Common cause? The political rationalities of populism and neoliberalism

Not so long ago critical social and political theorists were reflecting upon the breakdown of social capital and lamenting the defeat of grass roots political energies. Nowadays making some sense of a ‘populist explosion’ that has erupted across the globe has become a main task. It appears though that a hoped for democratic revolt against neoliberalism has by and large lent its energies to a demagogic, ideologically incoherent, right-leaning, nationalist politics. Flanked by Orban in Europe and Bolsonoro in Latin America, Trump in the Whitehouse appears ever less as an aberration, symptomatic of deep crises in North American society and politics. Something across-the-board, albeit chaotic, ideologically incoherent and brimming with contradictions appears to be taking place. Trying to get a handle on one small corner of this confusing picture, Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right (2016) offers a fine-grained ethnographic study of the ‘paradoxical’ political landscape of Louisiana Bayou country in which working-class people, whose lives and livelihoods have been devastated by unregulated chemical and oil companies, embrace a Tea Party populism that pits indignant community against the social and political protections promised by liberal democratic institutions and social democratic reforms.

Now also calling for a ‘progressive populism’, Nancy Fraser has joined Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclan in a bid to isolate and redeem a leftist populism from the paradoxical collusions of a right-wing populist revolt against neoliberalism. For her, a failed anachronistic social democratic politics must give way to a spirited leftist populism. Conceding the weak defence that has been offered by social democratic reformism under attack from neoliberal policies and ideologies, I nonetheless argue against calls for a leftist populism. This argument has two dimensions. Identifying two major paradigms in populism studies, I set out to wear down the attempt to isolate a leftist, progressive populism by demonstrating the internal incoherencies that result. Each time populism studies single out a leftist version, they find themselves reaching outside their own determinations of populism as a political genre and appealing to rejected liberal or social democratic principles and norms for the demarcation. A second dimension explores what such incoherencies signify. Reflecting upon the inability of populism studies to make sense of a left/right divide provides insight into a portfolio of repudiated value ideals. The repudiated commitments (of a principled liberal democracy and a progressive social democracy) have already been outlawed by neoliberalism’s ideological blockades. The main point is not just that elective affinities between the political rationalities of neoliberalism and contemporary populism emerge. More significantly, even a common cause is diagnosed that finds populism offering neoliberalism a second line of defence against the radicalization of liberal and social democratic projects. The last section turns to recent attempts to advocate for left populism as a new way of doing progressive politics. The incoherencies and collusions that are identified in attempts to isolate leftist populism within the terms of populism studies appear to be reproduced by these advocates.