All posts by IKPS

F&L Blog – Who Will Fight for Anti-Fascist Economics?

October 15, 2026F&L Bloganti-fascist economics, capitalism, social-ecological transformation, transformative cellsIKPS

Who will fight for Anti-Fascist Economics? The Role of Transformative Cells in the Face of a Regressive State

by Ulrich Brand

15.10.2026

Progressive proposals for improving the lives of the many often leave the question of how to transform power structures unaddressed. Similarly, recent proposals for an anti-fascist economics tend to portray the state as a benign actor driving progressive transformations. Challenging this view, Ulrich Brand argues that the state should instead be understood as a condensation of capitalist power relations. Based on this understanding, he proposes building power within and beyond the state through “transformative cells” – formal and informal networks within organizations that share the goal of advancing social-ecological transformations, be it in trade unions, schools, workplaces, government agencies, or other organizations. According to Brand, we must not underestimate the many ways in which transformative cells can strategically use their room for maneuver to shift power relations over the medium and long term.

Progressive political forces have good reason to view the future with little optimism given the rise in geopolitical tensions and armed conflicts, the enormous increase in power wielded by the super-rich, and the escalating ecological crisis. Nevertheless, many debates are underway and proposals are being put forward on how to strengthen emancipatory causes and, in turn, shift the balance of power.

There is thus no shortage of proposals and initiatives aimed at improving the lives of the many. Yet what is currently lacking is the political power to implement a progressive socio-ecological agenda. This raises several questions: How can the prevailing power and wealth structures be transformed? In what ways can concrete alternatives be developed on a small scale, as well as at a societal and even international level? And how can existing approaches be strengthened?

Weber’s Anti-Fascist Economics and the Problem of Power

This is where the currently important discussions around “anti-fascist economics” – shaped by Isabella Weber – come into play. Through measures such as combating inflation, imposing a tax on excess profits, implementing price controls, and expanding public goods, the aim is to curb powerful interests and improve the lives of the many. Sabine Nuss and Michael Heinrich, however, criticize these left-Keynesian proposals for not sufficiently distinguishing themselves from the bourgeois narrative of harmonious national communities of production and shared interests, united against competitors such as China [1]. Accordingly, the authors warn of the dangers of a politically progressive economic nationalism.

In my view, the proposals for an anti-fascist economics seem somewhat traditionalist; for example, they fail to recognize the significance of the escalating climate crisis. On the other hand, the state’s role as a regulator and protagonist of antifascist economics strikes me as portrayed in too positive a light. The idea of “the good state versus the problematic market” rests on a strong assumption. It is oversimplified, because the state not only drives the radicalization and brutalization of capitalism but also promotes reactionary – and even fascist – policies, as in the field of migration policy. The extent to which Weber addresses these arguments remains to be seen in her forthcoming book.

To avoid any misunderstanding, the state – or rather, the various state apparatuses at the international, supranational, national, regional, and local levels – possesses specific regulatory powers. Despite the current unfavorable balance of power, the state could potentially counter (fossil) capital through its financial and administrative resources, through legislation, and the recognition and support of progressive actors. Shifts in the balance of power and in constellations of interests in favor of progressive social and ecological causes could be advanced and consolidated through state institutions.

But “the state” does not do these things as an autonomously acting agent that solves problems or acts in the interest of the common good, such as good living conditions for all. Rather, the state and its policies are themselves an expression of social struggles and capitalist, imperial, patriarchal, and racialized structures. And the actors engaged in these struggles have highly unequal resources at their disposal. The owners of vast fortunes and the top management of corporations decide on investments – and thus on jobs; they influence public opinion, organize through their associations, and produce knowledge through their think tanks.

The State as the Condensation of Capitalist Power Relations

Fifty years ago, in his groundbreaking work State, Power, Socialism, the Marxist political theorist Nicos Poulantzas developed the argument that the “general function of the state” consists in securing the conditions for capitalist reproduction [2]. It is a highly conflict-ridden process, the outcome of which is by no means guaranteed. Thus, the power of (fossil) capital can be challenged, but not simply through state policies. It requires a much broader process of social mobilization and change, which might then lead to shifting state policies.

According to Poulantzas, one reason for this is that the ruling classes and class factions also wield power through certain state apparatuses – or, rather, that their power “condenses” within them. Some members of the current federal government in Germany are a direct and brazen expression of how fossil capital is able to place its own people at the helm of key state apparatuses, as can currently be observed in the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. Conversely, according to Poulantzas, the ruled classes and their representatives – such as the trade unions – cannot count on similarly powerful state apparatuses. Even a Ministry of Social Affairs, while more open to the interests of the governed, remains closely tied to capitalist interests and logics.

Going beyond Poulantzas: The state, in its very structure, is a fossil-capitalist state – whether in its historically liberal “face” in the 19th and early 20th century, later in the form of a welfare state in both the West and the East, or, since the 1980s, in its neoliberal and, increasingly today, geo-economic orientation. The state is therefore structurally linked to the fossil-capitalist growth economy [3], from which it derives its resources and, not least, its legitimacy. This affects how progressive social and environmental concerns can be articulated within state apparatuses [4].

However, the Greek-French intellectual also pointed to “centers of opposition” within state apparatuses. These do indeed exist in many cases where individuals or groups within these apparatuses resist directives “from above” or “from outside” because, in their view, they are heading in the wrong direction: namely, toward promoting fossil fuels, slowing down the energy transition, pursuing anti-social or anti-immigration policies, or deepening inequalities between classes or genders.

Transformative Cells: Building Power Within and Beyond the State

"Conflicts over transformation play out not only within the state or at the societal level, but also within organizations."

Building on the previous reflections on the state and its capacity for governance, I want to outline a proposal for strengthening the capacity of progressive forces to act strategically. This is because conflicts over transformation play out not only within the state or at the societal level, but also within organizations. In our new book, Capitalism at the Limit: A Political Ecology of a World in Crisis, Markus Wissen and I refer to those groups and networks that seek to advance more ambitious social and ecological transformations as “transformative cells” [5], although this term is still tentative.

The underlying assumption is that the purposes and goals of various organizations – not only state apparatuses – are not set in stone but are contested. This means that most organizations are heterogeneous and contradictory. Many already have democratic internal structures and opportunities for participation, which can serve as entry points for progressive causes. This opens up room for maneuver within organizations that can be leveraged through smart strategies and tactics. Not all areas of an organization are always fully controllable “from above.” Individuals, groups, networks, or even departments possess knowledge, which can potentially be used to formulate and advance their own agendas. This offers opportunities to advance progressive social and environmental causes in workplaces, trade unions, government agencies, the media, schools, universities, associations, and other organizations.

“Transformative cells” is not a fixed term, but rather a designation for very diverse groups – both formal and informal networks within organizations – that specifically aim to strengthen the organization’s socio-ecological orientation. The term is intended to help committed actors become more self-aware and act with greater self-confidence. Transformative cells’ individual and collective capacity for action depends on a variety of factors, including their own knowledge and experience, networks within and outside the organization, motivation, as well as financial, time, and institutional resources. And certainly, it also requires some courage and the cultivation of a certain kind of rebellious subjectivity, both collective and individual, within the organization.

"Not all areas of an organization are always fully controllable “from above.” Individuals, groups, networks, or even departments possess knowledge, which can potentially be used to formulate and advance their own agendas."

Actors within transformative cells are connected by shared worldviews and a common understanding of their specific situation. In addition to trust, the ability to manage internal and external conflicts, and strategic and tactical acumen, a certain degree of internal cohesion is also essential. Openness and a willingness to learn are important, as is the ability not to be discouraged by setbacks – for example, when the response to the crisis of Germany’s automotive industry is a shift to military production rather than the production of sustainable public transportation. Good connections beyond the organization – that is, to progressive actors in other organizations – are also important to prevent being “swallowed up” by organizational rationalities, hierarchies, and priorities.

The specific goals and strategies for driving fundamental societal and ecological transformation are diverse and exploring them is a worthwhile endeavour. They include influencing organizational strategies and their implementation; fighting to secure a certain degree of autonomy, decision-making authority, and responsibility for the transformative unit (for example, in hiring or resource allocation); providing specific training for employees; democratizing the organization; and making fundamental and concrete alternatives imaginable. In this way, for example, those segments of the chemical industry that prioritize resource-efficient and environmentally friendly production could be strengthened, while curbing the expansion of unsustainable chemical practices.

Within organizations, transformative cells also have the potential to divide the opposition, at least partially delegitimize their agenda, and act as a “spanner in the works” for misguided projects. Motivation and self-confidence can likely be strengthened by the awareness of being part of a progressive movement. External networking with like-minded individuals, and, where appropriate, with the media certainly plays a role here. More broadly, keeping in mind the long-term goal of shifting societal power dynamics is central. To achieve this, it is important to have a “big-picture perspective” and an understanding of political and economic interconnections, as well as the intended and perhaps unintended consequences of one’s actions. Taking the political and power relations into account – such as austerity policies, the fears they generate, and the simultaneous concentration of wealth – makes it possible to formulate more appropriate strategies that are more likely to gain support.

"When widely entrenched and accepted discourses and worldviews begin to crumble [...] windows of opportunity open up that transformative cells must recognize, assess, and seize."

For the possibilities for progressive action within an organization also depend on broader societal conditions – for example, when a crisis leaves those in power unable to lead, address societal problems, or offer anything to subaltern groups. This can also happen when widely entrenched and accepted discourses and worldviews begin to crumble – such as the notion that the rich deserve their wealth or that economic growth ultimately benefits everyone. This opens up windows of opportunity that transformative cells must recognize, assess, and seize. A sense of social renewal – a widely shared, emotionally resonant experience that one’s own actions “make a difference” – also fosters the capacity for emancipatory action.

Not everything can be planned out in advance by transformative cells; many highly contingent situations arise in the course of the process itself – such as a change in leadership, unforeseen allies, or a higher-level policy shift. This can also happen when strategies to steer the organization toward a more ambitious social and ecological transformation begin to yield initial successes. Conflicts that are successfully resolved can thus become the driving force behind socio-ecological transformation processes.

The concept of “transformative cells” is no magic bullet for progressive, anti-fascist action under conditions marked by regressive dynamics that point in an entirely different socio-political direction. However, it can help foster self-understandings critical of existing power structures and enable actors to pursue the urgently needed structural transformations.

References

Nuss, S. and Heinrich, M. (2024, 27. November) ‘Antifaschistische Wirtschaftspolitik: Weg vom nationalen „Wir“’, nd. Link
Poulantzas, N. (1978) State, Power, Socialism. London: New Left Books.
Brand, U., Hausknost, D., Brad, A., Eyselein, G., Krams, M., Maneka, D., Pichler, M. and Schneider, E. (2025) ‘Structural limitations of the decarbonization state’, Nature Climate Change, 15(9), pp. 927–934. Link
For a closer examination, see the research approach to historical-materialist policy analysis in Brand, U., Krams, M., Lenikus, V. and Schneider, E. (2022) ‘Contours of historical-materialist policy analysis’, Critical Policy Studies, 16(3), pp. 279–296. Link
Brand, U. and Wissen, M. (2025) Capitalism at the Limit: A Political Ecology of a World in Crisis. Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 158–163.

Webinar – Capitalism, Care, and Housing

October 7, 2026MediaIKPS

WEBINAR: Capitalism, Care and Housing

When? 10 November, 6-8 p.m. CET
Where? Online via zoom
Please register beforehand via the zoom link:

Care and housing are among the most pressing social and political issues of our time. While access to affordable housing and comprehensive care is increasingly set under pressure, current crises also raise fundamental questions about the values that should guide their organisation: Should care and housing be treated primarily as commodities, or as essential foundations of democratic life and social well-being?

