The first few months of Donald Trump’s return to the presidency have been dizzying and unsettling. From the attacks on public servants, universities, and students to the almost daily announcement of new tariffs and the slashing of a great many Federal programmes, it is difficult to just keep up with the latest news let alone to make sense of it and understand the broader context and implications of what is happening. Although most focus on the Trump regime’s increasingly authoritarian tactics and his xenophobia and imperial rhetoric, usually comparing it to past anti-democratic and fascist moments, what is often ignored is how deeper transformations of capitalism and our everyday lives may serve as the material conditions that made Trump’s political tenor and success
Although it is clear that Trumpism’s authoritarian tendencies and hatred of democracy fit well with past fascist movements, one key difference is that fascist movements of the 1920s and 30s were keenly communitarian. Not only is it true that the fascists in Italy and Germany were active in creating many welfare-state policies, they embraced state regulation of industry and economy and eschewed individualism and self-interested behaviour. It was the obligation of the individual to sacrifice for the good of the national community. Let us remember that the Nazis presented the Jews as the source of crisis in German society because of their presumed self-interested behaviour, their ascribed unfettered greed. Greed and self-interested behaviour were seen as the cause of social decay and economic malaise. Imagine, for a moment, what the Nazis would have thought of Ayn Rand, a great hero of Trump and the new right, who held up individual greed as the highest of all values? She would have been sent to the death camps even faster than the Jews and communists. For Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, Javier Milei, Elon Musk, and many more, the political vision of the present is not one of increased economic planning, public welfare spending, and taming market forces in order to address social needs. Instead, they are focused on a much more liberal and libertarian project of asserting the primacy of property rights and engendering safety and security. Why should this new right be so much more individualistic and libertarian than more traditional versions of fascism? Why would so many be attracted to the idea of a regime that is more authoritarian and xenophobic but also less supportive of social programmes and public spending? What are the material conditions that have led to the rise of Trumpism?
The Libidinal-Economy of the New Right
When Sigmund Freud penned Civilization and Its Discontents, it was taken as given that libidinal energy not expended in erotic life would, to a significant degree, be displaced onto socially acceptable practices in ways that bind together the members of the community in a strong way:
Reality shows us that civilization is not content with the ties we have so far allowed it. It aims at binding the members of the community together in a libidinal way as well and employs every means to that end. It favours every path by which strong identifications can be established between the members of the community, and it summons up aim-inhibited libido on the largest scale so as to strengthen the communal bond by relations of friendship.
However, the evolution of capitalism has brought this assumption into question. The contemporary capitalism of mass consumption, spectacle, and suburbanisation has eroded cooperative sensibilities and communal ties which, in turn, has underpinned the ever-increasing turn toward the right. The great libidinal investments placed in consumption as well as the ideologies engendered by suburban and digital spatial orders have led to a much more alienated and hollow existence for the many. The far right, Trumpism and beyond, has drawn upon these dynamics to mobilise the anomic and inward-looking drive for individual utility, on the one hand, and the nostalgic quest for community and harmony, on the other, in order to create a new right-wing politics that is xenophobic, nationalistic, and authoritarian while also being libertarian and individualistic. The material terrain for contemporary political struggles, accordingly, has been shaped by capitalism in ways that have significantly benefited conservative political forces; the challenge to revolutionary political efforts is to break the libidinal bonds of consumer society and redirect the desire for community from nationalistic and authoritarian forms to more democratic and communal models.
The basic Freudian insight noted above is that displacement of libidinal energy away from sexuality, the creation of aim-inhibited libido, was necessary in order to tie together the members of community in a strong way and temper the death drive. It was taken as a given that the surplus enjoyment would, in large part, be channelled into socially acceptable practices which would tie together the community in ways that allowed it to endure. The ways that libidinal energy flowed seemed to be inescapable, that which did not go into sexual life would necessarily flow to social activity, there simply were few other meaningful possibilities. Thus, the core contradiction between individual and society seemed clear, the possibility of individual happiness was necessarily sacrificed in order to make the community an enduring reality.
