The world is at a precipice, facing existential threats while fascism is on the rise. Yet we lack the proper governance structures to address global challenges, and it also seems that it falls upon the left to defeat fascism once again. So argues political scientist/political economist, author and journalist C. J. Polychroniou in the interview that follows with the French-Greek journalist Alexandra Boutri.

Alexandra Boutri: We live in a time of great uncertainty and profound disillusionment. We see a global escalation of violence and a lack of accountability. Even Israel’s genocide goes unpunished, which speaks volumes of the hypocrisy of western governments with regard to human rights and international law. There is a global wave of democratic backsliding, massive amounts of inequality by design, and extreme power concentration. Am I painting too bleak of a picture for the current state of the world?

C. J. Polychroniou: No, you are not exaggerating the current state of the world. The truth is that it is far worse than that. We are witnessing the resurgence of naked imperialism and the emergence of a new world of spheres of influence and, concomitantly, the death of international peacemaking institutions. The continued existence of nuclear weapons, which today are far more powerful than ever before, poses an existential threat to humanity while at the same time human beings are on a collision course with the natural world. To be sure, not only do we live in an era of polycrisis but in one in which developments are occurring at an increasingly rapid pace. We need polysolutions, yet neither the mechanisms are in place nor is there any detectable willingness on the part of current world leaders to pull humanity back from the precipice.

Political hypocrisy per se is not the major issue here. Pathological hypocrisy is a constant in the behavior of western governments. What I find most disconcerting is the sharp decline of rational thinking in contemporary society. Misinformation is spreading faster than facts and trust in science has virtually collapsed, especially in the United States. For example, scientific studies have concluded that climate change is mainly caused by human activity and scientists have documented the dangerous disruptions in nature. Yet you have the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, calling climate change “con job” and “scam.” Trust in healthcare and public institutions has also declined in recent years, and it is not a coincidence that these trends occur with the political ascendancy of right-wing extremism. Fascism is organized mass irrationality and leaders like Trump have been doing their best to design a society sustained by ignorance while at the same time normalizing cruelty and destruction. So, yes, we live in a world of increasing uncertainty, profound confusion, and maybe even civilizational decline. We are in the midst of a whirlpool of events and developments that are eroding our ability to manage human affairs in a way that is conducive to the attainment of a good and just world order. That being said, the world is not coming to an end any time soon, and we actually know that there are solutions for the world’s biggest problems. But paradigm shifts in political, social, and moral thinking are urgently needed for a sustainable future.

Alexandra Boutri: Is the nation-state at the present historical juncture a hindrance to the realization of a sustainable future for humanity?

C. J. Polychroniou: The general consensus among scholars about the nation-state is that it was a consequence of modernity and that it represents a progressive development in the course of human political history. It was an invention designed to unify people, the state, and the country. The Peace of Westphalia (1648), which marked the end of the Thirty Years’ War in Europe, established a new system of political order based upon the idea of co-existing sovereign states. Subsequently, the norm of Westphalian sovereignty became central to international law and world order. It shifted the balance of power, but it did not end conflicts. The nation-state sparked nationalism across Europe, and war over resources, driven by capitalist modes of production, remained predominant in the modern world. In fact, nationalism and capitalism have worked in tandem to make war a permanent feature of the modern world system. In any case, whatever benefits have accrued over the centuries because of the emergence of the nation-state (social solidarity, human rights, and democracy), it has become increasingly clear that the nation-state is not capable of managing, on its own, the globalized forces. And collective institutions in general have suffered a severe blow from the wrecking ball of neoliberalism. The climate crisis is a case in point.

Actions taken so far to combat climate change are insufficient. Moreover, while local and national climate policy efforts are important, the new energy infrastructure needed for establishing a zero emissions global economy must be global in scope. Economist Robert Pollin, who has done extensive work on building a green economy, has made a compelling case for the necessity of implementing a Global Green New Deal (GGND). Pollin has described in fine detail the impact of a GGND on economic growth and how it can be financed. But we are nowhere near to achieving such a goal. The problem is political in nature, not economic. Are nation-states capable of the type of international collaboration needed to secure a global green transition in order to save the planet? Are capitalist nation-states even able to sacrifice short-term interests for long-term benefits?

My own view is that the nation-state is indeed a hindrance to a sustainable future for humanity, but that doesn’t mean that the global governance structures needed to ensure that human civilization will endure despite the many existential threats it faces will inevitably happen. Such an outcome requires imagination, courage, and bold action. But it is not inconceivable that an alternative world order may emerge at some point in the future. After all, as sociologist Andreas Wimmer has convincingly shown, the creation of nation-states was mainly the result of external circumstances (geopolitical factors) rather than internal processes (ethnic homogeneity or nationalism). The climate crisis might very well become at a certain juncture a turning point for the emergence of new global governance structures. Hopefully, it won’t be too late by then.

Alexandra Boutri: Where does the Left stand on the question of universalism and the nation-state?

C. J. Polychroniou: This is a very complicated issue, especially since the Left is not monolithic. Generally speaking, however, the traditional Left has always held internationalist principles and viewed the nation-state as a modern phenomenon tied to the emergence of the capitalist mode of production. That was pretty much Marx’s own view on the subject. Lenin also argued that Marxism cannot be reconciled with nationalism. Communists and revolutionary socialists opposed World War I as an imperialist war. But most socialist parties and trade unions abandoned the internationalist vision and backed their respective governments. On the other hand, communists defended their own countries during World War II. This is because they came to view World War II as a “people’s war” against fascism. Communists fought heroically in World War II but also against fascism everywhere. The International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War represented a remarkable expression of international solidarity, a response of anti-fascists to the emergence of a new tyranny.

