Podemos’ twofold assault on hegemony: The possibilities of the post-modern prince and the perils of passive revolution

Abstract

In this chapter I examine theoretical and practical elements of the discourse of Spanish political party Podemos as a lens through which I make sense of competing understandings of hegemony that propel its project and envisioning, namely Gramscian and Laclau-Mouffian ones. On the one hand, Podemos draws on Gramsci in the combination of two forms of political realm in the “integral state”; the involvement of the masses in a national popular movement; and the expansion of the struggle on multiple fronts such as political, economic, cultural, and social. On the other, Podemos has also incorporated Laclau and Mouffe’s precepts on the need to go beyond class and politico-economic essentialism; the understanding of a contingent, unstable, and rhetorically/discursive hegemony; on the replacement of a well-defined ideology with transversalism;and finally on aggregating empty signifiers. After a review of those elements, I try to make sense of their combination in terms of two different emphases on ‘unity’and ‘difference,‘and of possible outcomes of their coexistence via the notions of a post-modern prince and passive revolution.