Neoliberal Capitalism: The Authoritarian Turn

What exactly is the nature of neoliberalism that it can simultaneously both rely upon state intervention and deny its efficacy by recourse to political and ideological populism, quite apart from appeals to other (conservative) collectivities – nationalism and racism, in particular – in the context of market individualism? Coherence is not the order of the day, but there is underlying order in the chaos as our argument here, summarized as follows, suggests.

First, what occurred in 2008-09 was a severe crisis within neoliberalism, exposing the limits of reliance on finance as the driver of global accumulation. Initially taken by many as a fatal crisis of neoliberalism, especially as the market failed spectacularly in its favoured arena of finance, the crisis proved nothing of the sort. Despite the decline of GDP growth rates and the vast and continuing reverberations of the crisis, neoliberalism remains alive and well in the economic domain and beyond. Indeed, in most respects, neoliberalism has been strengthened during the last decade. Second, the social and institutional changes brought about by neoliberalism, and furthered by the finance-first and fiscal ‘austerity’ policies imposed in the wake of the global crisis, have destabilized the political sphere formed under neoliberalism and steadily sapped the ideological legitimacy of the system of accumulation. These developments have not quelled political activism entirely, but they have severely undermined its traditional forms of expression and created fertile conditions for more extreme politics as new vulnerabilities to livelihoods emerged. Third, while neoliberalism was, previously, typically grounded in increasingly shallow and formal practices of liberal democracy, its current political forms are transitioning towards unstable modalities of which authoritarianism is increasingly common, with ‘spectacular’ leaders driving right-wing exclusionary programmes and the emergence of mass movements of the right both supporting and pushing them forward. We argue that these political shifts are not transitory phenomena ensuing directly from poor economic performance, that will reverse once faster economic growth resumes. Instead, they are the outcome of the degeneration of liberal democracy under neoliberalism.


Yet, to understand whether authoritarian neoliberalism is a transitory adjustment phase to the murky post-crisis world or becoming the ‘bestfit’ political arrangement for neoliberalism, the tendencies and countertendencies characterizing the present phase of neoliberalism need to be identified and disentangled. For the fate of authoritarian neoliberalism inevitably hinges on how such tendencies will be resolved – a process which is chaotic, still in flux, and by no means predetermined.

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