By Mario Candeias

August 26, 2019 "Information Clearing House" -   We live in the age of monsters. As the organic crisis of the old neoliberal project of globalization continues, nearly everywhere in Europe—but also in the US, Latin America, Asia, and Africa—we are seeing the rise of an authoritarian and radical right wing. However, the monsters are downright diverse: there are “strong men” like Trump, Kurz, Duterte, or even Macron—political impresarios who are giving shape to a new authoritarianism while in government. Common to all of them is a “top-down” anti-establishment discourse, backed up by powerful segments of the capitalist class. These ought to be distinguished from the authoritarian-nationalist regimes in Poland and Hungary, as well as those of a religious-nationalist character, as in Turkey or India. The latter should in turn be distinguished from the radical right, such as the National Front in France, Geerd Wilders’s Party for Freedom (PVV), or the Alternative for Germany party (AfD)—as well as from the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) or the Lega Nord in Italy, both of which are currently in government. The Italian Five Star Movement is completely different again. Then there are military governments, as in Thailand, or governments backed by the military, notably Bolsonaro’s Brazil. The list of examples could be continued; the authoritarian and radical right is multifarious. The Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung has established a global post-doctoral study programme on the subject.[1]

How can the rise of the radical right be understood? The following are a few theses (intended as a starting-point for further research)—developed not exclusively, although mainly, out of analyses of the US and Europe, and hence to be applied to other countries only with caution and further questions.

1. Nothing in common?: The question is not whether or not there is a global authoritarianism. The object is complex, heterogeneous, and highly dynamic, and eludes unitary explanation or even definition. And yet it would be insufficient to proceed on the basis of a juxtaposition of unrelated specific cases. Are the ultra-liberals (Austria), the racists (Italy), the social nationalists (Poland, and in some ways Hungary), the hyper-authoritarians (Turkey), the military taking care of public order (Egypt and Thailand), the military government in democratic guise (Brazil), the government in a state of emergency (Ethiopia with no opposition in the parliament, and possibly France), and the religious-nationalists (India) all different cases, which otherwise have nothing in common? We should rather seek to clarify what is specific to each situation and what unites them, so that cautious generalizations can be made.

2. Why now?: There have of course always been forms of authoritarian rule (cf. Marx’s 18th Brumaire), about which the Left has developed a rich corpus of theory. Thus the question is not whether this kind of authoritarianism exists; it always has. Rather, what are the specific conditions which give it global social importance and historical effectiveness today? How has this phenomenon been able to become so significant precisely now?

3. Crisis: Central to the current moment is the coincidence between an organic crisis of a specific, global mode of social production and reproduction (so-called neoliberal globalization) and the emergence, in the interregnum, of forms of authoritarianism as specific ways of working through this crisis and winning back or securing power. These forms can be differentiated according to the position of each country within the global structures of valorization, according to the developments of capital accumulation and/or the global obstacles to the valorization of capital—the respective position of a national economy (and its crisis) provides clues to specific causes and contexts for determinate forms of authoritarianism in the respective country and/or to a typology of forms of rule.

4. Missed opportunities: An important factor contributing to the rise of the authoritarian and radical right is the limitation of social-democratic projects: a) of a post-neoliberal sort, in other words the redistribution of social wealth in a situation of very limited democratization, but above all with no reconstruction of the bases of production and reproduction (from Venezuela to Brazil), b) of a progressive neoliberal sort, in other words the preservation of (limited) freedoms and progressive gains, without intervention in the meteoric transformation of the economic structure, and without downward redistribution (social democracy, left-liberals, and sometimes Christian democracy in the North). The disappointment over social democracy and/or the post-neoliberal Left, as well as the inefficacy and exhaustion of radical ruptures (the various liberation movements) and failed revolutions (North Africa), has led in many places to a rightward turn by parts of the subalterns, but even more frequently to ademobilization that is asymmetrical in terms of class politics, and to electoral abstention (in those countries where elections are still taking place).