cycle.
At the same time, a defining feature of Podemos from the
very beginning was the importance it attached to the idea of
building a hegemonic project, and the struggle to create shared
meanings. Two main developments came out of our project to
become a hegemonic force.
On the one hand, our story transformed the political
agenda in Spain, politicising the crisis and clearly indicating
who was responsible for it. We built an oppositional force, a
potential new popular will for national renewal. Discussions
about inequality, Spains submission to the Troikas adjust-
ment policies, the oligarchic hijack of the institutions, and
the collusion, corruption and incompetence of the old elites
became commonplace on television, in public pronounce-
ments, and in conversations in bars and workplaces. And, of
all our discursive conquests, the one that most captured the
Spanish collective imagination was without a doubt the term


casta. Casta gave a name to a them that was already visibly

emerging from 2011 and the beginning of all the mobilisations
and it necessitated the construction of a new us. The enor-
mous cultural earthquake unleashed by the 15M movement
the indignados had already established the precondi-
tions that, in the absence of any institutional response to the
increasing number of popular demands and the crisis of the
political system, enabled a populist articulation that sought
to bring together and unify the dissatisfactions and frustrated
aspirations of a new popular identity. All the political actors,
even the most conservative or reactionary, had to adapt to this
change in the landscape, and modify their language, policies,
and even aesthetics, if they were to avoid looking old in the
face of this growing, though still dispersed, desire for change.
On the other hand, while superficially accepting this new
atmosphere, and some of the new demands, the establishment
in a classic manoeuvre of passive revolution attempted
to deprive them of their anti-oligarchic content. It partly did
this through launching a massive and sustained campaign of
fear against Podemos, seeking to interrupt the wave of positive
response from the populace, and to stop such support from
expressing itself in votes. Despite the crudeness of its argu-
ments, this campaign should not be underestimated. If it had
not been for this fearmongering and the uncertainty it gener-
ated, through associating Podemos with extremist threats from
other times and places, our support and growth would have
been even more extensive, especially amongst the sections of
the population least disposed towards change elderly citi-
zens and people living in the countrys interior. The traditional
elites in Spain partially accepted the need for change, but at
the same time committed very substantial resources to discred-
iting the force that had put change on the agenda.


Thus, the general election campaign took place at a difficult

time for Podemos, which had experienced a year and a half
of attrition in the thick of Spanish politics and been attacked
on many fronts, and also had had to deal with the political
dynamics of a period of rapid change, with all the contradic-
tions that brought. Nevertheless, in spite of the atmosphere
that had been orchestrated against us, our election campaign
succeeded in proving wrong the analysts and pollsters who
had announced the end of this anomalous phenomenon; we
made a come-back, through combining good work on the
political and media front with a political passion and plebeian
popular enthusiasm of a kind that had been long forgotten
in the tepid atmosphere of recent Spanish electoral compe-
tition. As our friend Owen Jones says in the preface to this
translation, Podemos brought into play a process of popular
excitement, hope and identification that brought a new sense
of possibility to Spanish politics and made it possible to cut
across traditional political positions.
After a surge of support as the campaign came to a close,
Podemos won over 5 million votes in the election, 21 per cent
of those who voted, becoming the third political force in Spain
only a point and a half behind PSOE. It came first in the
Basque Country and Catalunya, and second in a number of
regions that carry great political and economic weight, such as
Madrid and Valencia. The election produced a set of complex
and contradictory results, characteristic of a transitional time
between two political eras. On the one hand, the Popular Party
won the most votes in the elections, but it did not have enough
parliamentary support even with the help of Ciudadanos, a
force of neoliberal regenerationism to continue governing.
Moreover, the traditional parties that typically alternate
in government (PSOE and PP) only succeeded in attracting