It is still unquestionably true that libidinal energy flows to social activity. Whether it be the satisfaction one gets from a hard day’s work, drinks with friends, a family meal, etc., there are still a plethora of social activities that function in the ways that Freud and others had presumed. However, the development of capitalism has engendered social relationships that are so mediated, so alienating and alienated, that it is no longer the case that we can assume that the libidinal energies that are sublimated onto them will have the effect of tying us together in a closer way. As capitalism in the twentieth century expanded and intensified, new ways of living emerged that endanger the libidinal glue of society. Fordist capitalism and the necessity of mass consumption introduced a very new and powerful form of aim-inhibited libido. The culture industry, the advertising industry in particular, (in part armed with Freudian insights) actively worked to create needs and desires that could only be addressed by consuming. Shopping and the desire for more became an ever-increasing element of modern life. As has been well argued, most notably by Henri Lefebvre and Herbert Marcuse, the never-ending process of needs being created in the marketplace only to be made obsolete and replaced by newer needs not only engendered a steady drive to consume more commodities but it also functioned to ever further enslave the modern individual to the needs of the marketplace, further alienating them and reducing them to economically useful monads. What neither Marcuse nor Lefebvre fully considered was that these new libidinal displacements not only took away from the possibility of satisfaction but also from all other forms of aim-inhibited libido as well. Thus, the more that consumerism became the privileged loci of libidinal displacements, the more that more social forms of libidinal displacements became less fundamental and unavoidable.
The key issue is that these new forms of aim-inhibited libidinal sublimations, the consumption of commodities and spectacles, do not presuppose a communal experience but, rather, a radically individualised moment of attempted satisfaction. There are numerous sociological studies that point to this cultural shift but perhaps the most well-known is Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone. Putnam laments the loss of ‘civic engagement’ which he chronicles in everything from voting in elections and attending religious services, to, of course, bowling in leagues. Indeed, even the casual observer of contemporary society would be hard-pressed to not notice a significant shift away from more communal forms of enjoyment.
In the twenty plus years since Putnam’s book, the situation has become even more acute. There has been an intensification of the redirection of libidinal energy, we not only have the previous trappings of Fordism but digitisation and the proliferation of screens has become an increasingly central element of modern life. Street life and big cities not only gave way to car culture and suburbanisation, interpersonal relations and communal forms of play and leisure slowly gave way to every more individualised and specular forms given the mediation and proliferation of screens (from movie theatres and television screens to the current ubiquity of screens everywhere from watches to cars to street corners to, of course, phones). The decline in social activity that Putnam examined seems quaint in comparison to the current situation when almost all forms of communication, consumption, and leisure can be accomplished through screens rather than having to deal with other people directly. Not only does this result in an even greater reduction of face-to-face interaction but it has created an entire industry that is designed to keep people focused on screens rather than each other; the attention economy is engineered to keep people glued to YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, and a multitude of other platforms. The bad has gotten even worse. We have gone from shopping in malls to shopping online, from going to the movies to streaming them at home, from seeing each other when riding the bus or train to staring at smartphones and listening to music through our earphones, from eating at restaurants to ordering online, from talking to our friends to texting them or communicating through emojis and likes on social media.
The net result of all of these new forms of highly serialised and asocial libidinal displacements is rapidly increasing levels of alienation and the fraying of social bonds. A plethora of new and old pathologies now characterise our societies. We not only have old fashioned opioid epidemics, alcoholism, anxiety, neurosis, and religiosity; we also have millions with attention deficit disorder, anorexia, shopping addictions, internet gaming disorders, social communication disorders, and hoarding disorders, among many others. In other words, we not only have the typical attempts to numb oneself to or displace the brutality of the social world but we also have internalised the mechanisms of Fordist consumption in ways that further bind us to our alienation, structure our enjoyments around it, and which drive us to ever more individuated and asocial libidinal displacements; often resulting in face-to-face human relations as being experienced as awkward, uncomfortable and undesirable.
