Friday, December 19, 2025

Bangladesh’s Liberation Under Siege

Atul Chandra | 19 Dec 2025

As Bangladesh marks the victory of its 1971 liberation, the secular, socialist foundations of the nation’s birth are under assault by the convergence of US geopolitical interests with religious fundamentalism.

On December 16, 1971, Lieutenant General A.A.K. Niazi signed the instrument of surrender in Dhaka, marking the birth of Bangladesh and the defeat of a genocidal military campaign that had claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. Fifty-four years later, as Bangladesh prepares to observe Victory Day, the foundational principles of that liberation: nationalism, secularism, socialism and democracy, stand in ruins. The statues of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman have been torn down. The party that led the liberation struggle has been banned. Its leader and former prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, has been sentenced to death in absentia. And the political forces that collaborated with the Pakistani military in 1971, most notably Jamaat-e-Islami, are once again ascendant in national politics. What we are witnessing is not merely a change of government but an attempted erasure of Bangladesh’s founding identity, orchestrated through the convergence of US imperial interests and domestic religious fundamentalism.

The compact of 1971

The Bangladesh Liberation War was never simply about territorial separation from Pakistan. It represented a decisive rejection of the two-nation theory that had partitioned the subcontinent along religious lines in 1947. The Bangla Bhasha Movement of 1952, which provided the cultural foundation for Bengali nationalism, asserted that linguistic and cultural identity, not religious affiliation, would define the political community. When Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s Awami League won the 1970 elections and was denied power by the Pakistani military establishment, the liberation struggle that followed crystallized around four constitutional pillars: nationalism, secularism, socialism, and democracy.

The 1972 Constitution gave institutional expression to these principles. Article 12 specifically mandated the elimination of communalism, prohibited granting political status to any religion, and forbade the abuse of religion for political purposes. This was not an abstract commitment to Western-style secularism but a direct response to the lived experience of genocide. The Pakistani military’s campaign of mass murder, rape, and destruction had been actively supported by religion-based parties, particularly Jamaat-e-Islami, whose members organized collaborationist militias such as the Razakar, Al-Badr, and Al-Shams. These forces participated in the systematic targeting of Bengali nationalists, Hindu minorities, and intellectuals. The constitutional ban on religion-based politics emerged organically from the liberation movement’s determination that such atrocities would never recur.

The assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on August 15, 1975, along with most of his family, inaugurated a systematic dismantling of this founding compact. General Ziaur Rahman’s military regime replaced “secularism” with “Absolute Trust and Faith in the Almighty Allah” through the 1977 constitutional amendment and lifted the ban on religion-based political parties. Jamaat-e-Islami, whose leaders had fled to Pakistan after 1971, returned to political life. The declaration of Islam as the state religion in 1988 completed the constitutional counter-revolution. Yet even through these reversals, the memory of 1971 and the institutional framework of the Awami League preserved a contested space for secular nationalism. The war crimes trials initiated under Sheikh Hasina’s government between 2010 and 2016, which resulted in the conviction and execution of several Jamaat leaders for their role in the 1971 genocide, represented the most significant attempt to reckon with this history and defend the liberation’s legacy.

The geopolitics of regime change

The events of August 2024 must be understood within the broader context of great power competition in the Indo-Pacific. Bangladesh occupies a position of exceptional strategic significance. Situated at the confluence of South and Southeast Asia, with a coastline on the Bay of Bengal through which approximately one quarter of global maritime trade passes, it represents what US strategic planners have identified as a crucial node in the architecture of China containment. The US Indo-Pacific Strategy, operationalized through the Quad alliance and a network of military partnerships, requires cooperative governments throughout the region. Bangladesh under Sheikh Hasina, with its extensive economic ties to China through the Belt and Road Initiative and its refusal to provide military facilities to the United States, particularly on St. Martin’s Island, represented an obstacle to this strategy.

Sheikh Hasina herself claimed, in statements reported by Indian media, that a “country of white-skinned people” was attempting to destabilize her government because she refused to compromise Bangladesh’s sovereignty. The chronology is suggestive. In May 2024, US officials visited Dhaka to discuss the Indo-Pacific Strategy. Within weeks, protests that had begun over civil service job quotas transformed into a broader movement demanding Hasina’s resignation. By August 5, she had fled the country. The speed with which the United States embraced the interim government under Muhammad Yunus, including a USD 202 million USAID package and President Biden’s meeting with Yunus at the UN General Assembly in September, indicates a level of prior coordination that demands scrutiny.