In this online conversation, Joan C. Tronto, Attila Melegh, Brigitte Aulenbacher, and Andreas Novy will explore the interconnections between capitalism, care and housing from different disciplinary perspectives.

Drawing on the ethics of care and her concept of a caring democracy, Joan C. Tronto will reflect on the democratic and ethical dimensions of care and housing. Attila Melegh will offer a historical-sociological perspective on long waves of the societal organisation of care and housing, examining their economic, political and social provision as well as the role of mixed economies. Brigitte Aulenbacher will address contemporary care crisis, the significance of care for sustainable organisation, and the ways in which the structural carelessness of capitalism endangers decent care. Andreas Novy will contribute insights from socioeconomics and housing research, including approaches inspired by the foundational economy that explore pathways towards a socio- ecological transformation.

Together, the speakers will discuss how care and housing can be reorganised beyond narrow economic imperatives and how they may become central pillars of a more just, sustainable and democratic society.

The conversation will be moderated by Fabienne Décieux and Raphael Deindl.

SPEAKERS:

Brigitte Aulenbacher, Prof. (ret.), Institute of Sociology, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria

Attila Melegh, Prof., Demographic Research Institute, Central Statistical Office. Budapest, Hungary

Andreas Novy, assoc. Prof., Institute for Spatial and Social-Ecological Transformations, WU Vienna University of Economics, Austria

Joan C. Tronto, Prof. (em), Political Science, University of Minnesota, US

MODERATION:

Fabienne Décieux, Department of Sociology in the research group Dynamics of Work, Care and Gender, University of Innsbruck, Austria

Raphael Deindl, Department of Sociology in the research group Dynamics of Work, Care and Gender, University of Innsbruck, Austria

An online conversation hosted by the International Karl Polanyi Society in cooperation with the Research group Dynamics of Work Care and Gender at the Department of Sociology, University of Innsbruck.

Andreas Novy – Isabella Webers Antifaschistische Wirtschaftspolitik

October 7, 2026Antifascist EconomicsIKPS

Isabella Webers „Antifaschistische Wirtschaftspolitik“ – Hayek und Polanyi im Widerstreit

Ein Kommentar von Andreas Novy

07.10.2026

Isabella Weber prägte den Begriff der „antifaschistischen Wirtschaftspolitik“, als sie 2024 auf X ihrer Frustration über den erneuten Wahlsieg Donald Trumps Ausdruck verlieh. Ihre These, dass die aktuelle neoliberale Wirtschaftspolitik reaktionären und faschistischen Bewegungen den Boden bereitet, hat seitdem für heftige Debatten gesorgt. In ihrem im Oktober 2026 erscheinenden Buch rahmt Weber nun ihr Argument als Kontroverse zwischen zwei großen Erzählungen, die von Friedrich Hayek und Karl Polanyi geprägt wurden. Im Buch wird Hayek ganze 92-mal und Polanyi ganze 126-mal erwähnt. Warum sind gerade diese beiden Ökonomen so bedeutsam für Webers Konzept der antifaschistischen Wirtschaftspolitik?

Hayeks und Polanyis Entwürfe einer anti-totalitären Wirtschaftspolitik

Um diese Frage zu beantworten und die großen Erzählungen der beiden Ökonomen verorten zu können, muss zunächst geklärt werden, was Karl Polanyi und Friedrich Hayek verbindet – und was sie unterscheidet. Beide wurden von ihrem Geburtsort Wien geprägt. Polanyi lebte im „Roten Wien“ der Zwischenkriegszeit, jenem beeindruckenden lokalen Reformprojekt, das erstmals für breite Bevölkerungsgruppen die Grundversorgung – in Isabella Webers Worten die „Essentials“ – sicherstellte, wesentlich gestützt durch ein ambitioniertes, öffentlich finanziertes Wohnbauprogramm. Das Rote Wien bot den Arbeitenden nicht nur soziale Sicherheit, sondern auch die Voraussetzungen für ein Leben in Würde. Für Hayek – geboren als Friedrich von Hayek – war der im Gefolge des Ersten Weltkriegs erfolgte Zusammenbruch des Habsburger Reichs hingegen eine Tragödie. Er und seine engsten Kollegen Fritz Machlup, Gottfried Haberler und Oskar Morgenstern sahen die neu gegründete liberale Demokratie mit ihrem rudimentären Sozialstaat als Ärgernis und blickten Zeit ihres Lebens nostalgisch auf das Empire zurück. Während Polanyis Vision einer egalitären und solidarischen Gesellschaft ihn zum Sympathisanten eines demokratischen und liberalen Sozialismus machte, wurde Hayek, mit seiner Nostalgie für das Empire und dessen große Freiheiten für die Besitzenden zum Gegner des Sozialismus – vor allem aber des demokratischen Wohlfahrtsstaats. 1944, gegen Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs, veröffentlichten beide ihre Vorschläge für eine Wirtschaftsordnung nach dem Krieg. „The Road to Serfdom“ (Hayek, 1944) und „The Great Transformation“ (Polanyi, [1944] 2001) entwerfen beide eine Alternative zur totalitären Herrschaft des Nationalsozialismus.

In der unmittelbaren Nachkriegszeit war Hayeks Wirtschaftsliberalismus noch höchst unpopulär, hatte dieser doch in den 1920ern zur Weltwirtschaftskrise geführt. Eine grundlegend andere Politik verfolgte Franklin D. Roosevelt, der, wie Weber in ihrem Buch detailliert zeigt, in den 1930er und 1940er Jahren zunächst innerhalb der Vereinigten Staaten und dann auch international eine explizit antifaschistische Wirtschaftspolitik umsetzte. Roosevelts Politik der Wirtschaftsplanung erwies sich als sehr erfolgreich: Die USA konnte während des Zweiten Weltkriegs sowohl Rüstungsproduktion als auch Massenkonsum steigern; eine machtvolle Demonstration der Leistungsfähigkeit einer geplanten Wirtschaft mit starkem öffentlichem Sektor und weiterhin eigenständigen Privatunternehmen. International ermöglichten die USA mit kreditfinanzierten Rüstungslieferungen den Sieg der Alliierten. Mit der Gründung der UNO und der Beschränkung globaler Finanzmärkte, sowie dem neuen Primat des Wohlfahrtskapitalismus inklusive Anti-Monopol Regelungen wurden auf internationaler und nationaler Ebene wichtige Lehren aus Wirtschaftskrise und Faschismus gezogen: „Nie wieder Faschismus“ hieß damals „Nie wieder Massenarbeitslosigkeit und soziale Verunsicherung“. Eine Wirtschaftspolitik der Vollbeschäftigung und der gesicherten Versorgung mit essenziellen Gütern und Dienstleistungen sollte garantieren, dass sich der faschistische Horror von Entmenschlichung und Gewalt niemals wiederholen würde.

Diese Prinzipien weisen Ähnlichkeiten zu Polanyis Erzählung von einer Gesellschaft auf, die allen Menschen die gleiche Freiheit ermöglicht. Doch nicht Karl Polanyi, sondern John Maynard Keynes wurde zur Leitfigur dieses nationalstaatlich regulierten Kapitalismus. Keynes, ein Pragmatiker, der wichtige Anleihen bei Abba Lerner und Michał Kalecki nahm, popularisierte, wie Weber anschaulich demonstriert, die Machbarkeit eines demokratischen »Mittelwegs« zwischen der Herrschaft der Märkte und zentraler Planung. In seinen verschiedenen Varianten prägte dieser Mittelweg nicht nur den Wohlfahrtskapitalismus des Globalen Nordens, sondern auch die Entwicklungsstrategien der entkolonisierten Staaten Afrikas, Asiens und Lateinamerikas. Politiker wie Willy Brandt (Deutschland), Bruno Kreisky (Österreich), Getúlio Vargas (Brasilien) und Jawaharlal Nehru (Indien), verfolgten eine Wirtschaftspolitik, die die Sicherung materieller Lebensgrundlagen sowie der Menschenwürde anstrebte. Bruno Kreiskys Spruch steht dafür beispielhaft: „Ein paar Milliarden mehr Schulden bereiten mir weniger schlaflose Nächte als hunderttausend Arbeitslose.”

Es dauerte bis in die 1970er Jahre, bis zum Ende streng regulierter Finanzmärkte und der damit verbundenen Krise keynesianischer Makroökonomie, dass Hayeks wirtschaftspolitische Vorstellungen Gehör fanden. Seine große Erzählung träumt von einer Gesellschaft, in der sich die Freiheit der Besitzenden bestmöglich entfaltet. Seine These lautete 1944, dass nur eine freie Marktwirtschaft vor den Gefahren des Faschismus schützt. Seiner Analyse zufolge gibt es zwei Formen der Wirtschaftspolitik, die beide im Totalitarismus enden: den Faschismus, den Hayek mit Nationalsozialismus gleichsetzt, und den Sozialismus. Hayek lehnte die zentrale Planwirtschaft und den Kommunismus ab, doch seine eigentlichen politischen Gegner waren all jene Demokrat:innen, die meinten, ein „Mittelweg“ sei möglich – allen voran Keynes. Hayek vertrat die These, dass schon der kleinste Eingriff in Märkte ein Wirtschaftssystem auf die Bahn des Totalitarismus lenke. Gerade wohlmeinende Demokrat:innen, die Totalitarismus eigentlich ablehnten, würden durch ihre Befürwortung staatlicher Eingriffe unbewusst zu Wegbereiter:innen des Totalitarismus. Hayek leugnet damit die Möglichkeit demokratischer Wirtschaftspolitik; Demokratie ist für ihn nur dort legitim, wo sie Märkte schützt – als „marktgerechte Demokratie“.

Niederlage des „sanften“ Hayek – Siegeszug des „harten“ Hayek?

In den 1980ern wurde Hayek zum Idol neoliberaler Politik, verehrt von Margaret Thatcher und Ronald Reagan. Im Gefolge der Demontage keynesianischer Politik verbreitete sich eine rechtsliberale Vision, die den Sozialstaat abbaute und wirtschaftliche Freiheiten erweiterte. In Erweiterung von Webers Argument, nenne ich diese sich in den folgenden Jahren breit machende Version des Neoliberalismus die Vision des “sanften” Hayek. Sie basiert auf der Idee einer “marktgerechten Demokratie”, das heißt einer neoliberalen Wirtschaftspolitik, die die Institutionen der liberalen Demokratie nicht offen attackiert, sondern bloß ihren Wirkungsbereich einschränkt. Diese Vision fand in den folgenden Jahrzehnten breite Unterstützung: Christdemokrat:innen und Sozialdemokrat:innen, unterstützt von Liberalen und Grünen, gingen gleichermaßen davon aus, dass Markt und Menschenrechte, Kapitalismus und Demokratie einander benötigen und gemeinsam zu einer harmonischen, liberalen Gesellschaftsordnung führen würden. Eine wirtschaftsliberale Politik der Privatisierung und Austerität – also eine Politik sozialstaatlicher Opfer – sei daher nicht nur wirtschaftlich sinnvoll, sondern auch in liberalen Demokratien alternativlos, um Freiheitsrechte und langfristige Prosperität zu sichern.

