Historical Dynamics of the Far Right in the Capitalist World-System

Abstract

This article develops a longue durée world-systems account of the contemporary resurgence of the far right. Against interpretations that treat far-right politics as an anomaly or a contingent product of authoritarian leaders, we argue that it has recurrently emerged during moments of world hegemonic crisis, when crises of capitalist accumulation deepen, geopolitical rivalry intensifies, and worldwide social unrest begins to generate broader crises of authority at both domestic and international levels. Comparing three historical conjunctures—the breakdown of Dutch world hegemony and the rise of Bonapartism, the terminal crisis of British world hegemony and classical fascism, and the crisis of U.S. world hegemony and the contemporary far right—we show that these formations belong to the same broad historical family, even though they cannot be reduced to one another. We argue that what links these movements is not a fixed ideology or organizational model, but a recurring political logic: the attempt to resolve systemic chaos through exclusion, repression, militarization, and the hierarchical reconstitution of the nation and world order. The article’s central contribution is to specify the ways in which the contemporary far right resembles, and differs from, its historical predecessors. We argue that it is a new and geographically uneven formation shaped by neoliberal financialization, uneven development between the Global North and South, and consequences of “new imperialism”.