Chinese analysts have been explicit about their concerns. Scholars at Chinese research institutions have noted that Bangladesh’s geopolitical position makes it a potential “gamechanger” in South Asian politics if the United States succeeds in reshaping its political orientation. The interim government’s early diplomatic overtures to Washington, combined with its cooling of relations with India, suggest that these concerns are well-founded. The pattern is familiar from Pakistan, where Imran Khan has alleged US involvement in his 2022 ouster, and from numerous other instances across the Global South where governments pursuing independent foreign policies have faced destabilization.

The fundamentalist vehicle

The domestic instrument for this realignment has been the rehabilitation of religious fundamentalist forces. The interim government’s lifting of the ban on Jamaat-e-Islami, imposed under anti-terrorism legislation, has enabled a party whose leaders were convicted of genocide to re-enter political life. The growing influence of Hefazat-e-Islam, which had previously mobilized against secular bloggers and successfully pressured for the removal of a Lady Justice statue from the Supreme Court premises in 2017, signals a broader shift in the political climate. The destruction of Mujibur Rahman’s statues and the Bangabandhu Memorial Museum in August 2024 was not random vandalism but symbolic annihilation of the secular nationalist legacy.

The consequences for religious minorities have been severe. According to the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, over 2,000 incidents of communal violence occurred in the weeks following Hasina’s ouster, including attacks on temples and the destruction of Hindu-owned properties. A UN report documented 2,924 attacks against religious minority communities in July 2024. The arrest of ISKCON priest Chinmoy Das in late 2024 provoked international concern. These are not isolated incidents but symptoms of a systematic unravelling of the pluralist social fabric that the 1972 Constitution sought to protect.

The 2026 elections, scheduled for February 12, will be conducted with the Awami League banned and its leader sentenced to death. The death sentence handed down by the International Crimes Tribunal on November 17, 2025, was delivered in absentia, without Hasina being represented by counsel of her choosing. Human Rights Watch said that the proceedings as failing to meet international fair trial standards. Whatever one’s assessment of Hasina’s governance record, the exclusion of the country’s largest political party from electoral competition makes a mockery of democratic principles. The Awami League’s characterization of the upcoming polls as elections “held for appearance, power decided in advance” contains more than rhetorical force.

On the occasion of Bangladesh’s Victory Day, the question confronting Bangladesh is whether the liberation of 1971 will survive the forces now arrayed against it. The secular, sovereign nation that emerged from the sacrifice of millions is being dismantled by a coalition of imperial interests seeking a strategic advantage in the Indo-Pacific and domestic fundamentalist forces seeking to complete the counter-revolution begun in 1975. The destruction of Bangabandhu’s memory is not incidental to this project but central to it. For what is being erased is not merely a political leader but the very idea of Bangladesh as a nation defined by linguistic and cultural identity rather than religious affiliation.

The struggle over Bangladesh is ultimately a struggle over whether the Global South can chart independent paths of development or must submit to the strategic imperatives of declining imperial powers. The forces that opposed Bangladesh’s birth in 1971, that collaborated in genocide, that have spent five decades working to undo the liberation’s progressive content, are today closer to victory than at any point since independence. Whether they succeed will depend not only on the resilience of secular and democratic forces within Bangladesh but on the solidarity of progressive movements across the region and the world. The liberation is not yet complete. It may never be complete. But on December 16, it is under siege as never before.

Atul Chandra is the Co-Coordinator of the Asia Desk at the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

Courtesy: Peoples Dispatch

INDIA

New Labour Codes: A Blow to Workers’ Rights

Saloni Khandelwal , Chetan Choudhary |

15 Dec 2025

Although presented as “reforms”, the codes in effect give the government sweeping authority, weaken worker protections, undermine unions.

After years of struggle, India has built a framework of labour rights—an important social contract achieved through long struggle. But what happens when one set of laws changes this entire contract?

Around 2019- 2020, during the pandemic and without much parliamentary debate, the government passed four new labour codes. These were presented as “modernisation,” but deeper analysis shows something else: a major shift from worker rights to employer flexibility, from security to precarity. This is not just an update—it is the biggest restructuring of India’s labour market since Independence. And the resistance is intense. Why?

After Independence, leaders like B.R. Ambedkar emphasised that while industrial development was essential, protecting human dignity was even more important. This vision shaped crucial laws, such as the Industrial Disputes Act of 1947, which required government approval for large-scale retrenchment; the Trade Unions Act of 1926, safeguarding the right to form unions; the Factories Act of 1948, ensuring workplace safety; and the Minimum Wages Act of 1948, setting wage standards. Together, these laws established a social compromise: workers received rights, stability, and protection, while industries benefited from a dependable workforce.

