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RADHIKADESAI*
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The almost total rout of the left may be recent, but the force and
resolutionof its opposition to the capitalistorder has been in doubt
since the beginningof the Cold War and the "containment"of the
SovietUnion. RobertBrennerwent furtherand argued,in the case of
the centresof advancedcapital,that the subordinationof labourand
its organizationsin the course of national and internationalclass
struggleswaged by capitaland its representativeswas the basis of the
spectacularand sustained capitalist accumulationof the post-war
period2.The fortunes of a compromised and bureaucraticsocial
democracyin the centresof advancedcapital,andof developmentalism
in the rest of the capitalistworld, remainedyoked, thereafter,to the
healthof capitalismitself.The lackof an organisedpoliticalopposition
does not mean today, as its weaknessdid not mean before, that the
politicaltasksof protectingand managingthe processof accumulation
againstthe obstaclespresentedby natureandculture,as well as coping
with the dynamic imbalancesof capitalist accumulation,political
and economic, can be ignored or neglected.This is itself a form of
class struggle,though it should not be forgottenthat while it may be
quite adequateto the needs of the right, any new left must take the
struggleto higherpolitical, economic and culturallevels to fulfill its
own historicaltasks.
The politics of the right since the Frenchrevolutionhas evolved
through a series of distinct historicalstages, singularconstellations
of constituencies,ideologies and strategies,in the face of changing
configurationsof propertyand the politicalchallengesto it3.Perhaps
the mostradicalreconstitutionit executedwas the one afterthe Second
World War when the order of property it had to defend, and the
domestic and internationalpolitical situation in which it had to do
so, had changed radically enough as to impose a thoroughgoing
reconstitution of its ideologies and strategies. Even so, the
reconstitutionappearedmoreradicalthan it actuallywas. Whichthe
resourcesit could mustertowards it were, for the most part, hardly
novel, to the political necessityof stabilisingcapitalismdomestically
and internationallyin objectivelynew historicalcircumstanceswas
added the imperativefor dissimulatingits real continuities with a
deeply discreditedpast. The effectivenessof the dissimulationcan
still be seen in the pervasive mis-recognition of right politics as
"centrist"from which the right benefitspolitically and which dogs
the understandingof its imperativesand intentionsin broadswathes
of progressivecircles.Nevertheless,objectivelynecessarychangesdid
not just include the institutionsof the welfare state demandedby a
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capitalistrightpolitics,also intimatelycommittedto the US-ledantiCommunist offensive which included extensive retention of fascist
personnelin the politicalandadministrativestructuresof the countries
wore a moderateandorganicist
of advancedcapitalistdevelopment16,
which
could
taken
be
for
Conservatism,particularlyin
appearance
the new context of welfare capitalism. Whether the right had
reinventeditself, as in Britain,in the inter-warperiod or, as in much
of fascistand occupiedEuropeandthe US, thereafter,its leaderscould
still claim a social distinction and deference which had been the
hallmarkof Conservatismhitherto.Not only were aristocraticfigures
notable in the partiesof the rightafter 1945, even more importantly,
as PerryAnderson has pointed out, "the bourgeoisieas a class, in
that meaning of the term in which Max Webercould remarkwith
pride that he belonged to it....a social force with its own sense of
collective identity,characteristicmoralcodes and culturalhabitus ...
a bourgeoismilieu confidentof the moral dignityof its own calling"
still existed.""Inthe politicalrealm,substantialfigureslike Adenauer,
De Gasperi, Monnet embodied this persistence - their political
relationshipto Churchillor De Gaulle, grandeesfrom a seigneurial
past, as if an after-imageof an originalcompactthat socially was no
longervalid"'17.Havingemulatedand deferredto the high cultureof
the aristocracyhitherto,and now bereftof any living Conservatism
or aristocratic culture to follow, never having evolved its own
independentcultureforcefullyenough,sucha bourgeoisiewould soon
reveal itself as the historicalanomalyit actuallywas.
As a capitalist calss, ratherthan a bourgeoisie,the post-Second
world war ruling class sccumbed to the logics of the
verycommodification,includingthat of culture,which it fosteredas
the baasis of its own prosperity.Fromthe late 1960s, as these classes
faded into the historicalbackground,came an "encanillementof the
possessingclasses". Its "starletprincessesand sleazeballpresidents"
were the symptoms. The new right, with its miserly and punitive
ideology, its open racism, social authoritarianism and cultural
nationalism,the commonersocial originsof its leaders,its mediatized
relationship to its electorate, its rationalised organization and its
undeniablerelianceon shock troops of the lumpenis surelythe first
purely and unabashedlycapitalistright emergingin all its Brechtian
glory.Not surprisingly,Liberalismas a distinctivelybourgeoispolitical
currentwas never strong, its bannersappropriatedby working class
parties'strugglefor democraticrightswhere the latter'suniversalist
and egalitarianaspirationsalso transmutedit into various forms of
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both respects,Mayer would say the focus is too narrow for proper
understanding.What he enables us to do, by contrast, is to see these
forcesas partof a familyof counterrevolutionary
phenomenonwhose
practicalresultsare, moreover,determinedmore by the surrounding
situationthan by theirintrinsiccharacteristics.Afterall, fascismitself
in inter-warEurope, as Hobsbawm remindsus, has been part of a
largerthreatto politicaldemocracyfromthe Rightwhich represented
"not merelya threatto constitutionaland representativegovernment,
but an ideologicalthreatto liberalcivilizationas such"in which while
"byno meansall the forcesoverthrowingliberalregimeswere fascist",
fascism "inspiredother anti-liberalforces, supportedthem and lent
the internationalRight a sense of historicconfidence"32.
Mayer saw counterrevolutionarygroups as having a mass base
and a leader.Thoughthey often cut into the base of mainstreamright
they remaineddifferent from and, usually, independentof
mODI?parties,
them, "anew butclaimantpoliticalcounterelite".Theyweretolerated
and kept in existence, rather than crushed, precisely because their
future utility to the established ruling groups cannot be
underestimated,somethingwhich Brechtso well broughtout in The
Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui. Commentingon the rise of the new
right in the 1960s MichaelKaleckisaw the "fascismof our times" in
muchthe same terms,as "a dog on a leash;it can be unleashedat any
time to achieve definite aims and even when on the leash serves to
intimidatethe potential opposition" 33. In our times, however,the
threatof challengefromthe Leftas such is at presentminimal.Surely
it is only the very volatilityof rightsupportamong the populationat
large,the meagrenessof the economicconcessionswhich are possible
to enlargeand stabiliseit, and the furiousambitionsand greedof the
propertied,which can explain the cultivationand tolerationof these
groups on the right. It is thereforethe hystericalcharacterof capital
and capitalistrulingclasseswhich is responsiblefor them. This is not
even a case of what Mayerwould call preemptivecounterrevolution,
rather it would be useful to add another category - hysterical
counterrevolution34.
There are a couple of importantpoints of differencebetweenour
times and those Mayeranalysedback in 1971. While in earliertimes
counterrevolutionaryorganizationsoften separateddistinctsegments
of society from their allegiance to conservatism, the absence of
conservative formations today, as well as the above noted
"encanaillement of the possessing classes" means that their
constituenciesare not so readilydifferentiatedin social terms from
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NOTES
1 I would like to thank Colin Leysand JayantLelefor theircommentson an
earlierdraft.
2 RobertBrenner,"The Economicsof Global Turbulence"New Left Review
226, May-June1998, pp. 41-2.
3 BrianGirvin,The Rightin the TwentiethCentury(London,1994) is a useful
recentoverview.
4 AndrewGamble,The ConservativeNation, London, 1974.
5 See in particularGoran Therborn, "The Rise of Capital and the Rule of
Democracy"in New Left Review, 103, May-June1977.
6 Provisionallyentitiled, Sea Change:From Congressto Hindutvain Indian
Politics,
7 Any attack of such indulgencecan be easily cured by (re)readingMarx's
delightfulremarkson the mutualregardof the aristocratand the capitalist
in Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 Edited with an
introductionby Dirk J. Struik,translatedby Martin Milligan, New York,
1964, pp. 122-126.
Ibid., p. 12.
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Harold Perkin, in his The Rise of Professional Society ( London, 1989) makes
this distinction between the economic basis of the two main kinds of
professionals and their political proclivities. Colin Leys and Leo Panitch in
their The End of Parliamentary Socialism (London, 1998) discuss the social
basis of the rise of New Labour. My own Intellectuals and Socialism: "Social
Demcorats and the British Labour Party (London, 1994) discusses the nature
of the attachment of the older generation of professionals to Labourism
and the tensions within this relationship which led to the split in the Labour
party in 1981, leading to the creation of the Social Democratic Party. The
course of its later splits and merger with the Liberal Party has brought this
current to the present Liberal Democrats.
Herbert Kitschelt with Anthony McGann, The Radical Right in Western
Europe: A Comparative Analysis, Ann Arbor, 1997, p. 23
See R. Vidyasagar, "New Agrarianism and Challenges for the Left" in T.V.
Satyamurthy (ed.) Class Formation and Political Transformation in Postcolonial India, New Delhi, 1996; and T.J. Byres, "Land Reform,
Industrialization and the Marketed Surplus: An Essay on the Power of Rural
Bias", David Lehmann (ed.) Agrarian Reform and Agrarian Reformism,
London, 1974.
Prabhat Patnaik, "A Perspective on the Recent Phase of India's Economic
Development", Whatever Happened to Imperialism and Other Essays, Delhi,
1995.
K.Balagopal,, "An Ideology for the Provincial Propertied Class", Economic
and Political Weekly, Vol. XXII, Nos. 36 and 37, September 5-12, 1987, p.
1546-7.
Ibid. Formerly Marxist, Gail Omvedt and Chetana Galla's riposte ("'An
Ideology for a Provincial Propertied Class?" Economic and Polittcal Weekly,
Vol. XXII, no. 45, November 7 1987) making the argument that these
movements reflected the interests not only of capitalist farmers, but of all
engaged in agriculture, including landless labourers, reflects the depth of the
political confusion caused by the rhetoric the farmers' movements
Arno Mayer, The Dynamics of Counterrevolution in Europe: 1870-1956:
An Analytic Framework, New York, 1971, p. 42.
Peter Gowan, The Global Gamble: Washington's Faustian Bid for World
Dominance, London, 1999
Leo Panitch, in particular, has insisted on this in, among others, "The State
in a Changing World", Monthly Review, Vol. 50, no. 5, October 1998 and,
more recently, in "The New Imperial State" New Left Review (n.s.) 2, MarchApril 2000.
Prabhat Patnaik, C.P. Chandrashekher and Abhijit Sen, "The Proliferation
of the Bourgeoisie and Economic Policy" in T.V. Satyamurthy (ed.), Class
Formation and Political Transformation in Post-Colonial India, New Delhi,
1996
Etienne Balibar, "Es gibt keinen Staat in Europa" in New left Review 186,
March-April 1991, p. 13.
Ibid., p. 17.
Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes, New York, 1994, p. 112.
Kalecki, p. 104
Mayer considers the following types: pre-emptive, posterior, accessory,
disguised, anticipatory, externally licensed and externally imposed.
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