just over half of the vote, though, partly thanks to a system

weighted towards the least populated provinces, it secured
them the two top positions in parliament.
These results portray a political system in the midst of
profound change, which for the moment manifests itself
through two unstable equilibriums. Firstly, there is the balance
of forces between, on the one hand, the most rural areas and
elderly sections of the population (which are today the most
solid supporters of the traditional parties) and, on the other,
the more urban regions and young adult populations, espe-
cially in Madrid and the peripheral regions where the party
system has already been drastically modified, so that the town
halls of the main cities in Spain (Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia,
Cdiz and A Corua) are in the hands of political change. And
secondly and connected to this balance of forces there is the
catastrophic draw that characterises Spanish politics today,
an impasse which means that, although democratic-popular
forces have opened up a space that makes it impossible to
go back to business as usual, conservative forces, while not
capable of restoring the status quo, are able to veto or limit
the advance of change though not without making changes
to the way the game of internal differences inside the regime
is played. The key feature of this moment is that neither the
forces of rupture nor those of restoration have enough strength
to lead the country out of the impasse, and all the possibilities
of governability involve compromises between forces of a very
different nature.
Regardless of the immediate outcome of the current nego-
tiations and the resulting government, it cant be denied that
Spain is in the midst of a process of political change caused
by regime crisis. This crisis involves both a crisis of legitimacy
of the elites and the traditional parties, and an economic and


social crisis resulting from adjustment policies, the weakening

of institutions and the oligarchisation of our political system.
Together with the rise of 15M, these conditions facilitated a
populist situation in Spain, a symbolic opposition between,
on the one hand the elites and the institutional ensemble, and,
on the other, a multiplicity of sectors and groups with not
much in common other than their frustrated demands and
their mistrust of those in power. The indignados movement
expressed and framed that suffering, created an opening, and
sent shock waves through the official country, showing the
power of the real country. Podemos observed those condi-
tions and proposed the articulation of an alternative narrative,
and an electoral and institutional horizon for that desire for
change. Since then, we have taken steps to build culturally,
affectively, symbolically that new political identity, and to
form the nucleus of a national-popular will that is capable of
turning the hopes and fears of those below into the hopes and
fears of a new country, the foundations of a new historical
bloc. This is an ongoing story as we write.
At the same time, the development of a national-popular
and democratic project in a European Union country takes
place in a set of conditions and possibilities for development
that is very different from those in countries where there
is also a state crisis of monopoly over violence, territo-
rial management or the ability of public administrations to
produce certainty. We might say that the depth and speed of
the processes of change in each country have been in direct
proportion to the degree of its collapse or institutional decom-
position, but are also related to the ability of those working
for change from an initial position of subalternity to build
a people and begin to reorder their countrys political map.
Beyond the Podemos experience, which is not transposable,


and in no way offers a solution to the specifically national

issues of any political process, this book seeks to make a
contribution to a new perspective that brings together the best
currently available efforts and reflections for the construc-
tion of a progressive, popular and emancipatory hegemony
in Europe. The oligarchic advance has emptied out the
terms of the post-war constitutional and social settlement; it
has restricted popular sovereignty while at the same time
inflating the populism ghost and handed over many aspects
of human society to predatory private powers that are not
accountable to anybody. To counter this, we need to recover
a sense of politics, and a passion for a democratic revolution,
which is always born from we the people that is always the
originary statement construction of a people that demands
sovereignty and a new social contract. Such a revitalisation of
politics requires us to think about the affective, mythical and
cultural components of any identity construction, and thus to
abandon a fetishism about labels and programmes and pay
greater attention to metaphors and passions. It also requires
us to consider the routes and agendas of a possible war of
position inside the state. As we say in this book, this involves
imitating neoliberalism, but for the opposite ends: building
new majorities so that the progressive governments of the
future can institute a set of transformations and reforms such
that, even when they subsequently lose power and they all
lose power eventually their adversaries will have to govern
in a very similar way to their predecessors. In other words,
we need to build a new everydayness that can pervade the
cultural terrain, as well as public administration, the social
fabric and the socio-economic model, so that limits are put on
the possibilities of oligarchic regression, and we increase the
potential for advancing in a popular and democratic direction.


I will end with one last point. The modest victories Podemos
may have achieved in its mere two years of existence have
happened because of its ability to avoid the temptation (and
this has meant turning a deaf ear to well-meaning advice
from right and left) of looking into manuals old or new
in search of the exact recipe for the specific scenario for our
organisation and growth. The recognition of contingency as
a central fact of politics of the need to evaluate and rethink
in each moment the question of what to do, without falling
into cynical tactical manoeuvring is the best lesson we can
extract from our short experience. I hope that in this books
previous pages, the reader has encountered, not a manual, but
some clues.