However, after economic liberalisation in the 1990s, a new ideology—“Flexible Labour Market”—gained ground, prioritising ease of hiring and firing over job security. Many experts argue that the new labour codes do more than merely update existing laws; these fundamentally dismantle this long-standing social contract.

In November 2025, the Indian government quietly notified four new labour codes – covering wages, industrial relations, social security and occupational safety – replacing 29 existing laws The official line is that this overhaul “modernises” outdated regulations, simplifies compliance and extends social security to more workers.

In reality, trade unions charge, the codes herald a shift from secure jobs to precarious, contract work, tilting power toward employers. Nationwide protests erupted immediately, with unions denouncing the reform as a “deceptive fraud” that “bulldozes” workers’ rights. Even senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Basavaraj Bommai – who chairs the Parliament’s Standing Committee on Labour – has warned that the government’s failure to consult the traditional tripartite Labour Conference “undermines the democratic legitimacy” of these reforms.

The new Industrial Relations Code marks the beginning of an institutionalised recognition of temporary jobs, built on the expansion of fixed-term and hire-and-fire employment practices. Under the new framework, companies can hire workers on 6–11 month fixed-term contracts, with no obligation to provide compensation or renewal once the contract ends—and crucially, there is no requirement that the work itself be temporary.

Even roles that are permanent in nature can now be filled through short-term contracts. Retrenchment rules have also been relaxed: while earlier any establishment with more than 100 workers needed government permission for layoffs, the threshold has now been raised to 300 workers, with the government retaining the power to increase it further.

Under the Code on Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions, 2020, the definition of a “factory” has been altered, where earlier a factory was any premises where the manufacturing process is carried out and employs more than 10 workers, if the process is carried out using power, or 20 workers, if it is carried out without using power. This was the same as the Factories Act, 1948, which is being subsumed by the codes.

In 2020, the draft Bill on the labour codes increased this threshold to 20 workers for premises where the manufacturing process is carried out using power, and 40 workers for premises where it is carried out without using power. At the same time, contract labour safeguards were similarly weakened, as contractors would now need a licence only if they employ more than 50 workers, instead of the earlier threshold of 20.

Together, these changes make it far easier for companies to hire and fire at will, often resulting in more dismissals than stable employment. Even the traditional eight-hour workday has been diluted: although the code mentions it, another provision allows the government to extend shifts up to 12 hours, and overtime can run as high as 125 hours per quarter. Additionally, gig workers, platform workers, and those in the unorganised sector still lack universal, enforceable social security rights, depending instead on potential future schemes that may or may not materialise.

The Industrial Relations Code has attracted the strongest opposition because it significantly curtails fundamental labour rights, beginning with a narrower definition of who qualifies as a “worker.” Anyone earning above ₹18,000 or employed in a supervisory role is excluded, meaning key labour protections no longer apply to them.

Forming a union has also become considerably more difficult, as any new union must secure—and continually maintain—at least 20% membership, while the participation of “outsiders” in union leadership has been tightly restricted. Hence, even when unions do form, gaining official recognition will be nearly impossible. Also, a union can bargain on behalf of workers only if it holds 51% membership, and without a secret ballot, management interference has become far easier. The right to strike is similarly constrained. Workers must give 14 days’ notice, cannot strike during conciliation proceedings, and must wait another 60 days afterward, while any deviation risks criminal penalties, including fines and jail time. These restrictions effectively leave the right to strike only on paper.

Taken together, these provisions create an environment where forming unions is extremely difficult, achieving recognition is even harder, and organising any meaningful protest becomes almost impossible.

All India Trade Union Congress or AITUC leader Amarjeet Kaur has warned that the “reforms” risk dragging Indian labour “back to the colonial era where [workers] can’t even raise their voice nor fight to form or legalise a trade union”

A major concern running through the new labour codes is the frequent use of the phrase “as may be prescribed by the government,” which effectively means that the actual rules will be defined later through executive notifications, leaving the laws as empty shells while real authority shifts to the government.

This shift is further reinforced by the transformation of labour inspectors into “Inspector-cum-Facilitators,” who must seek prior permission before conducting inspections, reducing them from watchdogs to mere assistants.

