ABSTRACT
The economic and policy dilemmas posed for the welfare state by globalization robbed American liberalism and European social democracy of the political hegemony they held from the mid-1960s into the late 1970s. One can make a strong argument that neither political tendency has yet to discover a new material and policy basis for a majoritarian politics. Yet, neither have advocates of a “postmodern agonal politics” or a radical “politics of difference”– both of which assume the demise of a liberal or social democratic politics-developed a public philosophy and political strategy that can underpin a new “post-material” majoritarian politics. Radical democratic theory and practice today need not choose between the false antinomy of universality versus particularism, but must reconceptualize a politics that creates solidarity across difference. The “universal” project of achieving civil, political, and social rights has not been transcended by “difference,” but remains a prerequisite for a democratic polity that values both pluralism and social equality. Nor have “material” politics been transcended by the “qualitative” demands of race, gender, and sexual emancipation. For absent the social right of each individual to fulfill his or her human potential, other forms of emancipation that are not solely materially-based cannot be fully achieved.
