A War of Position
Owen Worth, Morbid Symptoms: The Global Rise of the Far-Right
Zed Books, 256pp, £18.99, ISBN 9781786993342
reviewed by Neil Dawson
In the post-Cold War world, a commitment to free market capitalism became widely accepted as the only legitimate approach to economics and politics. In other words, neoliberalism achieved hegemony. Challenges to this order have emerged in recent years, and as the academic Owen Worth shows in Morbid Symptoms, the most serious have come not from the left, as we might expect, but from the far right, from the likes of Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, and Marine Le Pen. Worth’s aims in his book are to explain the rise of the far right, to assess its potential to supplant neoliberalism, and to chart a way forward for the left. His analysis is relatively compelling with regard to the first two goals, but he misses the mark on the last one.
As Worth’s title indicates, his analysis is inspired by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. In his Prison Notebooks, Gramsci spoke of a condition where ‘the old is dying and the new cannot be born’. In this ‘interregnum’, he said, ‘a great variety of morbid symptoms appear’. Worth applies this idea to the present day, taking the far right’s rise in America and Europe as a sign of neoliberalism’s ill-health. Gramsci also stressed that the end to an interregnum is not a foregone conclusion. The old could be revived in full or alternatively it could be reformulated; and for the new to achieve hegemony a war of position must be fought and won. So, in the Gramscian schema used by Worth, there are three possible outcomes to the far right’s ascent.
Worth begins by examining the genesis of the contemporary far right. On this matter he is highly persuasive, tracing the social attitudes behind Trump et al back to the new social movements that emerged in the 1960s. These movements placed less emphasis on class divisions, the traditional political fault-line, and instead prioritised issues such as ‘racial and sexual equality’ and multiculturalism. They had a significant impact on politics, as illustrated by Britain passing the 1965 Race Relations Act outlawing discrimination on the basis of ‘colour, race, or ethnic or national origins’. Worth shows that today’s far right germinated primarily as a reaction to these changes, which is why nativism, traditional values and ethno-nationalism figure so prominently in its discourse.
The far right remained inchoate in the 1960s and 1970s, however. As Worth again convincingly demonstrates, it developed further largely as a consequence of two major events in world history. The first was the ending of the Cold War in the late 1980s, which led US president George HW Bush to talk of a ‘New World Order’ based on the integration of states and the empowerment of international institutions. Worth notes that Bush’s vision was depicted by prominent rightwing intellectuals such as Pat Robertson as an elite plot to ‘erode national self-determination and form a one-world government’, which prompted the far right’s embrace of anti-elitism and anti-globalism. The second event was the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11th 2001. These acted as ‘the catalyst for the increase in Islamophobia’ on the far right. In Worth’s view, therefore, the weltanschauung embodied by Trump, Le Pen and others was mostly in place by the early years of the 21st century.
Yet, with few exceptions, the far right at this time was confined to the margins. What allowed it to enter the political mainstream? Worth’s response here is far too simplistic. He states that the far right’s rise was enabled by the 2008 financial crash, as this created ‘an environment where [it] could flourish’. Specifically, he claims that the economic hardships caused by the crash, compounded in many instances by austerity policies, made many people receptive to a nativist and anti-globalist discourse. This allowed the far right to wage an effective war of position – interpreted by Worth as the winning of ‘hearts and minds in society’ – and so capture millions of votes. The financial crisis is clearly relevant to this story, but the problem with this argument is that economics doesn’t explain everything about the far right’s success. Look at Britain. The anti-immigration sentiment that fed into the Brexit vote was widespread long before the global meltdown of financial markets. Indeed, according to the British Social Attitudes survey, in 1995 63% of Britons wanted a reduction in the number of immigrants coming to the UK. From this angle, the growth of the far right seems less a product of economic misery and more a result of political supply catching up with public demand.
Worth gets back on track with his assessment of the far right’s potential to transform the ‘fabric of the post-Cold War world order’. This phenomenon can’t constitute a new hegemony, he concludes, because its internal consistency on cultural matters isn’t replicated in the economic realm. On culture the far right can conduct a war of position, but on economics it is just confused. A glance at Trump’s economic policy suggests Worth has a point. While the US president’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act from 2017 is straight out of the neoliberal playbook, his trade war with China goes against a global free market. Similarly, many Brexiteers expect that leaving the EU will transform Britain into a Thatcherite Shangri La. Yet others see Brexit as the means to a protected national economy. These discrepancies, Worth argues, prevent the far right from becoming a genuine ‘alternative to the status quo’. As such, the neoliberal system is ‘likely to survive’ the current interregnum, albeit in a different form.
Where is the left in all this? Worth contends that the far right’s inability to challenge the neoliberal hegemony ‘should serve to re-invigorate … the left’, and in the last part of the book he sketches how this renewal should take place. What the left must do, he states, is ‘reinvent socialism beyond’ the nation-state: as globalisation has rendered ‘state socialism’ and ‘national social democracy’ irrelevant, a ‘global vision’ of economics and culture that can win hearts and minds on a planetary scale is required. Even as a rudimentary outline, this prescription is unsatisfactory. We may not like it, but Benedict Anderson’s point from Imagined Communities stands: attachment to the nation remains ‘the most universally legitimate value in the political life of our time’. This doesn’t mean we should all become Trumpists – far from it. But any approach that sees the transcendence of the nation-state as the precondition for a fairer society seems to offer little in the current political context.