Kritiker:innen dieser Wirtschaftspolitik galten als Populist:innen. Demnach sei die demokratische Mitte sowohl von rechts als auch von links bedroht: Marine Le Pen, Jörg Haider und heute die AfD auf der einen Seite – Salvador Allende in Chile, Syriza in Griechenland und Bernie Sanders in den USA auf der anderen. Beide gefährden, dieser Sichtweise folgend, die Marktwirtschaft und damit die Freiheit – auch wenn sie demokratische Unterstützung finden. Die Vertreter:innen einer „marktgerechten Demokratie“ meinten, ihre Wirtschaftspolitik schütze vor den totalitären Extremen des Staatsinterventionismus. Dabei ignorierten sie die Einsicht, dass der Antifaschismus seine Legitimation nur aus einer Wirtschaftspolitik der Grundsicherung und Vollbeschäftigung beziehen kann.

Aus diesem Grund befinden sich Politiker:innen der Mitte, die sich auf diese gemäßigte Version der Hayek’schen Erzählung stützen, heute allerorten in der Defensive. In den vergangenen Krisen – von der Finanzkrise 2008 über die Covid-19-Pandemie bis zur Leistbarkeitskrise der letzten Jahre – haben sie ihr moralisches Kapital zusehends aufgezehrt. Immer mehr Menschen fragen sich: Welchen Zweck hat die Verteidigung einer „marktgerechten Demokratie“, wenn diese einzig zu einer Politik des Sozialabbaus führt? Wozu braucht es die Demokrat:innen der Mitte, wenn sie die steigenden Lebenshaltungskosten und die Zuspitzung der Klimakrise als alternativlos darstellen? Warum sollte man sich politisch engagieren, wenn sich Regierungen aller Couleurs weigern, in entfesselte Märkte und konzentriertes Konzerneigentum einzugreifen? Wenn also eine Wirtschaftspolitik der Mitte die Existenzgrundlage der Menschen zerstört und dies als Kollateralschaden einer freien Gesellschaft verharmlost, sind Aufstand und Protest unvermeidbar. Fehlt in so einer Demokratie die sozialstaatliche Alternative, gewinnt die reaktionäre Rechte an Boden.

Die Vision des “sanften” Hayek ist heute stark diskreditiert, wie sich am fehlenden Zuspruch für gemäßigte Neoliberale wie Merz und Macron zeigt. Gleichzeitig entlarvt sich der vorgebliche Antifaschismus vieler Neoliberaler als das, was er immer war: Eine Illusion, manchmal sogar eine bewusste Lüge. Nicht nur ist es illusorisch anzunehmen, dass eine “marktgerechte Demokratie” antidemokratischen Tendenzen effektiv entgegenwirken könne; vielmehr gab es stets auch die Vision des “harten” Hayek, der Bündnisse mit Faschist:innen im Notfall akzeptierte, um Kapitalinteressen zu sichern. Dieser „harte“ Hayek verfolgt die sozialdarwinistische Vision einer Gesellschaftsordnung, in der das Recht des Stärkeren und Erfolgreichen herrscht und Empathie als Schwäche gilt.

Ein genauer Blick auf Hayeks Schaffen begründet die Zweifel an dessen antifaschistischer Gesinnung: Nicht nur verteidigte er den chilenischen Diktator Augusto Pinochet sowie die Eigentumsordnung des südafrikanischen Apartheid-Regimes (von der Elon Musk, ein Anhänger Hayeks, heute profitiert). Mit zunehmendem Alter zeigte sich hinter seiner Ablehnung des Sozialismus auch immer deutlicher seine Abneigung gegenüber der Demokratie: Demokratische Herrschaft, die wirtschaftliche Freiheiten einschränkt, sei nichts mehr als Mehrheitsdiktatur (Hayek, 1978). Heute wird Hayek daher nicht nur in der politischen Mitte von Parteien wie FDP und NEOS hochgehalten, sondern vor allem auch von AfD und FPÖ, Musk und Milei. Hayek Institute propagieren weltweit einen sozialdarwinistischen Neoliberalismus: Rechtsliberale verbünden sich mit der reaktionären Rechten. Damals wie heute denunzieren Neoliberale, die die Vision des “harten” Hayek teilen, jede Politik des Mittelwegs als extremistisch und vertuschen die eigene anti-egalitäre Ideologie.

Angesichts des Scheiterns der Mitte stehen wir heute vor Herausforderungen, die in vielerlei Hinsicht den Herausforderungen der 1930er Jahre gleichen. Ich stimme daher Isabella Weber zu, wenn sie eine mutige Politik für Leistbarkeit, Würde und Demokratie fordert – gegen die Vertiefung sozialer Hierarchien entlang der Linien von Klasse, Geschlecht und Herkunft.

Antifaschistische Wirtschaftspolitik und die Wiederentdeckung Polanyis

Im 20. Jahrhundert galt John Maynard Keynes als der Gegenspieler des “sanften” Hayek, während Karl Polanyi in wirtschaftspolitischen Debatten marginalisiert blieb. Dies liegt nicht nur daran, dass Polanyi keine ausgefeilten wirtschaftspolitischen Empfehlungen lieferte, sondern auch an seinem Fokus auf die politischen, gesellschaftlichen und kulturellen Implikationen von Wirtschaftspolitik. Wie Isabella Weber in ihrem aktuellen Buch hervorhebt, beschäftigte Polanyi in den 1940er Jahren vor allem die Suche nach einer antifaschistischen Politik, in der die “gewöhnlichen Leute” im Zentrum stehen (Polanyi, [n.d.] 2017). Er verband damit die Vision eines guten Lebens für alle innerhalb planetarer Grenzen – einer Gesellschaft, in der die Grundversorgung und Menschenwürde gesichert und der Alltag lebenswert ist. Dieser Vision haben sich auch die Vertreter:innen der Alltagsökonomie (Foundational Economy) verschrieben, die seit rund einem Jahrzehnt dafür eintreten, die Bedeutung materieller und sozialer Infrastrukturen stärker ins Zentrum wirtschaftspolitischer Debatten zu rücken (Foundational Economy Collective, 2019).

Isabella Weber gelingt es mit ihrer packenden Analyse, den Beitrag Polanyis zu einer „Vision der demokratischen Organisation der essenziellen Güter … [und] eines durch öffentliche Investitionen ermöglichten guten Lebens“ (2026, S. 75) erneut einem breiteren Publikum zugänglich zu machen. Sie erinnert an Polanyis brillante moralische Kritik an einem wirtschaftsliberalen Status Quo, der Ungleichheit verschärft und die Würde vieler Menschen mit Füßen tritt. Damit findet sich Isabella Weber im Wiener Diskurs in bester Gesellschaft: Die International Karl Polanyi Society (IKPS) sieht seit ihrer Gründung 2018 ihre Aufgabe darin, eine Alternative zu „den Austrians“, der Österreichischen Schule der Nationalökonomie, zu entwickeln – eine „neue Wiener Schule der Wirtschaftswissenschaften“ (Novy, 2019). Zudem entstand 2023 das „Kompetenzzentrum Alltagsökonomie“, inspiriert von einem Verständnis von Wirtschaften als die Bereitstellung von Lebensgrundlagen (Getzner et al., 2024). Diese Bemühungen um eine Neudefinition der Wirtschaftswissenschaften decken sich mit Isabella Webers Verständnis von antifaschistischer Wirtschaftspolitik als Essential Economics, einer Ökonomik essenzieller Güter – von Gesundheit und Bildung bis Wohnen und Energie.

Eine Wirtschaftspolitik, die die Essentials sichert und die gleiche Freiheit aller anstrebt, ist antifaschistisch, ohne ein Allheilmittel versprechen zu können. Webers Vision ist zutiefst antidogmatisch: Weder „glaubt“ sie an Märkte noch an das Versprechen einer umfassenden zentralen Planung. In pluralistischen Gesellschaften mit widerstreitenden Interessen ist ein Mittelweg aus Marktwirtschaft und Planung die vielversprechendste Chance auf eine demokratische Wirtschaftspolitik. Weber hält außerdem daran fest, dass eine Wirtschaft für „gewöhnliche Leute“ nicht nur möglich, sondern auch notwendig ist. Denn die Verteidigung der liberalen Demokratie wird angesichts der aktuellen Konzentration von Vermögen und Macht nur mit einer umfassenden sozioökonomischen Demokratisierung gelingen, das heißt mit der Gewährleistung guter Lebensbedingungen durch öffentlich bereitgestellte Infrastrukturen.

Bei der Umsetzung dieser großen Erzählung von einer Gesellschaft der Freien und Gleichen bedarf eine antifaschistische Wirtschaftspolitik vieler Perspektiven, allen voran des Wissens einer interdisziplinär arbeitenden Wirtschaftswissenschaft, von John Maynard Keynes, Karl Polanyi, Joan Robinson, Michal Kalecki bis zu Tom Krebs und Clara Mattei. Und sie vertraut auf die Fähigkeit der Menschen, demokratisch die Weichen für ein gutes Leben festlegen zu können. Das ist antifaschistische Wirtschaftspolitik: Wirtschaften im Dienste aller Menschen.

Literatur

Foundational Economy Collective. (2019). Die Ökonomie des Alltagslebens—Für eine neue Infrastrukturpolitik. Suhrcamp.
Getzner, M., Damjanovic, D., Dowling, E., Müller, H. L., Plank, L., Strickner, A., Damböck, C., Evers, P., Kalhorn, A. F., & Pöchhacker, T. (2024). Daseinsvorsorge 2023. Gute Grundversorgung für alle innerhalb planetarer Grenzen (Nr. 209; Informationen zur Umweltpolitik).
Hayek, F. A. (1944). The Road to Serfdom. Routledge.
Hayek, F. A. (1978). The Constitution of Liberty. University of Chicago Press.
Novy, A. (2019). Welche Freiheit für wen? Friedrich Hayek und Karl Polanyi. In B. Aulenbacher, M. Marterbauer, A. Novy, & A. Thurnher (Hrsg.), Karl Polanyi—Wiederentdeckung eines Jahrhundertdenkers (S. 122–128). Falter Verlagsgesellschaft.
Polanyi, K. (2001). The Great Transformation. The Political and Economic Origins of Our Times. Beacon Press. (Original erschienen 1944).
Polanyi, K. (2017). The Common Man´s Masterplan. In M. Brie (Hrsg.), Karl Polanyi in Dialogue. A Socialist Thinker of Our Times (S. 79–94). Black Rose Books. (Original undatiert als Manuskript im Polanyi Archiv).
Weber, I. (2026). Antifaschistische Wirtschaftspolitik. Suhrkamp.

EVENTS:

Wiener Vorlesung – Isabella Weber – Antifaschistische Wirtschaftspolitik

September 21, 2026MediaIKPS

Wiener Vorlesung: Isabella Weber über Antifaschistische Wirtschaftspolitik

Im Rahmen der Wiener Vorlesungen und in Kooperation mit der IKPS wird Isabella Weber ihr Buch Antifaschistische Wirtschaftspolitik vorstellen.

Datum: Freitag, 9. Oktober 2026, 19.00 Uhr
Ort: Wiener Rathaus, Festsaal
Anmeldung erforderlich.

