Over the past two decades, talk show hosts, news pundits, academic scholars, and editorial writers have been absorbed by the rise of populism, nativism, and fascism in our times. Most present only one piece of the puzzle, whether that be the relationship between populism and nativism, or the similarity of right-wing movements across the centuries, or populism’s connection to globalization. Often these discussions are also partial in that they tend to focus on radical politics, either of the right or the left, without explaining how each relates to the other. This book seeks to connect the dots across these various and sundry discourses.
The thesis of this book is that the only way to explain the fact that parallel movements on both the right and the left are forming across so many countries at the same time is that we are witnessing a generalized response to structural changes in the global system. Moreover, this response has occurred before. The turn of the nineteenth century was a period characterized by similarly puzzling dichotomies: unparalleled scientific and technological advances produced economic and social interconnectivity across the globe that was followed almost immediately by a dangerous inward turn toward nationalism. Most surprising of all, this rejection of internationalism was particularly strong among the most technologically and economically advanced nations. Put simply, both were epochs of a “double movement.”
But such an assertion leaves us with a critical question: What does it mean to say, in effect, that “history is repeating itself”? Obviously, history does not literally repeat itself. Every time period is different from the one that preceded it. There has to be some kind of reasonable analytic model that can guide such a reading of history. So, the task here is to develop clearly specified guidelines for comparing these turn-of-the-century periods. Accordingly, this book takes a two-step approach. The first step is to clarify what the theoretical basis could be for making such a large claim. The second is to apply that theoretical model empirically to the two time periods.
Part I lays the analytic groundwork for the historical analysis that follows. In the four chapters that make up this section of the book, existing concepts and theories are contrasted and synthesized to produce a workable model that can be used to study the “double movement” in different time periods. Chapter One provides the foundation for this endeavor, by introducing key aspects of the concepts being investigated, namely nationalism, populism, fascism, and nativism. The chapter examines how these four discourses converge as well as where they depart from one another. Chapter Two builds upon these existing categories by presenting a new typology that organizes elements of these four concepts into novel categories of nationalism: creative, consolidating, and defensive nationalism. The chapter ends with a more extensive discussion of right- and left-wing versions of defensive nationalism.
Having established the foundation that lies behind the construct of defensive nationalism, the next two chapters describe critical elements of Polanyi’s and Schumpeter’s theories. The deeper examination of these theories is undertaken to explain how they will be amalgamated into a coherent analytic model. Chapter Three discusses in greater detail the theoretical construct of the “double movement.” The chapter commences with an exploration of Polanyi’s theory and then discusses the limitations inherent in it as well as the challenges of applying the “double movement” to a different period. Chapter Four surveys key aspects of Schumpeter’s theory of technology and explains how it can be combined with Polanyi’s concepts to overcome some of these constraints. The chapter ends by explaining why “defensive nationalism” provides a valuable tool for applying this combined theoretical model of historical change to both time periods.