As Worth’s title indicates, his analysis is inspired by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. In his Prison Notebooks, Gramsci spoke of a condition where ‘the old is dying and the new cannot be born’. In this ‘interregnum’, he said, ‘a great variety of morbid symptoms appear’. Worth applies this idea to the present day, taking the far right’s rise in America and Europe as a sign of neoliberalism’s ill-health. Gramsci also stressed that the end to an interregnum is not a foregone conclusion. The old could be revived in full or alternatively it could be reformulated; and for the new to achieve hegemony a war of position must be fought and won. So, in the Gramscian schema used by Worth, there are three possible outcomes to the far right’s ascent.
Worth begins by examining the genesis of the contemporary far right. On this matter he is highly persuasive, tracing the social attitudes behind Trump et al back to the new social movements that emerged in the 1960s. These movements placed less emphasis on class divisions, the traditional political fault-line, and instead prioritised issues such as ‘racial and sexual equality’ and multiculturalism. They had a significant impact on politics, as illustrated by Britain passing the 1965 Race Relations Act outlawing discrimination on the basis of ‘colour, race, or ethnic or national origins’. Worth shows that today’s far right germinated primarily as a reaction to these changes, which is why nativism, traditional values and ethno-nationalism figure so prominently in its discourse.
The far right remained inchoate in the 1960s and 1970s, however. As Worth again convincingly demonstrates, it developed further largely as a consequence of two major events in world history. The first was the ending of the Cold War in the late 1980s, which led US president George HW Bush to talk of a ‘New World Order’ based on the integration of states and the empowerment of international institutions. Worth notes that Bush’s vision was depicted by prominent rightwing intellectuals such as Pat Robertson as an elite plot to ‘erode national self-determination and form a one-world government’, which prompted the far right’s embrace of anti-elitism and anti-globalism. The second event was the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11th 2001. These acted as ‘the catalyst for the increase in Islamophobia’ on the far right. In Worth’s view, therefore, the weltanschauung embodied by Trump, Le Pen and others was mostly in place by the early years of the 21st century.
Yet, with few exceptions, the far right at this time was confined to the margins. What allowed it to enter the political mainstream? Worth’s response here is far too simplistic. He states that the far right’s rise was enabled by the 2008 financial crash, as this created ‘an environment where [it] could flourish’. Specifically, he claims that the economic hardships caused by the crash, compounded in many instances by austerity policies, made many people receptive to a nativist and anti-globalist discourse. This allowed the far right to wage an effective war of position – interpreted by Worth as the winning of ‘hearts and minds in society’ – and so capture millions of votes. The financial crisis is clearly relevant to this story, but the problem with this argument is that economics doesn’t explain everything about the far right’s success. Look at Britain. The anti-immigration sentiment that fed into the Brexit vote was widespread long before the global meltdown of financial markets. Indeed, according to the British Social Attitudes survey, in 1995 63% of Britons wanted a reduction in the number of immigrants coming to the UK. From this angle, the growth of the far right seems less a product of economic misery and more a result of political supply catching up with public demand.
Worth gets back on track with his assessment of the far right’s potential to transform the ‘fabric of the post-Cold War world order’. This phenomenon can’t constitute a new hegemony, he concludes, because its internal consistency on cultural matters isn’t replicated in the economic realm. On culture the far right can conduct a war of position, but on economics it is just confused. A glance at Trump’s economic policy suggests Worth has a point. While the US president’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act from 2017 is straight out of the neoliberal playbook, his trade war with China goes against a global free market. Similarly, many Brexiteers expect that leaving the EU will transform Britain into a Thatcherite Shangri La. Yet others see Brexit as the means to a protected national economy. These discrepancies, Worth argues, prevent the far right from becoming a genuine ‘alternative to the status quo’. As such, the neoliberal system is ‘likely to survive’ the current interregnum, albeit in a different form.
Where is the left in all this? Worth contends that the far right’s inability to challenge the neoliberal hegemony ‘should serve to re-invigorate … the left’, and in the last part of the book he sketches how this renewal should take place. What the left must do, he states, is ‘reinvent socialism beyond’ the nation-state: as globalisation has rendered ‘state socialism’ and ‘national social democracy’ irrelevant, a ‘global vision’ of economics and culture that can win hearts and minds on a planetary scale is required. Even as a rudimentary outline, this prescription is unsatisfactory. We may not like it, but Benedict Anderson’s point from Imagined Communities stands: attachment to the nation remains ‘the most universally legitimate value in the political life of our time’. This doesn’t mean we should all become Trumpists – far from it. But any approach that sees the transcendence of the nation-state as the precondition for a fairer society seems to offer little in the current political context.