In the contemporary period, a significant segment of the Left has been critical, even dismissal, of the nation-state but has also championed self-determination. Yet the question of how to circumvent the nation-state remains. The neoliberal hyper-globalization wave of the 1990s that envisioned the world becoming a global village transcended the boundaries of nation-states, but the new rules were made possible only through enforcement from the capitalist state itself. In fact, there was/is a symbiotic relationship between capitalist states and neoliberal globalization.

The Left is obligated to advance an alternative vision of a world order beyond capitalism and the nation-state. It must envision and fight for a world where the rights of labor reign supreme and the means of production are collectively owned by workers. There can be no socialism without collective ownership and democratic management of the means of production. The former USSR took a major step in the direction of collective ownership but a bureaucratic elite controlled the state and drained life out of society. Socialism in the twentieth-first century must be democratic, put average people at the center of society, and give priority to sustainability. And the rise of the socialist state must be of such socio-cultural nature that it inaugurates an authentic cosmopolitan horizon.

Alexandra Boutri: Today, the Left is in disarray while the far right is surging all over the world. Hard-right parties are most popular in many parts of Europe, although there is a ray of hope for reversing the trend on account of Viktor Orbán’s crushing defeat in last month’s Hungarian election. Why is the western left weak and disoriented when the problems caused to society by the policies of neoliberal capitalism are so destructive?

C. J. Polychroniou: There are no definite answers to that question. Moreover, the problematic of the political condition of the left in western societies is not new. The weakening of the western left has been long in the making. The traditional left undergoes a major ideological and political crisis with the collapse of communism in eastern Europe. Yet its decline had started as early as the mid-1970s and the 1980s. Take for instance the case of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). From the beginning of the 1960s to the end of the 1970s, the PCI was the largest communist party in western Europe, gaining a historic 34.4% of the vote in the 1976 parliamentary elections. Under the leadership of Enrico Berlinguer, the PCI had distanced itself from the Soviet Union and promoted “Eurocommunism,” an attempt on the part of certain western communist party leaders to reconcile parliamentary democracy with the transition to socialism and overcome the constrains of the Cold War. To further enhance the image of the PCI as a non-revolutionary party, Berlinguer also introduced the compromesso storico (the historic compromise), a proposal of an agreement between the Communist and Christian Democratic parties, for reforming the economy along capitalist lines and proclaimed his support for NATO.

Obviously, the leadership of the PCI felt that breaking away from the tradition of revolutionary socialism was the surest and safest path to power. But the experiment failed miserably. By the time of Berlinguer’s death, in 1984, the PCI was already losing support among the industrial working class and was officially dissolved in 1991 and then transformed into the Democratic Party of the Left. From the 1990s onward, left parties and conservative parties in western Europe became virtually indistinguishable. This is a key factor in explaining the decline of the western left. But this doesn’t mean that if the left had not become reformist and still clung to forms of socialism associated with the Soviet experience or with revolutionary Marxism that it would have become a hegemonic political power in advanced capitalist societies. Clearly, the western left needs to challenge capitalist social relations and hegemony but must also offer to the masses a convincing vision for an alternative socioeconomic order. It has yet to do so.

We must also recognize the fact that advanced capitalist societies are complex, multilayered systems, divided into several different classes. Class matters as much as ever, even if neoliberalism has reshaped the working class internationally. Moreover, while there is a widening social class divide, the class of the exploited remains fragmented. There is indeed a difference between a class “in itself” and a class “for itself.” In that regard, there can be no denying that the left has changed the way people think about exploitation, human rights, freedom, and personal identity, and has indeed “a great story to share about alternatives to capitalism.” But for various reasons, which include major structural factors, the ideological battle over capitalism and alternative worldviews has yet to be won. As Frederick Jameson once remarked, it appears that “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.”

Alexandra Boutri: What does the end of Viktor Orbán’s reign in Hungary mean for Trump and the far right in the US and globally?

C. J. Polychroniou: I do not wish to downplay the significance of this development but, at the same time, it is politically naive to think that it will have an impact on the way the Trump administration behaves. It is true of course that Hungary under Orbán provided inspiration for the MAGA movement and the far right across Europe. In fact, Orbán’s anti-immigrant ideology and immigration policy became the norms across Europe. But I would argue that Trump is far more dangerous than Orbán ever was. Orbán never denied election results, nor did he engage in acts of state-led violence. Orbán eroded the rule of law in Hungary and, for that, Trump thought he was a “fantastic man” and once even praised him as the “great leader” of Turkey. But Trump has already caused far more damage to US society than Orban caused to Hungary with his political shenanigans, and Hungary’s new prime minister is not a liberal. Nor do I think that Orbán’s defeat will have any impact on the political fortunes of the far right elsewhere. In Germany, the far right AfD has become the country’s strongest party. In France, Marine Le Pen’s far-right The National Rally (RN) is “already the biggest single opposition party in parliament” and its rise to power seems unstoppable.

Neofascism is on the rise, and the conservative/liberal/neoliberal establishment does not know what it will take to defeat it. It won’t even address the very structural factors that gave rise to the far right. So far, the establishment in both France and Germany has confined itself to labeling RN and AfD respectively as “extremist” entities as if that will deter voters from casting a ballot for those parties. As far as I can see, it falls upon the left to defeat the rising tide of fascism once again.

This article was originally published by Common Dreams; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.Email