Under the labour codes, governments also gains sweeping powers: they can unilaterally alter rules relating to safety, wages, working hours, and retrenchment without parliamentary scrutiny; can exempt any company from labour laws under vague justifications like “public interest” or “promoting employment,” a provision that earlier applied only in emergencies; and they can even block or override tribunal decisions, including cases where the government itself is a disputing party. Together, these provisions mark a significant expansion of executive power and raise serious concerns about fairness, accountability, and the erosion of judicial independence.

Another serious issue within the labour codes is the presence of confusing and overlapping definitions, especially concerning fixed-term employment. The law offers no clarity on which types of jobs can be placed under fixed-term contracts or how long such contracts can last, raising the possibility that permanent roles may be quietly converted into contractual positions Similar ambiguity surrounds the categories of gig workers, platform workers, and unorganised workers. In many cases, the same individual, such as a delivery driver, could fall into all three groups, with no clear guidance on which protections or schemes apply. Adding to the confusion, key terms like “manager,” “supervisor,” and “contractor” are inadequately defined, leaving substantial room for interpretation and misuse.

Enforcement under the new labour codes is also significantly weakened, reducing employer accountability. Punishments for violations have been diluted—for instance, obstructing a labour inspector now carries a maximum jail term of only six months instead of the earlier one year. Even serious, imprisonable offences can be “compounded,” meaning employers can simply pay a fine to avoid prosecution, turning labour violations into nothing more than a manageable business expense for exploitative companies.

Access to justice has also become more difficult: the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions (OSHW) Code under clause 125 bars civil courts from hearing related cases, forcing workers to approach the High Court instead -- a process that is far more expensive, time-consuming, and intimidating for ordinary labourers.

In practical terms, the new labour codes translate into less job security, longer working hours, fewer benefits, weaker unions, and a constant fear of losing employment. As states begin competing to appear more “business-friendly,” workers’ rights are likely to be diluted even further.

This is why large-scale protests, like the one on November 26, 2025, gained momentum In Delhi’s Jantar Mantar and factory towns from Kerala to Odisha, thousands of workers burned draft copies of the new codes and chanted anti-government slogans.

While the government argues that greater flexibility will create more jobs, the reality is that falling wages and rising insecurity reduce household spending, which ultimately slows economic growth.

The larger question, then, is what kind of development is India aiming for: a model built on low wages, high precarity, and maximised corporate profits, or one that upholds workers’ dignity and provides stable livelihoods?

Although presented as “reforms”, the labour codes in effect give the government sweeping authority, weaken worker protections, undermine unions, and disregard several recommendations from the Parliamentary Committee. As a result, India’s labour framework has shifted from a rights-based system to one centred on flexibility, where workers’ security depends not on firm legal guarantees but on future government notifications that may change at any time.

The November 26 protestors’ message was simple: bring back labour laws that actually protect workers. For, without job security, fair minimum wages, the right to unionise, and basic safety rules, millions of Indian workers will be pushed codes new will undo decades of progress.

The writers are independent researchers. The views are personal.

The ‘Inside’ and ‘Outside’ of Capitalism’s Universe

Prabhat Patnaik | 19 Dec 2025

A more “humane” society can only be built by transcending capitalism, and ushering in a system where the means of production are socially owned.

Banners at theOccupy London protest in Finsbury Square in the City of London. 2011.(File Image)

It is a well-known fact that contemporary “mainstream” economics, the only kind which is taught to students all over much of the world, does not capture the reality of capitalism. What is less recognised is that this “mainstream” economics, not just in its existing incarnations, but no matter what new incarnations it assumes, is incapable of capturing the reality of capitalism. Let us see why.

Any production requires the coordinated action of a number of individuals. Whether it is members of a tribal community hunting down a wild boar, or a modern capitalist factory manufacturing automobiles, it is important for those engaged in such activity to work according to a certain plan, which must necessarily demand coordinated action for its realisation.

Coordinated action in turn requires discipline. This discipline in most earlier modes of production was imposed through explicit coercion. If the actions of the slaves working together were not coordinated because some slackened in their work, then those who slackened would be physically punished by the agents of the slave-owner.

Likewise, in the feudal system, if the serfs working on the lord’s land did not act in a coordinated manner, say, in harvesting the crop, because of which a part of the crop got destroyed, then the allegedly laggard serfs would be beaten.

Production, in short, requires coordination, and in any society where the means of production are not owned in common, where in other words there is a distinction between the owners and the workers, so that the workers are not voluntarily interested in conforming to a coordinated action plan, there must exist some coercive means of making them conform.