This new libidinal reality underpins the current right-wing tendency in politics. The libertarian views that were once ridiculed by most and held by only a small fringe of the right have now become completely mainstream. As Trumpism slashes non-defence related government spending and threatens everything from student loans to social security while another round of tax breaks for those who own the country is being prepared, the new right ethos of libertarian-authoritarianism grows. That these authoritarian-libertarian movements have become so mainstream and so common in countries as disparate as Brazil, the US, Greece, Finland, Argentina, and the UK, is an indication that the causes of this shift are deep and widespread. Although there are certainly national differences and a variety of political currents and legacies that preceded and feed into this turn to the new right, it is impossible to fully understand how the new right has become so widespread and so libertarian without connecting it to these libidinal displacements of Fordist and digital capitalism.
The Contradictions of Trumpism: Get Ready for the Future, It Is Murder
That this new libidinal terrain of contemporary capitalist societies is fertile soil for right-wing movements is very evident all around us. However, there are key limitations and contractions to these societies and the right-wing political formations that have come to characterise them. As the individualising libidinal displacements multiply, as social bonds and solidarity become more tenuous, as the presumed impossibility of alternatives to existing societies becomes gospel, as social movements that challenge the dominance of capital have receded into memories, we are faced with a situation that brings into doubt the capacity of such societies to successfully reproduce themselves. That most every major university, law firm, media outlet, labour union, and so on have so quickly capitulated to Trumpism rather than come together and fight against it is quite telling. So is the relative dearth of opposition in Congress and on the streets. Individual calculation has come to overtake collective movements and group formation.
Recall that, for such theorists as Karl Polanyi through his notion of the ‘double movement’ and Nicos Poulantzas through the idea of ‘relative autonomy’, the active resistance of the dominated classes is fundamental to the capacity of politics to secure the extended reproduction of social relations. According to Polanyi, the attempts of capital to create completely disembedded markets in 19th century Britain were thwarted by the struggles from below and, thus, the transition to capitalism was able to proceed at a speed that allowed society to endure and survive the process. The implication is that if capitalists had been successful in achieving fully disembedded markets, if they had not been countered with movements from below, capitalism would have failed, it would not have been viable, it would not have been able to reproduce its constitutive social relations. The political world we face now increasingly resembles the one that was not able to be fully realised in the nineteenth century. Between the reduction in political movements from below because of the libidinal changes noted earlier as well ever more unfettered flows of capital and the greatly increased ability to avoid national taxes and other regulations, the state everywhere becomes less and less capable or rationalising capitalism and providing collective solutions to the reproductive needs of society. From the construction of the basic infrastructure to the provision of education, housing, and healthcare, the pattern in most contemporary capitalist societies, especially the United States, has been to privatise and make individuals responsible for managing the costs and risks of what used to be collective obligations. For example, public funding of universities has consistently been eroded over the last forty years, to be replaced with ever higher tuition, student loans, and private donations and research grants. Thus, the notion that society bears the obligation to educate its population and ensure access to all citizens has been replaced with the idea that individuals need to plan and ensure their own futures by gaining access to higher education and making sure to modify themselves in ways that will make them valuable to the labour market. Competition to enter the more prestigious universities has increased greatly over the last forty years, as has the notion that one should study topics that allow for maximum returns on investments, schools often being ranked by the average salaries of their graduates. Students have become consumers on the one hand and investors on the other, shopping for the best ‘experience’ and increasing their ‘human capital’ so as to be valued by potential employers. What was once accepted as a community good and which functioned as a key ideological apparatus for political legitimacy and social reproduction has become reduced to an adjunct to the labour market. Free or near free universities dedicated to disinterested study, the norm for decades, now appear to many as utopian, wasteful, and undesirable.