Begrüßung: Veronica Kaup-Hasler, Stadträtin für Kultur und Wissenschaft
Vortrag: Isabella M. Weber, Ökonomin und Professorin für Volkswirtschaftslehre, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Anschließendes Gespräch und Publikumsfragen: Isabella M. Weber und Natascha Strobl, Politikwissenschaftlerin und Autorin
Moderation: Judith Belfkih, Journalistin, Essayistin und Medienexpertin

Kurz nachdem die erneute Wahl von Donald Trump zum US-Präsidenten feststand, fragte Isabella M. Weber auf X: »Können wir jetzt endlich eine ernsthafte Diskussion über eine antifaschistische Wirtschaftspolitik führen?« Die Demokraten hätten die Auswirkungen der dramatisch gestiegenen Lebenshaltungskosten verkannt und so Trump mit seiner Ressentiment-Politik das Feld überlassen. Ihr Tweet ging viral und setzte eine weltweite Debatte in Gang. Wenn wir den weiteren Aufstieg der extremen Rechten verhindern wollen, so Weber, brauchen wir eine Wirtschaftspolitik, bei der die Bedürfnisse und die Würde der Menschen im Mittelpunkt stehen.

Isabella M. Weber, geboren 1987 in Nürnberg, ist Professorin für Volkswirtschaftslehre an der University of Massachusetts Amherst. Sie wurde mit zahlreichen Preisen ausgezeichnet, u.a. mit dem Wissenschaftspreis der Keynes-Gesellschaft. Ihr neues Buch Antifaschistische Wirtschaftspolitik erscheint im Oktober 2026 im Suhrkamp Verlag.
Natascha Strobl, geboren 1985 in Wien, ist Politikwissenschaftlerin und Autorin. Sie schreibt unter anderem für die Frankfurter Rundschau und die Süddeutsche Zeitung. Ihr Buch Radikalisierter Konservatismus. Eine Analyse war ein Bestseller und wurde 2021 mit dem Bruno-Kreisky-Preis für das Politische Buch (Anerkennungspreis) ausgezeichnet.

Es wird einen Livestream geben.

Veranstaltungsbeschreibung übernommen von Wiener Vorlesungen. Fotocredit: © Heike Steinweg_SV

F&L Blog – Is Fascism Returning?

September 10, 2026F&L Blogfar-right, fascism, fascistization, Germany, history, Italy, labour, Mussolini, Nazi Germany, TrumpIKPS

Is Fascism Returning?
Why the Historical Fascism Analogy Falls Short

by Stéfanie Prezioso

10.09.2026

The resurgence of the far-right has revived a familiar question: are we witnessing a return of fascism? According to historian Stéfanie Prezioso, the widespread use of the term ‘fascism’ as a template for understanding today’s far-right movements risks obscuring what is new about contemporary right-wing radicalisation. She argues that while today’s movements share important features with historical fascism, they operate under fundamentally different economic, political, and social conditions. Therefore, Prezioso calls for a more comprehensive analysis of the changing form of the far-right under the conditions of twenty-first-century capitalism.

Is there any point in reviving the concept of fascism? The central place that fascism occupies in the history and ‘mental territory’ of the 20th century explains why this concept is so frequently referenced, along with iterative nouns such as ‘recurrence’ and ‘return’. It is undoubtedly legitimate to want to place the current rise of the far-right within a broader historical context. However, it is precisely this ‘archaeological’ work (in the Foucauldian sense) that leads me to categorically reject the idea that we are reliving the 1920s and 1930s. Rather than focusing on historical analogies, I argue that we should concentrate on current movements and ask what is distinctive about today’s far-right – and, in particular, its relationship with contemporary capitalism.

The Problem of Looking Backward

"[...] in my view, invoking fascism also amounts to a certain kind of laziness, as it spares us from analysing what is radically new about the current processes of right-wing radicalisation [...]"

In fact, the term ‘fascism’ poses numerous problems. Firstly, there is no consensus on its definition, despite – or perhaps because of – the hundreds of thousands of pages devoted to it. For historian Ian Kershaw, for example, attempting to define fascism is akin to trying to nail jelly to a wall.[i] Secondly, the term is marred by its numerous polemical or derogatory uses – social fascism, Islamo-fascism, crypto-fascism, and so on – to the extent that, as historian Robert Paxton points out, “it stirs up more heat than light today”.[ii] Third, and more importantly in my view, invoking fascism also amounts to a certain kind of laziness, as it spares us from analysing what is radically new about the current processes of right-wing radicalisation among a significant section of bourgeois forces on a global scale. This does not mean that today’s far right poses fewer problems than the emergence of fascism after the First World War. Quite the opposite. It means that we need to better understand the specific conditions under which it is developing.

Those intellectuals, trade unionists, and politicians who attempted to understand the rise of fascism at the time – using the tools of the late nineteenth century – did not truly grasp what they were dealing with. Consider the antifascists, who — from 1919 to 1922 when Mussolini and his Blackshirts had not yet come to power in Italy and could still be stopped — remained fixated on the idea that fascism was either a reactionary movement similar to those they had previously encountered or a docile tool in the hands of the bourgeois state and big capital. Even worse, some Marxists such as Amadeo Bordiga[iii] claimed that there was no fundamental difference between fascism and parliamentary democracy. There was a profound misunderstanding of what was new about ‘this political animal’ at the time: a mass movement of civil society with a powerful paramilitary component (hundreds of thousands of men in uniforms), largely independent of traditional bourgeois forces, structured and organised for its own purposes and objectives. This relative autonomy in its march to power, however, did not ultimately prevent fascism from becoming a precious conveyors of the interests of the most aggressive sections of imperialist capital once it reached the state apparatus.

"There was a profound misunderstanding of what was new about [fascism] [...] at the time: a mass movement of civil society with a powerful paramilitary component [...] largely independent of traditional bourgeois forces, structured and organised for its own purposes and objectives"

A similar risk arises today. Those who adorn the concept of fascism with a litany of prefixes — neo-, techno-, post-, para-, eco-, and so on — do not truly grasp what they are dealing with. The current proliferation of variations on the term merely masks the disorientation in the face of a situation that may recall the dark hours of the twentieth century but is nevertheless radically new.

As Foucault wrote in the 1970s, “any analysis that seeks to produce a political effect by resurrecting old spectres is doomed to failure. It is precisely because we are unable to analyse something that we seek to resurrect the spectre of its return”[iv]. Instead of describing today’s extreme shift to the right by resorting to often superficial analogies, we should recognise the fundamental differences that separate us from the 1920s and 1930s. Above all, we must take into account the transformation of the capitalist economy, including globalised value chains and the dominance of the financial sector, the decline in the organisation of civil society — such as political parties, unions, and associations — and the strengthening of state apparatuses that escape democratic control, as discussed by Nicos Poulantzas.[v]

Past and Present ‘Fascistisation’: Continuities and Decisive Differences

"As we are no longer at the beginning of this rising tide of new far-right movements, it is crucial that we strive to understand these movements' specific characteristics."

My research focus on the historical developments in Italy led me very early on to question the many static, term-for-term comparisons between the 1920s–1930s and the early 21st century, which uncritically relied on Robert Paxton’s (2004) model.[vi] I also questioned the predictive and mobilising virtues of using such a ‘fire alarm’. Ongoing socioeconomic and political upheavals have moved us ever more clearly away from the interwar period. As we are no longer at the beginning of this rising tide of new far-right movements, it is crucial that we strive to understand these movements’ specific characteristics.

Yet this does not mean that there are no continuities between historical fascism and today’s far right. Historical fascism itself was not without antecedents: it drew on reactionary, nationalist, and racist right-wing movements that had developed during the nineteenth century. Hannah Arendt, for instance, demonstrated that these movements were situated within the context of imperialism and historians such as Stehrnell have also traced the ideological origins of fascism back to 19th-century Francevii.

Today’s far-right movements undoubtedly share a common foundation with historical fascism and anti-democratic right-wing movements of the nineteenth century, including nationalism, racism, authoritarianism, a rejection of class conflict in favour of national and popular unity, the scapegoating of minorities (e.g. migrants, Muslims and Jews), machismo, and LGBTQI-phobia. Anyone who does not fit their conception of the nation, whether a minority or a political opponent, is stigmatised or criminalised, and this rejection is used as a tool for electoral mobilisation. This rejection of otherness is accompanied by an exclusionary, identity-based discourse that aims to legitimise authoritarian policies by claiming to defend a ‘threatened’ community.

"Historical fascism was also economically statist and interventionist, whereas contemporary far-right movements aim to privatise the public sphere to open it up to private capital."

Such phenomena, I argue, emerge in contexts of prolonged economic, social, and moral crisis characterised by a loss of trust in traditional forms of political representation. However, such parallels have their limits: historical fascism emerged in the aftermath of the First World War, following the revolutionary wave of 1917–1920. At that time, the USSR embodied a horizon of hope for millions of workers — a situation without parallel today. Historical fascism was also economically statist and interventionist, whereas contemporary far-right movements aim to privatise the public sphere to open it up to private capital. This is precisely what Milei’s ‘chainsaw’ symbolises, in line with the Reaganite and Thatcherite rhetoric of the 1980s.[viii] Moreover, while far-right movements have always challenged democratic freedoms, historical fascism involved organized strong mass mobilisation, a feature lacking in today’s far-right movements, even if they are able to mobilise a large number of voters, as was more recently the case in Saxony-Anhalt.

Historical fascism also relied on paramilitary formations, such as the Blackshirts and the SA. These were aimed at destroying the labour movement’s powerful organisations which had certainly suffered defeats but still retained considerable strength amid a profound crisis of capitalism. Such political formations no longer exist; currently, fascist splinter groups are marginal and loosely organised.

In contrast, major far-right parties exert their influence through the electoral process. In his book Hyperpolitics, Anton Jäger identifies this as one of the main differences between historical fascism and the far-right today.[ix] He argues that, unlike in the interwar period, levels of politicisation in society are high, yet they are not organised along left- or right-wing lines. Alberto Toscano[x] thus describes a fascism largely stripped of its mass movement, which retains the ideal of national rebirth driven by a union of the ‘productive classes’ — a theme that has animated all far-right movements since the second half of the nineteenth century. Jäger’s and Toscano’s work therefore highlight that we should resist a simple equation between today’s far-right and historical fascism. The point is not to deny the continuities, but to understand why the same ideological elements can produce different political forms under different historical conditions.

Why Context Matters: Fascism in the Longue Durée

As Richard Saull et al. wrote in their introduction to a significant book on ‘The Longue Durée of the Far Right’, it is crucial to challenge the prevalent assumption that fascism represents the ‘supreme stage’ of the political spectrum.[xi] In reality, fascism acquired its particular form through a specific conjunction of crises: the crisis of the capitalist regulatory regime, the disintegration of the international order based on the treaties that ended the First World War, and the imminent threat of revolution. The political form that emerged from these conditions cannot be treated as a model that is simply transfarable to other contexts without caution. This way of viewing the far-right differs from interpretations that focus too exclusively on the realm of ideas and discourse. It is also a matter of understanding the far-right as a phenomenon rooted in concrete economic, social, and political dynamics. To understand its development, we therefore need to ask how contemporary capitalism produces insecurity and conflict, how states respond to these crises, how political representation is changing, and how different fractions of capital relate to the new right.

Enzo Traverso’s term ‘post-fascism'[xii] is undoubtedly the term with which I disagree the least, precisely because the prefix “post” can be understood as signaling an incomplete transition. This allows us to consider both continuity and rupture. The breeding ground for many contemporary far-right movements was established in the 1920s and 1930s and is connected not only to Nazi-fascism but also to the experience of colonial rule by “democratic” states. Yet the distinctive characteristics of the twenty-first-century far-right are no less significant than those of the interwar period — hence the difficulty in describing this new ‘morbid phenomenon’, to borrow Gramsci’s term.

Anti-Fascist Struggle in the Twenty-First Century

"In the 1920s and 1930s, there was at least a powerful, organised socialist and communist movement, as well as an aspiration to overthrow the capitalist order and a sense of purpose. Today, that horizon seems largely blocked. This requires us to examine not whether fascism is simply “returning,” but how the far right is being transformed by the conditions of twenty-first-century capitalism."

The anticipatory nature of the term ‘fascism’ risks misleading current struggles against the far-right. While history can help shed light on the present, it can in no way predict the future, provided we do not view it as eternal repetition. Understanding how Italian fascism and German National Socialism triumphed does not necessarily mean that we will be better equipped to confront the rise of new authoritarian — or even totalitarian — regimes. We do not know in advance the forms that their development will take. The term ‘fascism’, thus, traps us in the past. We must stop isolating fascism from “the longue durée” of the far-right, which has its roots in the nineteenth century and continues to this day. The detached use of the term ‘fascism’ obscures precisely this connection to the long-term history of the far right. By constantly presenting fascism as the ultimate stage of the far right, we contribute to turning it into a static archetype divorced from the history of capitalism — a ‘parentheses’, as the liberal philosopher Benedetto Croce argued. [xiii]

I believe we could be facing even more dramatic situations. In the 1920s and 1930s, there was at least a powerful, organised socialist and communist movement, as well as an aspiration to overthrow the capitalist order and a sense of purpose. Today, that horizon seems largely blocked. This requires us to examine not whether fascism is simply “returning,” but how the far right is being transformed by the conditions of twenty-first-century capitalism. In other words, it compels us to examine the fundamental antagonism between democracy and capitalism, particularly in its imperialist phase, to examine how economic and social crises reshape political representation and to conduct an in-depth analysis of the history of the right and its most radical factions during times of crisis. 

References

Ian Kershaw, To Hell and Back: Europe, 1914-1949, Penguin Books, 2016, p. 246
Elisabeth Zerofsky, “Is it Fascism ? A Leading Historian Changes His Mind”, The New York Times, Oct. 23, 2024.
Amadeo Bordiga, “I rapporti delle forze sociali e politiche in Italia (II)”, Rassegna Comunista, Oct. 31, 1922, n. 30-31, p. 1461
Michel Foucault, “La sécurité et l’État”, Tribune socialiste, Nov. 24-30 novembre 1977, in Dits et écrits, t. 3, Paris, Gallimard, 1993, p. 387.
Nicos Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism, London, Verso, 2000 (first English edition 1980).
Robert Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism, New York, Alfred A. Kopf, 2004.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarisnim. Expanded Edition, New York, Library of America, 2025 (first edition 1948); Zeev Sternhell, Neither Right nor Left. Fascist Ideology in France, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1986.
See Quinn Slobodian, Hayek’s bastard. The Neoliberal Roots of the Populist Right, London, Allen Lane, 2025
Anton Jägger, Hyperpolitics. Extreme Politicization Without Political Consequences, London Verso, 2026.
Alberto Toscano, Late Fascism. Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis, London, Verso, 2023.
Richard Saull et al., “The longue durée of the far-right : an introduction”, in Id. (eds), The Longue Durée of the Far Right. An international historical sociology, New York, London, Routledge, 2015.
Enzo Traverso. 2017. Les nouveaux visages du fascisme. Éditions Textuel
Benedetto Croce, “Discorso inaugurale al Congresso di Bari il 28 gennaio 1944 “, in Gli Atti del Congresso di Bari. Prima libera assemblea dell’Italia e dell’Europa liberata, 1944.

F&L Blog – The International Division of Finance

July 30, 2026F&L Blogcapitalism, financialization, global south, NeoliberalismIKPS

The International Division of Finance: a structural threat to democracy in the global periphery

by Bruno De Conti

30.07.2026

Drawing on Karl Polanyi’s insights, Bruno De Conti argues that contemporary financialisation undermines democracy, particularly in the global periphery. Analogous to the international division of labour, which relegates peripheral countries to the production and export of low-value-added goods, De Conti identifies an International Division of Finance. By strengthening the political power of global financial actors at the expense of governments’ policy autonomy, this division creates conditions in which far-right and authoritarian forces can thrive. Reclaiming democratic control over global finance is therefore essential if governments are to restore their ability to pursue the economic and social programmes for which they were elected.

The Transformation of Finance in the 20th Century

"Historically, finance has evolved alongside capitalism itself, while its manifestations differ markedly between the core and the periphery of the global economy."

Finance lies at the heart of capitalism. Financial markets and instruments have enabled large-scale investment, technological innovation, and the spread of consumption patterns that have underpinned unprecedented economic growth. At the same time, finance has generated chronic instability and recurrent crises with profound socioeconomic consequences. Although finance is intrinsic to capitalism, its forms, functions, and effects vary across time and space. Historically, it has evolved alongside capitalism itself, while its manifestations differ markedly between of the global economy.

To understand how finance shapes today’s global economy and processes of fascistization, it is necessary to briefly examine the historical evolution of finance over the course of the last century. At the turn of the twentieth century, the international financial system was organised around the gold standard. According to Karl Polanyi, the latter constituted one of the four institutional pillars of the nineteenth-century liberal order, providing the monetary discipline that sustained an integrated world economy. Britain occupied the system’s commanding position, and the Bank of England acted as its chef d’orchestre.

The Great Depression and two world wars exposed the fragility of this order. In response, policymakers sought to redesign the international monetary and financial system to promote peace and revive international trade. Despite opposition from financial interests centred on Wall Street, in 1944, the Bretton Woods Agreement established a framework that restricted international capital mobility and reduced exchange-rate volatility. This system proved short-lived. By the 1960s, the emergence of the Euromarkets (with US dollar deposits in London) marked the beginning of a new phase of financial deregulation.

The collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971/73 paved the way for what is now widely known as financialisation, understood here as a regime of accumulation in which finance assumes a dominant role. While finance has always been central to capitalism, advances in information and communication technologies (ICT), together with deliberate political decisions to deregulate domestic and cross-border finance, profoundly transformed its scale and influence in the neoliberal era. New financial instruments proliferated, speculative activity expanded, the financial sector grew faster than the productive economy, and financial operations became increasingly important within non-financial corporations. Internationally, these changes were accompanied by an extraordinary expansion of cross-border financial flows and a deepening of financial integration across most of the world economy. The 2008 financial crisis showed the extent to which the world population is vulnerable to the volatilities of global financial markets, yet it did not lead to structural transformations or stronger regulation.

How Financialisation Undermines Democracy

Given the centrality of finance to contemporary capitalism, a vast literature has examined the socioeconomic consequences of financialisation. Some studies associate it with lower levels of productive investment, while others analyse its effects on individual behaviour, education, and even professional football. Lionel Messi’s transfer to Inter Miami, for example, increased the value of the club’s shares, from which he himself benefited as a shareholder.

This essay takes a different approach, arguing that one of the most harmful consequences of deregulated finance is its erosion of fundamental democratic principles. Financial actors frequently seek to depoliticise finance and financial institutions by portraying economic decisions as purely technical rather than political. Yet claims of technical neutrality invariably serve particular interests. This logic is perhaps most clearly reflected in debates over central bank independence. The argument that monetary authorities should be insulated from political influence in order to ensure price stability and financial credibility serves to remove a key public institution from democratic control. Given the pivotal role central banks play in contemporary economies – and the far-reaching consequences of their decisions, from inequality to the green transition – it is difficult to justify preventing elected governments from using monetary policy to pursue the development projects for which they were democratically elected.

"Governments may therefore find themselves unable to implement the programmes on which they were elected for fear of a downgrade [by credit rating agencies] that could trigger capital flight, currency depreciation and inflation."

A similar logic underpins the widespread belief that senior positions in central banks and finance ministries should be occupied by supposedly apolitical experts. In practice, many of these officials come directly from private financial institutions through the well-known “revolving door” between the public and private sectors. Their policy preferences inevitably reflect both a particular theoretical outlook and the interests of the financial sector, often privileging speculation and financial returns over broader social objectives.

Financialisation has also elevated credit rating agencies (CRAs) to a central position in global finance. Three agencies – not by chance, all headquartered in New York or London – dominate this market, assessing not only corporate debt but also the sovereign debt of national governments. Although their evaluations are presented as objective technical assessments, they are based on specific assumptions about what constitute “sound” economic policies. Governments may therefore find themselves unable to implement the programmes on which they were elected for fear of a downgrade that could trigger capital flight, currency depreciation and inflation. As my colleagues and I argued in a 2022 paper [1], CRAs have effectively become policymakers, exercising significant influence over national economic policy without any democratic accountability. This constitutes a profound contradiction of democratic governance.

The International Division of Finance

Although the previous arguments apply broadly, they must be qualified by the unequal position that countries occupy in the global economy. The classical distinction between a core and a periphery in the world economy remains highly relevant and has been reinforced by financialisation. Drawing an analogy with the international division of labour, my colleagues at the University of Campinas and I propose the concept of an International Division of Finance [2]. It alludes to the configuration in which core countries issue liquid, low-yield assets and low-cost liabilities, whereas peripheral countries offer less liquid assets with higher returns.

Just like the international division of labour, this hierarchy is neither accidental nor the result of underdeveloped financial markets in peripheral economies. Rather, it reflects the structural role these countries play in the global financial system by offering international investors opportunities for higher (and often quick) returns, for example through public bonds with high interest rates. Yet investors’ appetite for such assets fluctuates with changing perceptions of global risk. Peripheral economies are therefore repeatedly exposed to waves of capital inflows and sudden reversals over which they have only limited control. The International Division of Finance thus reproduces and deepens their dependency on the core while increasing their vulnerability to external shocks.

"Peripheral economies are therefore repeatedly exposed to waves of capital inflows and sudden reversals over which they have only limited control."

This structural dependency significantly constrains policy autonomy in the periphery, reinforcing the antidemocratic character of financialisation. Brazil provides a telling example. Dilma Rousseff was re-elected president in 2014 on a platform of stronger social policies. However, amid a deep political crisis and growing concerns about the possible loss of Brazil’s investment-grade status, she appointed a highly orthodox finance minister who implemented a stringent fiscal adjustment programme. Many voters perceived this shift as a betrayal of the electoral mandate, contributing to the president’s declining popularity and paving the way for the parliamentary coup d’état that removed her from office in 2016. The subsequent political crisis paved the way for the far-right government led by Jair Bolsonaro.

This sequence of events illustrates two broader dynamics. First, governments (especially in the periphery) are often compelled to conform to the imperatives of global finance rather than the preferences expressed by their electorates. Second, when democratic mandates cannot be translated into public policy due to externally imposed fiscal constraints, trust in democratic institutions erodes, creating fertile ground for authoritarian and far-right political forces.

Moving Forward: Subjecting Finance to Democratic Control

"In the contemporary era, finance is one of the principal mechanisms through which neoliberalism undermines democracy and creates favourable conditions for the far right."

Inspired by Polanyi, many contributions to this blog have highlighted the historical relationship between (neo)liberalism and the rise of the far right. This relationship is not automatic, but reflects a recurring historical pattern in which the social dislocations produced by (neo)liberalism generate countermovements that may strengthen authoritarian and fascist forces. In the contemporary era, finance is one of the principal mechanisms through which neoliberalism undermines democracy and creates favourable conditions for the far right.

The growing power of liberalised finance has produced the paradox in which governments often prioritise the demands of financial markets over the well-being of their populations. This was evident during the COVID-19 pandemic, when CRAs continued to press governments in the periphery to reduce public spending despite the massive deaths resulting from an unprecedented public health emergency.