Capitalism, however, despite being a class-divided society, does not resort to any explicit coercion. Not that capitalists do not occasionally use physical coercion, but that is not the rule under this system, which then raises the question: how is work-discipline maintained under capitalism so that workers are made to conform to the plan of coordinated action?

The answer is that this is achieved under capitalism through what the Polish Marxist economist Michal Kalecki had called the “threat of the sack”. Anyone who is deemed to be slacking, and hence upsetting the coordinated action plan is simply thrown out of employment. That person, in short, loses his place within the system and is thrown outside of it.

It follows, therefore, that capitalism as a system must have both an “inside” and an “outside”, to enforce work discipline that is so essential for production. While there is no explicit physical coercion, like starving a slave or beating a serf, there is implicit coercion imposed on the workers, without which of course production under this system would not be possible. For this implicit coercion to exist, a space “outside” of the system must exist where conditions of life are so difficult that those employed within the capitalist region dread being pushed into this “outside” region.

The totality of capitalism, therefore, consists of two regions: the “inside” and the “outside” regions. The Marxist tradition alone takes cognizance of this fact and notes the existence of a “reserve army of labour” as a necessary feature of capitalism constituting this “outside” sphere.

Even many Marxists or persons sympathetic to Marxism do not see this point. They see the reserve army of labour only as explaining why real wages under capitalism remain tied to a (historical) subsistence level, that is, only as playing the same role as the Malthusian theory of population played in the Ricardian system. In Ricardo’s view, the Malthusian theory explained the fact of real wages of workers remaining more or less tied to a subsistence level, for, according to Malthus, if wages rose above subsistence then workers procreated rapidly, causing labour supply to increase which pushed wages down again to subsistence level.

Marx had rejected Malthus’s theory, calling it a “libel on the human race”, and it is generally believed that Marx substituted his concept of the reserve army of labour, which served to keep real wages down to subsistence level, for Malthus’s libelous explanation.

This, however, is an incomplete reading of Marx. It is certainly true that the reserve army keeps down real wages to a historically-given subsistence level, but this is not its sole role. Without the reserve army there would be no work discipline under capitalism and hence capitalist production will become impossible.

All of contemporary “mainstream” economics, however, sees capitalism as a self-contained system where all “factors of production” are fully employed if markets are allowed to work freely; and those existing deviant traditions, such as the Keynesian tradition which does not accept this proposition, believe nonetheless that capitalism as a self-contained system can achieve full employment of all “factors of production” through the efforts of the state supplementing the working of the market.

In other words, both the orthodox and the heterodox traditions in non-Marxist economic theory that currently exist, see only the “inside” of capitalism, not its “outside”. In fact, they do not even see the necessity of an “outside”, that is, of a region containing a mass of unemployed, underemployed, and disguised-unemployed workers, such that being thrown into these ranks fills employed workers with dread and serves to instil in them an obedience to discipline that is absolutely essential for capitalist production.

The reason why contemporary “mainstream” economics and not even its heterodox critics do not see the necessity of this “outside” region, is because they do not analyse production sui generis but see it only as an extension of exchange. Their focus, in short, is on the process of exchange which markets are supposed to effect; and that is where their analysis stops.

What happens after the capitalist has purchased raw materials and labour-power on the market and retreated into the premises of the factory, is not something that occupies their attention. Their analysis, therefore, can at best cover production only in an imaginary world where all production is artisan production, with each artisan employing only his own labour, so that there is no separate need for having an arrangement for imposing work-discipline. But outside of this imaginary universe, and certainly for a capitalist economy, both “mainstream” economics and even its valid and insightful critical theories such as the Keynesian theory, clearly fall short.

This has important implications. The existence of a reserve army is necessary not only for production, not only for keeping real wages down as already noted, but also for ensuring that workers act as a class of price-takers who are too weak to demand and obtain higher money wages even when their real wages are being eroded.

This is not to say that if the reserve army disappears or dwindles, the system will immediately collapse; but its functioning will become impossible over time, which basically means that the maintenance of full employment under capitalism is an impossibility. The Keynesian idea that through state intervention in “demand management” capitalist economies can maintain full employment, is a chimera, arising from the fact that Keynes saw the deficiency of aggregate demand as the only cause for involuntary unemployment.

This is not just an idle claim. The Keynesian idea put into practice in the post-war period came to grief with an explosion of money wages all over the advanced capitalist world in 1968, which in turn gave rise to an inflationary explosion, since the low unemployment rates that had been sustained had ended the workers’ role as “price-takers”. This inflationary explosion which was carried forward by primary commodity prices, was finally ended with US President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. They ended Keynesian “demand management” and re-created massive unemployment.

