Look up rather than down: Karl Polanyi’s fascism and radical right-wing ‘populism’

Abstract

Radical right-wing politics is often regarded as a populist movement for social protection against economic globalisation. As a solution, contemporary Polanyian critics often suggest reforming left parties to reorient populist movements from the right to the left by building a broad non-capitalist coalition. Through a close reading of Polanyi’s works, this article offers an alternative diagnosis and prescription for preventing radical right-wing empowerment. Polanyi explains that fascists gained political power through support from capitalist elites. Political democratisation threatened the separation of the market from politics, and the war and depression resulted in the dysfunction of the market economy. In this situation, capitalist elites chose fascism – a radical measure to protect capitalism by destroying democracy. This article argues that, in order to prevent radical right-wing empowerment, we should look up, to the capitalist economy and the ruling classes, rather than only down, to welfare chauvinism and the ‘people’.

Assessing Regional Variation in Support for the Radical Right-Wing Party ‘Alternative for Germany’ (AfD)—A Novel Application of Institutional Anomie Theory across German Districts

“…It is a specific setting in which Karl Polanyi's work is rediscovered, tracing the development of financialized capitalism since the 1990s, the deepening of neoliberal reforms, the 2008 financial crisis, and the austerity policies that followed (Atzmüller and Décieux 2020). Rosenfeld (2000, 2001), along with many others, including a report by the German government (WBGU 2011), have revisited Karl Polanyi's ideas, claiming a "new Polanyian 'movement' of market expansion" (Atzmüller and Décieux 2020, p. 2) in contemporary Western societies (for an overview, see Aulenbacher et al 2019; relevant to the present study, e.g., Atzmüller and Décieux 2020;Dörre 2019;Fraser 2011Fraser , 2017Lim 2021;Sandbrook 2018).…”

“…When scholars in the field of critical political economy (Aulenbacher et al 2019;Wigger 2022) refer to Polanyi to gain insight into how contemporary radical right movements emerge in the context of free market capitalism, they often turn to his concept of a 'double movement' (Dörre 2019;Fraser 2011Fraser , 2017Holmes 2018;Lim 2021). Polanyi's (Polanyi [1944(Polanyi [ ] 2001 double-movement refers to the dialectical counterbalance between the two forces that have continually shaped the history of capitalist development: economic liberalism, which attempts to extend free markets and free trade, and social protectionism, which aims to safeguard people and the society from the destabilizing forces of the former.…”

“…Polanyi's (Polanyi [1944(Polanyi [ ] 2001 double-movement refers to the dialectical counterbalance between the two forces that have continually shaped the history of capitalist development: economic liberalism, which attempts to extend free markets and free trade, and social protectionism, which aims to safeguard people and the society from the destabilizing forces of the former. However, as Lim (2021) argues, there are two divergent interpretations when scholars invoke Polanyi's double-movement concept.…”

“…Instead of advocating for a minimal state, these parties now tend to support a strong but exclusionary welfare state (Chueri 2022) and embrace economic nationalism (Clift and Woll 2013), departing from global market liberalism (Betz 2003, p. 76;Mudde 2007). However, empirical evidence from countries such as Hungary (Scheiring and Szombati 2020), Austria (Ausserladscheider 2022), Turkey (Güven 2016), Britain (Hopkin 2017), and the US (Pierson 2017) suggests that when right-wing parties come to power, they tend to implement policies that benefit the wealthy and powerful rather than implementing policies that promote social and economic equality (Lim 2021).…”

The will to security: Law, order, and the shifting terrain of popular struggles

“…8.Hall’s description of authoritarian populism as a vehicle of the neoliberal revolution closely resembles Karl Polanyi’s (2001 [1944]) description of fascism as a movement “for the protection of market society” (Lim 2021: 2).…”