There are no simple solutions to these challenges. Yet one conclusion is clear: finance must be repoliticised, especially in the global periphery. If liberalised finance threatens democratic sovereignty, the response must be to restore democratic control over finance. At the national level, this requires measures such as capital controls and other forms of financial regulation. Internationally, this requires renewed efforts to reform the international monetary and financial system so that it serves democratic development rather than the imperatives of global finance. Unless we fundamentally transform the financial system now, we should be prepared to use the next financial crisis for expanding democratic policy space.

References

De Conti, Bruno, Pietro Borsari, and Manuel Martínez. 2022. “Credit rating agencies as policymakers: the different stances in regard to core and peripheral countries during the pandemic.” Texto para Discussão. Unicamp. IE, Campinas, n. 438. Link
Oliveira, Édivo de Almeida, and Bruno De Conti. 2025. “The International Division of Finance: Reassessing the Peripheral Condition in a Financialised Capitalism.” New Political Economy30 (2): 163–77. doi:10.1080/13563467.2024.2405522.; Lima, Humberto. 2013. Dependência Econômica sob a Hegemonia do Capital Financeiro. University of Campinas: PhD thesis. Link

Call for Papers – Democracy Under Pressure Conference

July 15, 2026MediaIKPS

CALL FOR PAPERS: DEMOCRACY UNDER PRESSURE CONFERENCE

We are pleased to share the Call for Papers for the interdisciplinary conference Democracy Under Pressure: Conditions of the Authoritarian Turn Yesterday and Today, to be held at WU Vienna on 24-26 May 2027.

The conference brings together scholars from law and socioeconomics to examine the current rise of authoritarian tendencies around the world and to explore which socioeconomic, legal, and institutional responses could strengthen democratic resilience. The conference addresses these challenges in dialogue with four pivotal thinkers – Friedrich Hayek, Karl Polanyi, Hans Kelsen, and Carl Schmitt – whose influential yet antagonistic accounts of the proper economic and constitutional order remain highly relevant for contemporary debate. Confirmed keynote speakers are Katharina Pistor(Columbia University) and Quinn Slobodian (Boston University).

We welcome the submission of individual abstracts as well as proposals for complete panels from scholars in law, socioeconomics, political economy, constitutional theory, political science, economic sociology, history and related research fields — at all career stages, and from all regions, including the Global South.

Deadline for Abstract Submission: 15 October 2026

You can find the full Call for Papers including conference themes and submission guidelines on the conference website:

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the conference team via democracy2027@wu.ac.at

The conference is organized as a collaboration between the Institute for Law and Governance, the Institute for Spatial and Social-Ecological Transformations (ISSET), and the International Karl Polanyi Society (IKPS).

DETAILS

Date:
May 24th-26th, 2027

Keynote Speakers:
Katharina Pistor (Columbia Law)
Quinn Slobodian (Boston University)

Organised by:

Institute for Law and Governance
Institute for Spatial and Social-Ecological Transformations (ISSET)
International Karl Polanyi Society (IKPS)
(WU Vienna University of Economics and Business)

Check out our preparatory work & events:

As preparation for the conference we have held Reading Cicles and two webinars and we also reccommend our FASCISM & LIBERALISM blog, which you can find here:

F&L Blog – In Search of Protection

July 9, 2026F&L Blogann pettifor, fascism, finance, fl-blog, karlpolanyi, liberalism, Markets, securityIKPS

In Search of Protection

Why Global Financial Markets Fuel the Far-Right

by Ann Pettifor

09.07.2026

Why are so many people willing to trade democracy for authoritarian promises of protection? According to political economist Ann Pettifor, humans share a need for social, economic, and ecological security. This need, however, has been undermined by globalised markets in money, energy, food and housing as well as the US dollar standard. The consequent existential precarity is a primary reason why far-right leaders with their promises of protection and strength appeal to a growing number of people. Thus, Pettifor calls for a financial order that again subordinates global financial markets to public control.

Human Insecurity and the Need for Protection

Human beings have a fundamental need for security. In their book “Human Givens”, Joe Griffen and Ivan Tyrrell outline a radical new framework for the practice of psychiatry, psychotherapy and counselling based on the idea that humans, like all living organisms, share innate needs. These inbuilt patterns are nature’s genetic endowment. According to Griffen and Tyrell, we seek to fulfill these emotional needs not only for our well-being, but ultimately for our survival. Fortunately, our needs are only one half of the story, write Griffen and Tyrrell. Nature has also provided us with a wealth of resources to help us get those needs met.

According to the authors, one of our most important needs is security – or safe territory. An environment which enables us to lead our lives without experiencing undue fear and anxiety, and that ensures we develop fully. Our need to feel secure is closely connected, the authors explain, to our innate need for control and autonomy.

"the world has once again become profoundly insecure. Societies turn to authoritarian strongmen and women for protection from the globalised markets of our era"

Griffin and Tyrell’s insights allow us to acknowledge that when economic, social and ecological life becomes increasingly precarious, people do not simply demand more freedom – they demand protection. However – just as “in the early thirties, with an awe-inspiring vehemence”[1] – the world has once again become profoundly insecure. Societies turn to authoritarian strongmen and women for protection from the globalised markets of our era – markets in money, energy, food, and housing that, while enriching the already wealthy, have stripped millions of incomes, secure work, the right to a decent home, and affordable food. These insecurities have led many societies to turn away from what passed as democratic politics and towards far-right leaders promising protection. Donald Trump, for example, appealed to workers in the American Rust Belt by promising to protect jobs and incomes through walls against Mexico and China.

Thus, I argue, global financial markets are one of the key reasons why authoritarian leaders have become attractive again across the world. It is not inequality alone that drives the far right, but the widespread experience of insecurity generated by an international financial order that has subordinated democratic politics to global markets.

The recent turn away from democracy and towards authoritarianism has been remarkably rapid in historical terms and has spread across an extraordinary range of countries—from the United States under Trump, to India under Modi, Russia under Putin, China under Xi Jinping and Brazil under Bolsonaro, with many more countries like Indonesia, Ethiopia and Vietnam following similar trajectories. As the ‘Tyranny Tracker’ illustrates, authoritarian rule is no longer confined to a handful of countries but has become a defining feature of today’s political landscape. Of all 179 countries covered by the tracker, only 74 are classified as democracies, 25 as hybrid authoritarian regimes, and 80 as fully authoritarian regimes.

Authoritarianism and Its International Roots: From the Gold Standard to the Dollar Standard

“[the] bird’s-eye view of the quarter-century, 1914-39, shows clearly that change was sudden and world-wide, including in range, countries of the most various social and political complexion. Only a cause external to them all could have had such an effect" - Karl Polanyi 1940 [1]

What explains the remarkably simultaneous rise of authoritarian politics across countries with very different political traditions? As Karl Polanyi argued of the 1930s, “only a cause external to them all could have had such an effect.” The external cause of this era’s rise in authoritarianism worldwide, I argue, is the insecurity generated by the globalised financial system and the US Dollar Standard – a system that in many respects mirrors the gold standard of the 1930s. Polanyi described the “fount and matrix” of that earlier international order as the self-regulating market, built around markets in the fictitious commodities of labour, land and money. Much the same can be said of today’s financial order.

To paraphrase Polanyi, since President Nixon dismantled the Bretton Woods international financial architecture in 1971, little has been allowed to impede the expansion of private global markets in money, labour, energy, food and housing [2]. Prices, supply and demand have increasingly been left to market forces, while governments have retreated from regulating markets in the public interest. Neither price, nor supply, nor demand were fixed or regulated: only such policies and measures were introduced which helped to ensure the self-regulation of the market. The result has been an international economic order in which global markets have become the only organizing power in the economic sphere.

"[...] globalised markets increasingly disturbed and ruined our daily lives and livelihoods by way of financial, political and ecological volatility, leading periodically to catastrophic crises and causing growing insecurity"

Reflecting on the collapse of the Gold Standard and the rise of fascism, Polanyi concluded in a 1940 lecture that “neither liberal capitalism nor representative democracy could function satisfactorily under such conditions” [3]. His insight remains strikingly relevant today.

The willing surrender of the world’s parliaments and congresses to government by private, globalised markets in the neoliberal era, increasingly hollowed out political power and bred cynicism and disillusion with so-called democratic politics. The governance of globalised markets was not only deliberately detached from democratic, regulatory oversight, globalised markets increasingly disturbed and ruined our daily lives and livelihoods by way of financial, political and ecological volatility, leading periodically to catastrophic crises and causing growing insecurity.

The Neoliberal Age: Financial Crises and Wars

What ensued from these neoliberal market policies was a non-stopping wave of financial crises: The sovereign debt crises of low-income countries began at the fringes of the global economy in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. With the following dotcom crisis of the 2000s – which was caused by the widespread euphoria over the internet and new telecommunication technologies – financial crises shifted to the Western core.

Since the start of the twenty-first century, as awareness grew of the threat posed by ecological breakdown, societies have endured recurring global crises and growing precarity: The world lurched from the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2007-09, to the 2009-10 European debt crisis, to the collapse of the repo market, i.e. shadow banking, on 17 September 2019 which led to massive central bank bailouts. The wave of crises continued from the COVID-induced stock market crash in February 2020, to the shadow banking crash in March 2020, to the 2021-2024 global cost-of-living crisis.

In reference to the 1930s, Karl Polanyi argued that the economic system has led to a social and economic “transformation of planetary range […] topped by wars of an entirely new type in which a score of states have crashed, and the contours of new empires are emerging out of a sea of blood”. [4] Today, similar dynamics can be seen in Russia’s long war against Ukraine, the ongoing devastation in Gaza following the Hamas attack on Israel, and the subsequent immiseration and deliberate genocide of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza. The disastrous 2026 war against Iran, led by Israel and the United States led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, driving energy prices sharply upward and intensifying both the cost-of-living crisis and global ecological pressures.

Toward a Global Financial Order for Security

"we must once again draw on our own personal resources to build the international coordination and cooperation needed to restore humanity’s and the ecosystem’s profound need for stability, security and autonomy."

Taken together, these developments provide stark evidence that the contemporary US dollar-based financial order has become a destabilising force in global politics and material life. Looking at the multiple wars, rising costs and ensuing resource shortages there can be no clearer evidence that today’s US dollar standard of globalised financial markets threatens to physically destroy human society and to transform the ecosystem into a wilderness.

Yet this is not an inevitable condition. An international financial order that subordinated finance to democratic priorities has existed before. We did this as a world community, at Bretton Woods in 1944, when the world’s leading economists gathered to design an international financial system that rejected the globalisation of the 1930s, and built a system that subordinated global markets to the interests of states. These states worked inter-nationally to create what is known in all economic textbooks as ‘the golden age’. An age when governments exercised power over cross-border capital flows; used central bank powers to manage the creation of credit, and regulation to intervene in the conduct of markets in money, labour and land. It was an era in which humanity experienced relative peace, security and stability, thanks to the subordination of global markets to democratic regulation in the interests of society.

Society’s only hope today is to draw on nature’s wealth of resources to restore some sense of security and stability to both humanity and the ecosystem. The ability to mobilise those resources requires wise leadership, solidarity and community and the political power needed to, once again, subordinate global markets to the interests of society and the biosphere.In other words, we must once again draw on our own personal resources to build the international coordination and cooperation needed to restore humanity’s and the ecosystem’s profound need for stability, security and autonomy.