If the maintenance of full employment is impossible under capitalism, then so is the maintenance of a welfare State. Welfare State measures make the position of the reserve army less intolerable, and hence the punishment for an employed worker who is “given the sack”, for allegedly violating work-discipline, less severe. Such measures, therefore, undermine work-discipline within the capitalist system; what is more, they also enhance the bargaining power of the workers, thereby undermining their “price-taker” role. Such measures, of course, can be in force for some time, but the effort of the capitalists will always be to erode them.

In the 1950s and the early 1960s, there was much discussion about whether “capitalism had changed”, whether it had altered its nature from predatory to welfare capitalism; and many believed that it had. The imposition of neo-liberalism, however, altered the fortunes of the workers even in the advanced capitalist countries and this imposition was immanent within the system. All attempts at “reforming” capitalism, making it more “humane”, it follows, are bound to come a cropper. A more “humane” society can be built only by transcending capitalism, by ushering in a system where the means of production are socially owned.

Prabhat Patnaik is Professor Emeritus, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The views are personal.

Populism as a departure from neoliberalism in Hungary and Israel

University of Chicago Press Journals

At the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, write the authors of a new article from Polity, neoliberalism was “consolidated as the only legitimate form of doing politics.” But in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, and with the entrenchment of far-right governments across the world, neoliberalism’s dominance was threatened by the rise of populism. And while some analyses of populism present the phenomenon as a continuation of neoliberalism, Asaf Yakir and Doron Navot argue that it in fact represents a rupture with the neoliberal order. In “Right Wing Populist Re-Politicization and the ‘Hollowing Out’ of the Neoliberal State,” Yakir and Navot use Viktor Orbán’s Hungary and Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel as case studies to demonstrate neoliberalism’s vulnerability to populist rule.

Neoliberalism is often theorized as a withdrawal of the state from the economy, but, argue Yakir and Navot, it can be more accurately characterized as state intervention into markets for the benefit of private profit. And although right-wing populism as enacted by the Orbán and Netanyahu governments also necessitates increased state intervention, its strategies differ than those of neoliberalism in their rejection of bureaucracy, their re-politicization of state policy, and their subversion of institutional independence.

Viktor Orbán was once involved in Hungary’s neoliberalization program following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. But since his election in 2010, Orbán has instituted political reforms that clash with neoliberalism’s technocratic tendencies. His government replaced 274 judges with sympathetic allies, and solidified parliament as an extension of the executive branch, rather than an organ with any power of oversight. Orbán also reduced the independence of the Hungarian central bank, and, during an economic downturn in 2011, shifted significant capital into a “workfare” program that provided jobs to the nation’s unemployed at salaries above welfare benefits but below minimum wage. All of these initiatives align, write Yakir and Navot, with the populist insistence on enacting policy agenda even at the cost of a heavier fiscal burden and a greater entanglement of the state and the market.

Benjamin Netanyahu, too, write the authors, has challenged neoliberal governance through his transformations of the Israeli government. In 2015, the Israeli Prime Minister appointed his populist ally Moshe Kahlon to the head of the Ministry of Finance, an agency long viewed as the “cornerstone of the neoliberal Israeli state.” Under Kahlon, Netanyahu’s government involved itself in a controversial plan to address the nation’s housing crisis. The state sold land below market price to contractors and provided housing grants to buyers in lower-income districts that had supported Netanyahu’s party in the election. This program increased the country’s budget deficit and incurred the criticism of the International Monetary Fund, who “encouraged Israeli authorities to adopt supply-side measures that are more adaptable to the tenets of neoliberalism.”

Both Orbán’s and Netanyahu’s governments are conservative ones, guided by a populism that is right-wing in its “declared commitment to the well-being of ordinary people at the expense of other sections of society.” And as such, write the article authors, their brand of populism, unlike a left-leaning one like that of the Syriza party in Greece, poses “no threat to capitalism.” Nonetheless, Yakir and Navot conclude, the success of these populist overhauls shows that the neoliberal regime “could be more fragile than previously assumed by critics and sympathizers alike,” and undermines “the apparent solidity of the state, unmasking its existence as a contradictory form of social relations.”

Journal

Polity

DOI

10.1086/737289

Article Title

Right-Wing Populist Re-Politicization and the “Hollowing Out” of the Neoliberal State

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment