(PHOTO CREDIT: Gage Skidmore/Flickr)

By Youssef Shawky Magdy

After Donald Trump won 2016 elections, many theorizations emerged about the rise of the right in the capitalist West. This was exacerbated by Boris Johnson's victory in Britain, and the vision became clear that there would be a tug of war between a US-British economic and political alliance against Europe under the leadership of Germany. In addition to the rise of the right-wing movements in many European countries as Germany itself and France (some expected Marie Le Pen would win or that Le Pen will succeed Macron). But what does the rise of the right mean basically?

Since the end of the nineteenth century, the period of competitive capitalism ended and capitalism has been entering the framework of monopoly capitalism, which was characterized by the close union of financial and industrial capital. Lenin wrote about that stage, stressing its close connection with imperialism, and we still live in the highest stage of capitalism with the change of imperialism from a national situation to a globalized one. The question here is when does "fascism" — or what can be called more broadly the "savior right" — rise?

The savior far right rises as a response to a comprehensive social crisis represented by an economic decline in the rate of capitalist profit that cannot be compensated for by "more foreign imperialism"(imperialism against others), in addition to a political crisis represented by the dissolution of the ruling-class coalition and the collapse of its hegemony. Besides the ideological crisis represented in the collapse of the principles and myths supporting the status quo.

This is accompanied by an increase in the pace of progressive movements of a left-wing nature that offer popular and progressive solutions to the crisis, such as fair wages, a fair distribution of the surplus, and an increase in workers' power and authority within productive enterprises. Perhaps the solutions become more revolutionary that try to change the entire social system.

And when those progressive movements fail for subjective (strategic and tactical) and objective reasons, the fascist right rises up as the representative of the bourgeois class, which is in crisis. So the right tries to fix the situation in favor of monopoly capitalism, but in a populist fashion. So, the crisis is emptied of its content and the process of displacement is installed, which projects the problem to any demographic or cultural phenomenon, such as projecting the crisis on immigrants, for example. The right represents the middle class but in a deceitful manner.

And now, after we knew the conditions and aspects of the savior right, are these conditions and appearances fulfilled in the current capitalist West?

Of course, the capitalist West has been going through an economic crisis since the 1990s, and the Iraq war was a temporary attempt to alleviate the crisis, but the opposite happened. The goal of securing the oil wells was achieved, but the return was serious economic and political losses. The crisis reached a dangerous stage in 2008, and with Covid-19 crisis, the severity of the crisis increased in several situations. The profit rate reached very low rates.

Regarding the political crisis, the United States has been suffering since the Iraq war from a decline in its hegemony over the world and the consumption of exorbitant resources in its wars, which has led to Trump's tendency to reduce those interventions and limit the intervention only to very necessary situations such as threatening to intervene in Venezuela or Iran. In Western countries themselves, liberal democratic governmentality suffers from a deep problem represented in the vulgarization of the meaning of democracy and its focus on the representative type only. The public’s distrust of that governmentality has been increasing.

Regarding the ideological crisis, liberal democratic values are proving their failure day after day, from their forced application on the third world countries within the framework of pushing them towards economic openness (which is failing for various reasons, the most important of which is that these projects are completely unpopular) to the failure of that values in the West to achieve the desired happiness.

In addition to the neoliberal ideology that fuels religious and ethnic conflicts.

As for the signs that indicate the rise of the right, we find that they are available to a large extent; for example, Trump tells us that he is “the president of the peasants and workers!” Right-wing nationalism is spreading again, in addition to anti-immigrantism. Racist crimes are increasing day by day.

The question here is whom the rising right represents now?

In the pre-globalization era, the right "truly" represented big monopoly capitalism that was still associated with "nation-state". That link was largely structural. So we find that the laws and rules regulating the economy were related to the framework of the nation. The economic production cycles were deeply related to the state’s economic cycles, such as the payment of salaries, allowances, official holidays..etc. In addition, industrial capitalism prevailed, not financial capitalism. The first, of course, needs an organization and a specific context in which to work. In one word, capitalism was capitalist "statism". Consequently, when fascism escalated, it rose in a context that made it easier for it to perform its rescue tasks, and the statism turned into hyper-statism. The bailout has come in a national context to represent monopoly capital of a national character.

But in our time, the era of globalization, capital divorced from the national context; the globalized economic cycle, in all its complexities, has separated from the national context and Financial capital prevailed. In fact, the crisis of global monopoly capitalism needs a solution of the same size and level of complexity, that is, it needs a global solution.

The savior right cannot provide solutions but national solutions, and thus its representation in that era is limited to capital, which is not so large as to leave the context of the nation-state. In general, there is a conflict with those small capitalist strata, and the globalization project led by big capitalism, which seizes and controls the market and has relatively little production costs. The protectionist measures (of all kinds) promoted by the right contradict the globalization project.

Even if an extremist right-wing project succeeds in a western country, it will be overthrown by the global system, as happened in the Second World War as When the right fails to manage the crisis, it turns to violence that is forcefully defeated.

This is how we should understand Trump's rise and fall. The rise was a response to the crisis but an inadequate response. The new US administration is more homogenous with the world order. Therefore, it will participate in the global solution to the crisis.

Biden's victory and the defeat of Trump have not signified the success of any progressive coalition, as some liberals think.

Some believed that Trump's rise would result in a counter-left movement, and that did happen with the rise of Bernie Sanders, but that movement was defeated. Ultimately Biden does the same job as Trump, but in a more understanding and rational way.

By Youssef Shawky Magdy

"There is no revolutionary movement, without a revolutionary theory"
-V.I. Lenin ("What is to be done?")

In order to continue to be a theory that interests in Reality and at the same time provides critical concepts and theoretical tools to interpret this reality, Marxist theory should not fold upon itself in a dogmatic manner, as this self closure is contradicting the theory itself and its alluding to reality, as well as its finite formulation; as the importance of Marxist theory (especially, Marxist critique to capitalism) will diminish upon changing conditions and Realities, this changing what the theory is all about.

On the other hand, we find many revisionist approaches and the harmonizing tendency with the spirit of the era: as the mechanistic and economistic views of Marxism, Neo-kantian formulations, humanistic interpretations, postmodern Marxism...Etc. All these discourses, regardless of their different forms and the conditions in which they are produced, have the tendency to minimize or cut the critical distance between Marxism and other philosophies and Ideologies.

But as we know, Marxist theory contains a critical philosophy, as it tries to absorb or enclose other philosophies within the Marxist framework; this closure means simply interpreting these ideologies from an objective materialistic stance by relating them to the social formation with its interwoven complex structures. This implies that in order to do this job, Marxist theory should not subordinate theoretically to the problematics of these philosophies which means fleeing their magic and "laying bare" what is consolidated under colorful rhetoric. What makes this clearer is the discovery of struggle between Idealism and Materialism in every ideological or philosophical system. In this context we may refer to how Lenin read Hegel, as Lenin had discovered that the Hegelian "absolute idea" is Materialistic rather than idealistic. This discovery or laying bare was done through Hegel's system itself, as Hegel had asserted that: "Logic" is a process without a subject or a center, even Logic negates itself and with that, negating the center or the beginning. This negation corresponds to scientific objectivity that Marx adopted in Das Kapital (Althusser 1971, 123).

The pioneers of this Marxist critical stance are Antonio Gramsci and Louis Althusser, as they had gone beyond the return and rereading of Marx and emancipation of Marxism from prevalent ideologies, drawing great attention to more or less successful revolutionary practices which happened around them and extracting from their critique very important theoretical conclusions.

From this stance, it is important to make up an imaginary discussion between the two figures, and that’s what Althusser did. But from the point of view of justice is it right to hold this discussion when one of the two figures didn't reply to the other? It is not that simple, as there is no winner and loser here, rather what should concern us is the struggle over the interpretation of Gramsci and currents of thoughts that try to absorb him. This struggle has originated partially because of special conditions related to the life and thought of Gramsci as can be discussed in few points:

Althusserian theses were directed partially to prevalent Humanistic Marxism in France, so in case of Gramsci we can't separate between theoretical abstract theses of Gramsci and what happened in Italy in the period that preceded the rise of Fascism when the labor movements had lost many decisive battles. According to Gramsci, this loss was linked to the economistic view that was adopted by Italian socialist party, this stance implies that the economic struggle (strikes and so on) is sufficient for the workers to win their battles against capitalism , so accordingly the party was not interested in the formation of coalitions between different factions of popular classes (Simon 1999, 15) as peasants, Agricultural laborers, low middle class employees and so forth, these coalitions which would have taken a political color. And from this point we can understand Gramsci's assertion about the importance of both political and ideological moments in the struggle for Hegemony. These moments which need a kind of human volunteerism or agency.
In some cases we may find a difficulty to fully understand some of Gramsci's theses but of course that isn't related to the difficulty of Gramsci's style of writing or thought, but to the circumstances in which Prison Notebooks had been written as it included a severe watchful periodical inspection from the guards, this dictated a self censorship carried by Gramsci through a distracting style of writing and choosing of words. This in addition to his illness and great difficulty to have books in prison.
When Gramsci wrote about Marx, he warned us from oeuvres that were published posthumously, as they are far from being complete and distinct but they contain ideas which are in development and adjustment, and if the author had an opportunity to complete or adjust his works, he might denounce them or regard them as insufficient (Gramsci 1999, 715-716), this short story says a lot about what Gramsci had thought about the notebooks he was writing.

And now we can tell that the struggle about Gramsci is related to two points:

Firstly: interpretation of Gramsci, as Humanistic Marxism in France, had given a humanistic interpretation to Gramsci supported by some obvious texts, as well as the Neo-Marxist interpretation that exploits the notion of historical bloc to take in theoretically the new type of protests which can be designated as liberal, for example: 3rd wave feminism and environmentalism. The direct obvious content of these protests didn't change considerably but what changed is the social relationship that this content has kept with the whole social struggle, especially class struggle. What is obvious today is detachment of the content from the whole social framework and harmonization of these movements with late capitalist context.

Secondly: does Gramsci represent a self-sufficient (Adequate) intellectual system? Does he provide concepts and theoretical tools (which as any tools need to be improved continuously) wich make up a system that doesn't contain any central or fundamental problems within the structure of the theory itself (regardless of regular problems that face any intellectual system and get resolved with time)?

Roughly, we can say that Althusser was interested in the second point, which means that he didn't think that Gramsci's intellectual project can form a complete or self-sufficient theoretical system. But this didn't stop Althusser from appreciating what Gramsci asserted about the state, which can't be reduced to a coercive apparatus but also includes the civil society with its different organizations, even if Gramsci didn't indicate systematically the effect of each apparatus and its relatively different role (Althusser 2014, 242, note 7). And in other places, Althusser appreciated the welding nature of ideology that was discovered by Gramsci (Althusser 2014, 227), who said that ideology resembles cement because it connects different elements of the hegemonic/ruling bloc.

This doesn't mean that Gramsci's system doesn't contain crucial flaws that, according to Althusser, can have serious outcomes in relation to theoretical and political practice. For example, Gramsci's failure to formulate an obvious relationship between philosophy and science (Althusser 2016, a letter) as we will discuss shortly.

Althusser's critique, which is somehow scattered in various texts, culminated into an article which then became a chapter in Reading Capital. This article will be our main source besides Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks.

The distinct trait in Gramsci's texts is "humanistic historicism," which means that every social phenomena is in an ongoing state of change and historical development as successive historical eras, thus there is no kind of knowledge that supersedes history. To make it simple: historical era dictates any kind of knowledge. That's the historical part; the other part indicates that people or "Human" is responsible for this historical process by taking part through her free will in various practices that change history. And of course these practices are participated in the "present" (a moment in history) which humans want to change.

There is a distinction between historicism and humanism but, according to Althusser, this difference is superficial and they share the same problems.

First: Historicism

Gramsci puts history above everything, including philosophy, science, and politics. That, of course, includes Marxism. He went further to say that Marxism is an "absolute Historicism" (Gramsci 1999, 836) which means that he views Marxism as a methodology which interprets various phenomena in the light of history, historical eras, and its peculiarities — even Marxism itself is part of this history. Thus, all different forms of human knowledge and practice occur in a specific moment in history called "present.” This occurrence makes these forms of knowledge carry the present within it and express the present. And there is also an expressive relationship between forms of knowledge (scientific, political…etc.) so everything expresses everything with the same structural degree because they are exposed to the same "present.” This is what what Althusser called "direct expression." (Althusser 2015, 211) This leads to the idea of contemporaneity, which will be discussed shortly.

Accordingly, we can then understand Gramsci telling that philosophy can't be separated from the history of philosophy and also culture from the history of culture (Gramsci 1999, 628). Thus philosophy can't break with its history as new philosophy will enclose the old within itself considering it as history. But what about Science? Science also behaves like philosophy in this historical path, based on this, Gramsci wrote that electricity for example has its historical significance only when it has become an essential element in production process, and here manifests the instrumental tendency Gramsci had about science (Althusser 2016, a letter). According to that, by inclusion in history (its peculiarities and specific eras) science has the same epistemological value as philosophy and may be as politics also, as the result of "direct expressionism", so at the end we find that peculiarity of science is lost. But science is the peculiar element of Marxism and it is what separates it from other ideologies (Althusser 2015, 211); what is important about science is its formulation and concepts which try to catch up with objective reality which is separated from subject's experience; this reality Gramsci views as metaphysical as it related to human existence, and if a human is a historical being, then this reality and knowledge related to it and resulted from it are also historical beings (Gramsci 1999, 807). This asserts the Gramsci's devaluation of science and objectivity which is a theoretical tendency that is adopted by material philosophy as Linen indicated in "Materialism and empirio-criticism" (Althusser 1971, 48-49) this materialism is what Gramsci called metaphysical (Gramsci 1999, 836 ).

So according to what preceded, we find that the distance separating Marxist philosophy (Dialectical materialism) and science (Historical materialism) disappeared in Gramscian thought where Historicism swallows everything and then the material science of history becomes a mere organic ideology incorporated in the historical bloc and included in the superstructure of society (Althusser 2016, a letter).

And here comes the idea of "contemporaneity" that we referred to earlier. "Direct Expressionism" makes all instances; scientific, philosophical, political…etc, are exposed by the same degree to the historical present (Althusser 2015, 212) and also exposed to themselves by an equal extent. That manifests a Hegelian influence especially Hegelian Totality that designates everything as the reflection of the internal dialectic of the absolute idea. But the Marxist totality is different in the sense that it separates between different instances and provides each instance with a degree of "Relative Autonomy". So Superstructure is relatively autonomous from "the Base", and the ideological apparatuses is relatively autonomous from coercive ones and the components of the ideological apparatus each has a degree of independence and so on, not to mention the political structure and its great degree of independency and determining power. Here we find that different instances are not the same in effect and we can't reduce them to be mere reflections of history.

We can conclude from what previously stated that different practices related to distinct instances can also be reduced to one practice which is historical practice. Althusser refused this concept in the light of his own theoretical concept of practice, as every practice is an activity that transforms a raw material (not only material one but also intellectual as the raw materials are more or less the products of other practices; empirical, ideological…etc.) through definitive methods, means and conditions to obtain a specific product (Althusser 1969, 166-167)

And so the unification of practices and their processes in maxim of history can be considered a dissociation of the uniqueness of each practice and its break with other practices in the specificity of production process, i.e. adopting this notion, the ideological practice is then homogenizes with scientific one without a break. So the specific traits of each practice can be designated to other practices, and this appears in Gramscian thought as a general methodological trend (Althusser 2015, 217) as for example, Gramsci sometimes attributes to political practice a deterministic power or ability equivalent to that of economic social relations.

Althusser attributes all these ideas to the theoretical play of Gramscian thought discovered by the analysis of the internal logic of this thought, but we can find the origin in Gramsci's text itself, as he thought that, considering philosophy, politics, and economy, if the three elements adopted the same notion about the world, then they should hold within themselves an ability to transfer the theoretical fundamentals from element to another and to conduct a mutual translation between them (Gramsci 1999, 745 )

Second: Humanism

Man can understand history because s/he who made it. Thus spoke Vico. Here we can distinguish between two roles:

firstly, the making of history or the actor role, that's the role we all familiar with in which man is the obvious actor who leads revolutions, declares war, discovers, Etc. in fact that's the ideological role by which we perceive history.

Secondly, the author of history which is the non-human conditions (and yet not natural) that make history. These are the relations of productions that constitute the economic structure and also the political and ideological relations and structures. these determinants are not human in the sense that although humans are the smallest elements of that system, what should be counted for are the relations between these elements, these relations have a non-human nature because they sublime above humans as they control and coerce them materially and symbolically. So the relations with their complicated intercalation, are structuring structural positions which humans fit in. we can say that, This role is the real role in history.

According to Althusser, Gramsci wants to make human both the actor and the author of history by his stress on human agency and consciousness as we referred earlier. This should be accompanied by substitution of relations of production with human relations (Althusser 2015, 218), these new relations expand to include knowledge, objectivity, and science, the latter is considered as the human relation with history and nature (the concept of nature presents in history), and so history returns again but this time, it revolves around human and its different relations, and human becomes the inducer of human nature change by his role in making history, accordingly the real conditions that constitute human are eliminated.

Words are possibilities!

We can't doubt the growing importance of Gramsci and Althusser with the development of international and national statuses, the recognition of this importance must be fortified by the discussion between the two in addition to other thinkers. No doubt that Althusser had caught up with Gramsci's literal words, but we shouldn't forget that although theory isn't mere words and language, it is represented by these tools. And we should remember also that theory although it doesn't make the world, it reveals how it is constructed, and accordingly what are the possible strategies to change this construction, so we can say that words have an important weight in determining the scope of potential and our capability.

References

Althusser, Louis, For Marx, Translated by Ben Brewster, (Paris: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1969).

Althusser, Louis, Lenin and philosophy and other essays, translated by Ben Brewster, ( NY and London: Monthly review press, 1971).

Althusser, Louis, On the reproduction of capitalism: ideology and ideological state apparatuses, preface by Etienne balibar, translated by G.M. Goshgarian (NY and London: verso, 2014).

Althusser, Louis, Reading capital : the complete edition /; introduction by Etienne Balibar ; contributions by Roger Establet ; contributions by Jacques Ranciere ; contributions by Pierre Macherey ; translated by Ben Brewster and David Fernbach, ( NY and London: verso, 2015).

Althusser, Louis, "A Letter from Louis Althusser on Gramsci's thought", Decalages, 2016, Vol.2, iss 1.

Gramsci, Antonio, Selections from the prison notebooks, Edited and translated by Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, (London: Lawrence & wishart, 1999).

Simon, Roger, Gramsci's political thought, an introduction (London: Lawrence & wishart, 1999).