Take as another illustrative example, the Build Back Better legislation proposed by the Biden administration to repair and replace some of the crumbling infrastructure as well as fund some modest social programmes. It was estimated to cost upwards of 3 trillion dollars over ten years, roughly 12% of GDP at the time it was proposed. It failed to pass as it was deemed much too costly, an impossibly obscene expenditure. By contrast, the New Deal was 80% of GDP in 1934 and was spread over 7 years rather than 10. What once was seen as prudent spending now appears as unthinkable. Even paying for the upkeep of those universities, parks, roadways, bridges and tunnels built 70, 80 and 90 years ago seems to be too much for the state to provide.
This new capitalist world where social bonds and collective responsibility are replaced by the ‘autonomous’ individual brings with it increased anxiety as well as nostalgia for community. The new right addresses both of these factors. On one hand, the libidinal dissatisfactions of the many are addressed through the anti-establishment rhetoric of those movements, a recognition that something is broken and the suffering of the people is recognised. Often, the ascription of some corrupting or dirty presence is given by these right-wing movements as the explanation of why society is broken. They provide a conceptual map through which the lack of satisfaction makes sense (as Trump had put it, ‘poisoning’ the blood of the country). Equally importantly, the powerlessness the many feel when facing the world as isolated monads is mediated through their identification with a powerful figure, be it a leader (Trump) or the party itself (MAGA). By fusing with the leader or party, they attempt to overcome their own feelings of powerlessness as well as the anxiety of curating their individuality. It may be futile, but this fusing functions as an attempt to overcome alienation by eliminating their own individuality and freedom by becoming a dutiful and faithful member of the group.
The nostalgia for community is very well reflected in the nationalistic elements of Trumpism and similar right-wing movements. However, given the weakened communal bonds, the nationalism becomes reduced to a matter of individuation rather than community cohesion. There is no notion that individuals have to go beyond their own interests in order to benefit others in the community, the nationalism of the Trumps of the world is about branding and excluding others rather than being about communitarian values. Recall that, for Trump, veterans are ‘losers’ and ‘suckers’, successful individuals would have made much more lucrative and safe career choices.
In key ways, supporting nationalist rhetoric and posturing becomes a stand-in for the community that people long for, but rather than transforming their ways of living so as to live a less alienated life they remain trapped in their current malaise, turning the question of community into a question of lifestyles. The celebration of the ‘autonomous’ individual as the highest of all values brings with it a greatly increased range of choices and options when it comes to our individuality. We now have the obligation to curate ourselves but this inward turn of our libidinal focus and the corresponding indifference to others and society more generally leads to principled political action, action that results in us sacrificing our self-interests for a broader good, becoming less and less possible. For every Mahmoud Khalil, there are thousands of Eric Adams. The key contradiction in this situation is that, without collective action from below, the extended reproduction of social relations become more and more anarchic and tenuous, furthering alienation and lack of social solidarity. In turn, individuals become more aggressive toward others as well as more anxious and fearful of the future. It is a dangerous and disastrous loop.
This is the dire political situation we face today, we are not simply battling Trump’s rhetoric and control of the repressive state apparatus (together with the ineptitude and failure of the Democratic Party), we are faced with a society that is deeply alienated and whose desires and gaze have been captured and colonised by a digitised capitalism that has increasingly replaced social cohesion and interaction with Netflix and Amazon. Our everyday lives increasingly lead us to a more anomic and violent future. As Trumpism’s cuts to social spending continue and people’s anxiety increases, the spiral of ever more frayed social relations and desire for authoritarian libertarianism will continue to feed each other and drive us even further along the disastrous road we are on. The only option is to replace these everyday repetitions that underpin so much of Trumpism and to reconstitute ourselves as communities that live in ways the oppose our servitude to capitalist technology and desire. A real revolution in everyday life is needed if we hope to resurrect a society that can understand its own interdependencies and champion popular sovereignty. Whether these movements take the form of radical struggles for municipal democracy and autonomy or a more familiar left-populist movement to redistribute wealth and nationalise monopolies, the technologies of seriality and servitude that capitalism has unleashed need to be destroyed and replaced with democratic forms of education, desire, and cooperation.
