ABSTRACT
This chapter explores more closely the key features of postmarxist theory as a way of establishing its basis and as it applies to the social. It offers a simple description of the thesis set out by Laclau that argues for the impossibility of society by examining the definitions of the social, the political and society and then later to explore the way concepts such as identity, difference, discourse, antagonism, hegemony and equivalence are defined and applied. In Laclau's postmarxist theory, one of the key objectives has been to destabilise the relationship between the social and the political. The construction and organisation of social and political action come as a consequence of the development of meaning operating within social relations and expressed via language and speech. The essentialism is the classical Marxist aspiration for the proletariat. This is the only group identity with the potential for purity.
