The great dispute over the political direction of the country is also taking place in the conceptualization of the crisis: what has been characterized as polarization is nothing more than the application of the method of agonism or conflict theory that reveals a dispute over social hegemony between the centrist consensus model that benefits conservatism and a new correlation in favor of the benefit of the popular social classes sacrificed by the agreement in the proprietary elites.
This consensualist approach to interpreting reality that served as justification for Salina’s neoliberal policy from 1983 to 2018 would explain President López Obrador’s reasons for building a conflict scenario that could close the contradictions and strengthen his social economy proposal with popular benefits.
The agonism model, which defines the dispute or conflict between two currents with conflicting interests, has greater political content than the conservative argumentation of social polarization or antagonism, as it deals with proposals that have nothing to do with the mode of production. , but they do directly involve the mechanisms and objectives of wealth distribution.
The theory of agonism was explored by the political scientist Chantal Mouffe, together with her colleague Ernesto Laclau, in the investigations about a political theory of populism far beyond the conservative argumentation of building personal leadership.
The model of agonism explains the reasons for the rearrangement of political and economic adversaries: on the one hand, the State and a leading group that has built a policy of social distribution of wealth via subsidies; on the other side, the neoconservative coalition of the three opposition parties –PRI, PAN and the Chuchos Party- under the ideological and political direction of Coparmex and the anti-statist businessman Claudio X. González. The neoconservative coalition presents an organic alliance that involves masses and ideology.
One of the great battles between the lopezobradorista social-popular group and the neoconservative coalition is taking place in the fight for the National Electoral Institute, as this body has served as an instrument to contain democratic forms alien to the model of procedural democracy with arguments ideological consensus between opposites and control mechanism of social extremes.
The proposals regarding the electoral reform are very clear: maintain the current model of authoritarian and exclusive control of procedural democracy based on consensus and the construction of a centrism that unites extremes or strengthen the electoral authority to stimulate social participation and open institutional doors to participatory democracy directly.
In this scenario, the conflicts around the INE and the electoral reform are expressing a dispute for political hegemony, that is, the construction of a political block of power to benefit the institutional elite through an unrestricted division among the masses of voters. and the ruling class, while President López Obrador’s proposal turns the social masses into beneficiaries of popular budgetary policies and involves them as guarantors of the functioning of the ruling class.
In theoretical terms, it would be a dispute between representative democracy –separate leaders and masses– and participatory democracy –masses conditioning the functioning of the leaders–, with public marches as an element of involvement of the bases in the leader activities. The model of agonism ends with the myth of the democratic model of centrism that has always benefited the elites over the masses and brings a new proposal for the exercise of the Government and power to a kind of popular plebiscite seeking the responsible involvement of the masses in decisions.
As an instrument of response, the conservative coalition wants to turn agonism — the conflict as a war of positions — into antagonism or a fight without rules that disputes power, trying to characterize it as a social struggle of excluding classes.
This is the scenario in which the country finds itself and which presents a dispute for the hegemony or the political direction of the State and society between a proposal with popular bases and a coalition of elitist interests that hides in representative democracy a way of assuming to the masses as a mass.
Policy for dummies: Politics is the ideological direction of society.
The content of this column is the sole responsibility of the columnist and not of the newspaper that publishes it.
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