References

Karl Polanyi, 1940. Lecture 1: The Passing of 19th Century Civilization
Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation, 1957, p.72
Karl Polanyi, 1940. Lecture Four: Is America an Exception?
Karl Polanyi, 1940. Lecture Four: Is America an Exception?, p. 4.

F&L Blog – Against The Republic

June 19, 2026F&L Blogcapitalism, counter-revolution, fascism, fascistization, Neoliberalism, republicanismIKPS

Against the Republic:

Fascism, Capitalist Crisis, and the Assault on Popular Sovereignty

by Pınar Bedirhanoğlu & Cenk Saraçoğlu

19.06.2026

What are the roots of today’s global fascist turn and where is it leading us? In this article, Pınar Bedirhanoğlu and Cenk Saraçoğlu argue that fascism is not a fixed regime type, but a counter-revolutionary political process triggered by deep capitalist crises. Moving beyond rigid historical checklists, the authors show how fascism systematically assaults “republican political rationality” – the institutional and ideological frameworks that allow ordinary people to act as active political subjects. They trace the current wave of global fascistization back to the backlash against popular uprisings following the 2007–08 financial crisis, itself a crisis of neoliberal capitalism. While contemporary movements differ in their rhetoric, their shared objective is to atomize societies and eliminate democratic restraints on capital accumulation. Addressing today’s fascist turn means recognizing it as a broader assault on popular empowerment and our ability to shape our collective future.

Understanding Today’s Fascist Turn Within the Historical Development of Capitalism

The renewed urgency with which fascism is discussed today is not merely an intellectual exercise. It reflects a widely shared intuition that what is unfolding across the world today cannot be understood by terms such as “democratic backsliding”, “competitive authoritarianism”, or “right-wing populism”. These conceptual debates often get stuck in a methodological dead end, evaluating fascism only by the degree with which it corresponds to past instances, such as interwar Germany and Italy.

This article differs from common approaches that use a checklist of features to decide whether the “fascist minimum”, in Robert Paxton’s words [1], is met. Instead, we draw on a historical materialist framework by investigating the question of what fascism means within the historical development of capitalism: what structural function it serves, what it targets, and why it recurs. Alberto Toscano’s 2023 book Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis [2] offers a decisive methodological starting point. Building on W.E.B. Du Bois’s characterization of late 19th century post-Reconstruction period in the US as a “counter-revolution of property” led by white supremacy, Toscano argues that fascism must be approached not as a fixed regime type or a coherent ideological formation, but as a historically fluid process intimately tied to the dynamics of capitalist crises. In this respect, “late fascism”, like “late capitalism” varies in form and content according to its conjuncture. According to Toscano, its genealogy can be traced back to racial capitalism and extends well beyond the interwar European cases that have dominated theoretical reflections.

We take up Toscano’s argument and seek to extend it in a specific direction: if fascism is a counter-revolutionary process whose form and content change with historical circumstances, then we need a clearer answer to a basic question: what exactly is it a revolution against?

Fascism as a Counter-Revolution Against “Republican Political Rationality"

"[Today's fascist counter-revolution] does not merely suppress specific gains but works to eliminate the very conditions under which such gains become possible."

We argue that fascism consistently targets two interrelated terrains. The first consists of the ideological and political gains won through socialist and progressive struggles. The second is the ideological and institutional ground which enables working and lower social classes to be active political subjects in the first place. It is this second terrain – what we term republican political rationality – that gives today’s fascist counter-revolution its characteristic depth and reach. It does not merely suppress specific gains but works to eliminate the very conditions under which such gains become possible.

The concept of republican political rationality has its roots in the French Revolution, or more precisely, the long revolutionary conjuncture of the late eighteenth century. It was during this era that popular forces — the sans-culottes, the urban laboring poor, the peasantry, the colonized subjects of the Haitian Revolution — first entered onto the political stage. For the first time, the question of who rules and on what terms could no longer be settled among elites without responding to the cries and claims of the laboring majority. Thus, what the new, republican state form registered, however imperfectly and however much against the intentions of dominant classes, was this irreversible entry of the popular classes into politics.[3]

The political rationality – i.e. the logic or set of ideas – of the republican societal order and state structure builds on a specific conception of freedom, freedom as non-domination, as long emphasized by Philip Pettit.[4] Here, freedom is understood not only as the absence of interference but as the absence of subjection to arbitrary power. As such, we can define the republican political rationality as encompassing following principles:

Popular sovereignty: the legitimacy of political authority derives from and must remain accountable to the people as a collective subject, not via divine mandate, dynastic right, or the will of a particular privileged group.
Active citizenship: the political community is made up not of passive subjects but active participants – people who deliberate about and take responsibility for the common affairs of their polity and play an active role in designing the constitution and laws that organize social and political life.
The priority of the public: the common good, the res publica, takes precedence over private interest; the state is accountable to the general will rather than to particular interests.

These principles do not constitute a coherent or tension-free doctrine but are better understood as the normative residue of social struggles. While capital forces the state to maintain the conditions for its accumulation, such as the protection of property and the “policing” of class conflict, the republican political form introduces into this equation a set of principles – such as popular sovereignty, active citizenship, non-domination – that are structurally in tension with the impositions of capital. This tension is what makes the republican state both a mechanism of bourgeois class rule and a terrain of popular struggle. This has significant implications for how we read both the historical instances of fascism and its contemporary forms.

How Neoliberalism Created the Conditions for Contemporary Fascism

In the interwar period, the fascist assault was directed simultaneously against the organized working-class movement – its parties, unions, and revolutionary organizations – and against the liberal-democratic institutional and ideological framework within which that movement had won its basis. The neoliberal era since the 1970-80s has been characterized by a systematic hollowing out of the gains achieved by social and working-class movements in inter- and post-war eras.[5] The financialization of social relations has atomized the working class and made collective political action increasingly difficult; the subordination of public policy to the demands of financial markets has reduced popular sovereignty; the technocratization of government has removed key decisions from the domain of democratic deliberation; and the dismantling of welfare institutions has eroded the material conditions of active citizenship.

"The neoliberal erosion of republican political rationality is not yet fascism. It does, however, create the conditions for fascism."

The result is a procedural democracy stripped of its republican substance, reduced to the empty form of periodic elections that reproduce the management of accumulation by different political figures but do not alter its fundamental logic. This neoliberal erosion of republican political rationality is not yet fascism. It does, however, create the conditions for fascism. It produces the generalized political disorientation, the erosion of trust in democratic institutions, and the atomized social landscape on which a fascist counter-revolution can operate.

The Significance of the 2007-08 Crisis and Its Aftermath

The 2008 financial crisis was not merely an economic event. It was the explosive moment at which the accumulated contradictions of neoliberal capitalism could no longer be contained. The rapid delegitimization of existing political institutions and ideological frameworks, the material impoverishment of broad sections of the working class and middle strata, and the sudden visibility of the structural violence of capital produced what Antonio Gramsci would have called an organic crisis. The 2008 financial crisis was not merely a crisis of the economic realm but of the entire social formation, in which the old forms of hegemony could no longer be upheld. The result was a wave of popular political mobilization unprecedented in the post-Cold War era: the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, Occupy Wall Street, Turkey’s Gezi Park uprising, the Indignados movement in Spain that eventually crystallized as Podemos, the student movements in Brazil… to name only a few.

"The 2008 financial crisis was not merely a crisis of the economic realm but of the entire social formation, in which the old forms of hegemony could no longer be upheld."

These varied movements shared a common political grammar that is highly significant for our argument: not particular to a specific sector or identity group, but what can be recognized – in retrospect – as cries of republican political claims. Popular masses reclaimed the political institutions that had been captured by private and oligarchic interests. They reacted to the hollowing out of popular sovereignty by financial, technocratic and coercive strategies, which were systematically destroying the conditions of active citizenship and people’s capacity to participate meaningfully in shaping the collective conditions of life.

The counter-revolutionary response did not take long to respond, however. The violent repression and/or “hijacking” of the Arab Spring, the crushing of the Gezi movement, the defeat of Syriza’s opposition to EU-imposed austerity policies, the systematic containment of Occupy and the Indignados: these were the opening moves of what has become a globally converging, if not centrally organized, counter-revolutionary assault.

The Fascistization of Post-2008 Societies Around the World

"What followed was [...] a more far-reaching attempt to eliminate the very political, social, and ideological terrains from which popular challenges might re-emerge. This is what substantiates the use of the term 'fascistization'."

What followed was not limited to the reassertion of neoliberal policy, but a more far-reaching attempt to eliminate the very political, social, and ideological terrains from which popular challenges might re-emerge. This is what substantiates the use of the term fascistization, not because all its contemporary manifestations replicate the organizational or ideological forms of interwar fascism, but because the counter-revolutionary logic at work shares the same structural target: the conditions that enable everyone to be active political subjects.

This fascistization process has taken different forms in different national contexts. Trumpism and the MAGA movement combine the mobilization of racial and nativist resentment with a systematic assault on the institutional and legal constraints on executive power. In India, Modi’s BJP has deployed Hindu nationalist ideology to reconfigure the political community along exclusionary ethnic-religious lines, dismantling the constitutional protections that had, however imperfectly, sustained a plural political field. In Turkey, the AKP has combined right-wing populist mobilization with a subversive assault on the republican institutional and ideological framework of the state. In Brazil, Bolsonarismo represented not merely a right-wing government but an attempt to reorganize the terms of political conflict around the elimination of the social and political gains of the PT era.

In Europe, the picture is more complex, but its fundamental logic is the same. The electoral rise of far-right parties across almost all European countries represents something more than the predictable shift toward the right. These forces systematically undermine the democratic norms that structure political contestation – from equal citizenship regardless of origin, to the principle that political authority is accountable to the entire population rather than to an ethnically defined community. Crucially, we argue that these forces remain part of the fascistization process even when they are not in power. Their role is to reshape the political horizon by normalizing authoritarian and exclusionary ideas, weakening the republican foundations of popular political agency, and redirecting the energies unleashed by organic crises into nationalist channels rather than true emancipatory alternatives.

Fascistization vs. Our Common Future

What all these diverse manifestations of fascistization share is a goal of eliminating the republican political rationality. The particular institutional targets and ideological codes, and the specific combination of repression and mass mobilization through which consent is organized all vary in each national context. But the structural logic is the same: to annihilate the conditions of popular political subjectivity and to depoliticize, atomize, and reintegrate the popular classes under forms of identification and mobilization that preclude true collective agency. [6]

In this way, fascistizsation secures the conditions for the continued extraction and accumulation of capital, unhindered by social or political forces. Discussions on the extent to which contemporary forms align with historical examples overlook fascism’s broader purpose of dismantling our collective capacity to shape our common world – and risks distracting from the urgent need to form collective responses.

References

Paxton, Robert O. 2004. The Anatomy of Fascism. Alfred A. Knopf.
Toscano, Alberto. 2023. Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis. Verso.
Bedirhanoğlu, Pınar, and Cenk Saracoglu. 2023. ‘Demokrasi Nereye?: Neoliberalizm Döneminde Demokrasi-Cumhuriyet Bağının Kopuşu’ (Quo Vadis Democracy: De-linking of Democracy and Republic in the Neoliberal Era). In Demokrasi: Kavram, Kurum, Süreç (Democracy: Concept, Institution, Process), edited by Menderes Çınar. İletişim Yayınları.
Pettit, Philip. 2012. On the People’s Terms: A Republican Theory and Model of Democracy. Cambridge University Press.
Saraçoğlu, Cenk. 2026. ‘Beyond the Freedom of Movement: Rethinking the Global Migration Regime through the Right to Homeland’. Globalizations, April 29, 1–22.
Saraçoğlu, Cenk. 2026. ‘Beyond the Freedom of Movement:…’

F&L Blog – Authoritarian Desires

June 4, 2026F&L BlogMAGA, neoconservatism, Neoliberalism, republican party, TrumpIKPS

Authoritarian desires

How Neoliberalism and Neoconservatism Brought Us to the Brink of Fascism

by Wendy Brown

04.06.2026

How did authoritarianism become desirable for ordinary people in formerly liberal democracies? In this blog article, Wendy Brown traces two governing rationalities that have been central in shaping popular tolerance for Trump’s attacks on democracy: neoliberalism and neoconservatism. While neoliberalism eroded democratic values by naturalizing markets and traditional morality, neoconservatism promoted a strong state, including militarism at home and abroad, and normalized regime change. Moreover, neoconservatism forged a distinct identity for middle- and working-class adherents, displacing class and upward mobility with religion, family, and nation. According to Brown, understanding these political subject formations is key to addressing the anti-democratic turn and articulating emancipatory forms of belonging.

The following article is an adaption of Wendy Brown’s keynote address at the Historical Materialism Conference 2025. It was edited by Maie Klingenberg.

The Puzzling Desire for Authoritarianism

We know that authoritarian politicians today anoint wounds, mobilize fears and resentments among working– and middle-class populations, while enabling oligarchic control of the levers of government. But how do we explain the popular tolerance, and even enthusiasm, for dismantling democracy? How do we explain the support for soldiers and tanks in cities, and masked ICE agents invading schools, workplaces and homes, tackling old people and grabbing children? For state takeovers of cultural institutions and universities dictating what is doable and sayable? For trampling the Constitution while amplifying the power of capital, lining the pockets of the already rich, and cutting what remains of social benefits after decades of neoliberal slash-and-burn? Why are so many accepting this conduct?

In the following, I identify what I deem some of the most important forces behind the rapid consolidation of authoritarianism in the US. My analysis concentrates on two different governing rationalities de-democratizing the state and the citizenry: neoliberalism and neoconservatism.

Far from identical or even commensurate, these two forms of reason together tilled the popular ground for an authoritarian state and yielded Project 2025, the playbook for much of what the Trump regime is doing. From dismantling the Department of Education to voter suppression, from mass firings of federal workers to undoing the basic institutions of liberal democracy via both nuanced legal maneuvers and bold power grabs – as well as renewed imperial domination in all parts of the globe.

"Project 2025 is the most thorough plan for state-animated transformation of the political, cultural, social, and economic life that any liberal democracy has so far known – and neoliberalism and neoconservatism are at its heart."

At 600 pages, Project 2025 is the most thorough plan for state-animated transformation of the political, cultural, social, and economic life that any liberal democracy has so far known – and neoliberalism and neoconservatism are at its heart. This claim will seem curious to many at first blush: neoliberalism is frequently declared to have suffered near-death blows from right-wing retorts to globalization – from ethnonationalism to tariff wars – and also from left-liberal efforts to revive the big state. At the same time, neoconservatism is conventionally regarded as history, left behind by the discredited Middle East wars, the rise of the Tea Party, and MAGA. Yet, the American present is profoundly shaped by the bastard legacies of both.

Neoliberalism: Markets and Morality as a Natural Order

At the level of economic policy, neoliberalism meant deregulation, privatization, regressive taxation, financialization, assaults on unions, and offshoring of jobs. Together, these exacerbated wealth inequality, stymied upward mobility, and throttled middle- and working-class existence, producing an economic populism that the entire right spotted and mobilized well before the center left did. At the level of political rationality, neoliberalism did something equally profound: it undermined the very idea of democracy – attacking its principles, its jurisprudence, and the idea of a social compact – even legislated justice.

Neoliberal reason naturalizes both markets and traditional morality, casting them as neither born from human minds or intentions nor as planned or engineered. Although markets may require state support, they are seen as emerging naturally and spontaneously. By contrast, democratic legislation is cast as emanating from an idea of “the good” imposed from above and thus intervening in these natural and spontaneous orders. Neoliberalism thus opposes active democratic practices, especially legislated ones, as it makes support for markets and traditional morality, along with national defense, the only legitimate domestic state practice.

With its privileging of capital accumulation, its dismemberment of society into individual units, its disintegration of the social compact, and its economization of politics, neoliberalism is an inherently anti-democratic force. By advancing the “equal right to inequality” and reducing freedom to the ability to buy, sell, and plunder, it has profoundly shaped the popular receptivity to authoritarian statism we see today.

Neoconservatism: Fighting the Redistributive, Anemic State

As neoconservatism is the lesser known of the two rationalities, I will explore it in more depth. Neoconservatism emerged in the 1970s, influenced by intellectuals such as Irving Kristol and Leo Strauss. Soon supported by secular cold warriors, Jewish and Christian religionists, and family moralists of all types, it had become mainstream in the Republican party by the 1990s. Neoconservatism is conventionally thought to have peaked in the early 2000s and then to have crashed after the second Bush administration, discredited by the quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq for which its leading figures such as Paul Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney were responsible. Additionally, it was challenged by the Tea Party movement, with its principles of small government, fiscal austerity, and anti-regulatory libertarianism. However, we are not living with Tea Party politics today; MAGA is a descendent of neoconservatism even if MAGA leaders deny this. So we need to understand: how did neoconservative principles soak into the fabric of American political culture and life in general, and the Republican Party in particular?

"Capitalism [according to neoconservatives] has a downside: It frays the moral and cultural fabric of a people and discredits authority, producing individual licentiousness and indulgence, cultural decadence, liberation movements, and fractured families."

Neoconservatism responded to the upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s with the diagnosis that capitalism – for all its glories and achievements – has a downside: It frays the moral and cultural fabric of a people and discredits authority, producing individual licentiousness and indulgence, cultural decadence, liberation movements, and fractured families. Moreover, according to the neoconservatives, capitalism pushes the state in the wrong direction, promoting states that are redistributive and internally and externally passive and anemic.

So neoconservatism offers a political balancing practice. It endorsed strong states that would put this strength to use both at home and abroad, that would align with and empower corporations and replace “decadent” popular culture with a culture rooted in traditional values: religion, heteronormative families, and manliness. It further advocated transforming education, especially at the university level, and fostering – in schools and civic life more broadly – the values of patriotism, militarism and support for wars of regime change.

At the heart of the neoconservative project was the aim of linking state power and morality for both domestic and international purposes. This moral-political project not only departed significantly from the neoliberal rationality taking shape in the same period, but also from classic conservatism and its belief in limits, moderation, and the aristocratic virtues of rectitude, civility, education, and discipline.

Neoconservatism: The Making of a Post-Class Identity

"Neoconservatism took the Republican Party in a direction that was not conservative, but right-wing and authoritarian."

In abandoning these values, neoconservatism accomplished two ends. Firstly, whereas the Republican party had long been regarded as the home of the educated and wealthy, it now became incredibly attractive to working class men, especially amidst globalization and disinvestment in education. Secondly, neoconservatism was ready to battle with “its gloves off”, that is, without regard for liberal democratic norms or processes. Breaking with the old conservative attachment to a modest and small state, neoconservatives affirmed the values of authority and hierarchy, avowing the use of state power to shape the nation and the globe. It took the Republican Party in a direction that was not conservative, but right-wing and authoritarian, blasting past the party’s classic commitment to constitutional democracy, fiscal responsibility, unrestricted liberty, and isolationism in relation to foreign affairs.

In its place, neoconservatism installed the precept of a big powerful state, including an anti-democratic judiciary, with current Supreme Court justices such as Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas shaped by neoconservatism’s philosopher-king Leo Strauss. Moreover, it aimed at repressing “decadent culture”, seeking to influence school curriculums, regulate hip hop, and outlaw porn. Neoconservatism also installed the principle of robust foreign policy – one that would reassert American empire, including devotion to Israel and active efforts at regime change to “spread American values around the world”.

In addition to legitimating authoritarian statism and imperialism, this project politicized family, religion, and education by tightly fusing them with Americanness and patriotism. Those who held traditional values were interpolated as true American patriots, tacitly and later explicitly demonizing the rest as un-American. Vilifying ordinary liberal democrats as radicals, terrorists, and dangers to the republic became a common strategy for right-wing leaders.

"Neoconservatism produced a distinctive identity for the working and middle class – an identity that was devoid of the concept of class."

Crucially, neoconservatives bound together family, religion, nation, and patriotism in a way that made economic precarity fall out of the picture. As unions were being destroyed, jobs outsourced, public education privatized, and upward mobility and access to cosmopolitanism removed, neoconservatism produced a distinctive identity for the working and middle class – an identity that was devoid of the concept of class. The promise of jobs and upward mobility – once a central part of post-war American capitalism – was now being replaced by God, family and country. Increasingly this bound working- and middle-class populations – those who brought Trump to power – to the authority and hierarchy of church, traditional family, and the neoconservative version of the state.

Neoconservatism: The Normalization of Regime Change

While few call themselves neoconservative anymore, we live with the legacy of three neoconservative decades. Three decades during which the neoconservative vision – a powerful state, traditional values at the heart of the nation, militarism abroad, and intensified policing in American cities – became normalized as mainstream conservative politics. Above all, neoconservatism legitimated regime change, which – while briefly discredited by Iraq and Afghanistan – was bound to come home, and is now being applied to the American republic.

Regime change for the United States is what the 900 pages of Project 2025 map and detail. That document specifies exactly what to do and how to do it, just as the Bremer orders – the 100 governing principles for Iraq after Saddam Hussein was toppled – provided details of regime change and the making of a new state, culture, and political economy for that country. In the case of Iraq, the design was for a relentlessly neoliberal order with a finesse of liberal constitutionalism. In the case of Project 2025, it is for a right-wing authoritarian order that transforms the liberal democratic state and its institutions, political economy, and culture.

At the Brink of Fascism: Possibilities of Turning Back

To conclude, over the past decades, with neoliberalism’s naturalization of markets and traditional morality, its economization of the principles of democracy, its tarring of democratic legislation as totalitarian social engineering, combined with neoconservatism’s affirmation of strong state power, hierarchy, authority, and binding of traditional values to patriotism, the ground was tilled for turning a population against its own class interests and in favor of an authoritarian state.

It is important to pay attention to political subject formations like these if we are to get our analysis and organizing right. Those who voted for Donald Trump and continue to support him are more than dethroned white workers manipulated by autocrats or bewitched by right wing media. We need to understand what these historical political formations legitimated and normalized, what they delegitimate, hystericize, and marginalize, and what desires, communities, and attachments they produce.

"Mamdani revived patria in its original Latin sense: not as loyalty to an abstract nation defined by flags or militarism, but as a lived attachment to the city – something collectively built, cared for, and protected."

Zohran Mamdani showed us how to address and begin to transform this formation by treating affordability and the right to the city as a non-radical value, even, we might say, a traditional one. To quote Zohran, “the people who work and raise families in New York City need to be able to live here.” Day after day during his campaign, he repeated his mission to make New York City a collective object of love and belonging – one that belongs to the people, not the billionaires. Mamdani revived patria in its original Latin sense: not as loyalty to an abstract nation defined by flags or militarism, but as a lived attachment to the city – something collectively built, cared for, and protected. He is especially brilliant at linking principles across the local to the global: New Yorker’s right to live in New York is no greater and no lesser than Palestinians right to live in Palestine. After several decades of driving toward fascism, his campaign showed us a way back from the brink.

Photo Credit

Nando Ochando

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