Mediated neo-fascisms and “mid cult” as the political (and cultural) logic of Latin American lumpen-capitalism
Within the "Latin American Critical Thought Notebooks" Collection, CLACSO presents "Mediated Neofascisms and 'mid cult' as the political (and cultural) logic of Latin American lumpen-capitalism," an investigation by Rodolfo Gómez.
Mediated neo-fascisms and “mid cult” as the political (and cultural) logic of Latin American lumpen-capitalism
Rodolfo Gomez[1]
Introduction
The title paraphrases the one used by Fredric Jameson (1998) to describe “postmodernism” (as the cultural logic of late capitalism). Our perspective here acknowledges our debt to that great American cultural critic, but also to another author, André Gunder Frank, who was part of the so-called dependency theory—less frequently revisited these days.[2]Who knew how to make the Marxian notion of “lumpenproletariat” his own, in the middle of the sixties of the twentieth century, but not to characterize that sector of the popular classes but to do so with the Latin American bourgeoisie, which he called “lumpen-bourgeoisie”, associating it with a mode of economic development in the capitalist periphery that he called “lumpen-development”.
In the case of this brief work, we will attempt to revisit some of these approaches, in order to extend the use of the notion of “lumpen”, originally associated with its Marxist use in The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1975), no longer just to the Latin American bourgeoisie or to the modes of economic development it promoted in the 20th century, but to the entire functioning of capitalism. Hence the term “lumpen” capitalism that we use.
However, the use of this notion does not imply that, in our view, there has been a substantive change in the way capitalism, as described by Marx, functions. On the contrary, what we will argue here is that capitalism remains a “totality” (although—as Adorno would say—it presents itself as a false totality) that expresses itself in different dynamic and contradictory forms, derived from the contradiction between capital (understanding “capital” in a broad sense) and labor (also understood in a broad sense) throughout different historical periods. That is to say, capitalism mutates in its “forms” but not in the exploitative substance of “capital” over “labor.”
The hypothesis guiding this article posits that capitalism currently assumes a general “form” characterized by lumpen elements, reflecting the crisis of its previous neoliberal “form.” It is this new form that fosters the emergence of radicalized right-wing political movements in Latin America (Bolsonaro in Brazil, Milei in Argentina, etc.) and even in other countries (Trump in the USA, Meloni in Italy), which we define as mediated and mid-cult “neo-fascist.” In other words, it is a political, and also cultural, “form” that—like its 20th-century antecedents—seeks to promote capitalist reproduction.
Fascism, the dictatorships of capitalism, and the roles of the "lumpen"
While some authors (for example, Morresi, 2023) offer compelling reasons for not characterizing these new, radicalized right-wing political “forms” as fascist, we will use the prefix “neo” to highlight the differences between these “new” political movements or parties and historical fascisms, particularly European ones. To this end, we will consider previous works that analyzed 20th-century European fascisms, such as those by Trotsky (2019), Gramsci (2003), Horkheimer (2006), and Poulantzas (1998), to demonstrate certain lines of continuity in ideology and political practices. Above all, however, we will attempt to show that this “neo” characterization is based on changes in the “forms” of capitalist operation, where these new 21st-century fascisms—despite their differences—fulfill a similar function of capitalist preservation to that of 20th-century European fascism.
Indeed, if we understand that capitalism is a total “system” of domination that is expressed in different “forms” in all spheres of social functioning (socio-economic, political, cultural, etc.), resulting from the class struggle, that is, from the conflict between capital and labor, at a specific historical moment – and in a certain place; we can define, for example, the European fascisms of the 20th century as a specific “form”, exceptional according to Poulantzas, of political regime and capitalist State.
Trotsky unequivocally defines fascism as a dictatorial political “form,” determined by a specific historical stage of the class struggle, which uses capitalism as a means of disciplining the masses—that is, the working classes in Europe (particularly in Italy and Germany)—whose primary function is the reproduction of capitalism as a whole. Gramsci would later add to this definition the assertion that these capitalist political “forms” also assume, simultaneously, certain hegemonic (capitalist, dominant) characteristics, both consensual and repressive.
In a similar sense, in 1940 Horkheimer, based on Pollock's theory of state monopoly capitalism, defined the "authoritarian state" as a political "form" of domination where the economic and the ideological are articulated, and where cultural industries and mass media acquire an important function.
This is something Poulantzas (1998) also draws attention to in his meticulous description of Italian and German fascism. For the Greek-French author, fascisms are exceptional capitalist political regimes within a transitional process from the earliest forms of capitalism to its imperialist stage, and they are also the product of the defeat of the working and popular classes by the dominant capitalist classes. It was from this point that fascism entailed a hegemonic articulation of ideologies originating from conservative agrarian capitalist sectors, from small and large landowners, from unemployed social sectors, and from petty-bourgeois sectors, all driven by the interests of large monopoly capital. In a certain way, this bears similarities to the process described by Marx in The 18th Brumaire of Louis BonaparteAlthough with the differences that occurred in the transition from a developing bourgeois world to a consolidated capitalist society, where the working and popular classes, as well as the capitalist classes, assumed rather homogeneous characteristics.
From that early historical example analyzed by Marx in the mid-19th century, one could observe the emergence of a political leadership characterized as "lumpen," which came to power through a rhetoric of the nation-power, successfully uniting sectors of the lumpenproletariat with the petty bourgeoisie and small-scale farmers. This served as a foundation for Bonaparte's subsequent coup d'état, which consolidated political dominance for later capitalist development. A series of characteristics partially coincide with those described by Poulantzas for the fascist phenomenon in the 20th century, with a consolidated capitalism undergoing a transformation toward what he calls its "imperialist phase."
But beyond certain discussions that could be raised regarding the notion of “imperialism” (even the Leninist one)[3]), we are interested in emphasizing that both in the process described by Marx and in the one described by Poulantzas, it was about managing the political control of the masses within the framework of two different situations of change of “forms” promoted by capitalism itself.
Poulantzas sees here, during the political crisis that resulted from that change in capitalist “form” which involved questioning its first liberal phase, the search by the dominant classes to promote that new political regime, of exception, which was fascism.
With the democratic “reformist” political possibilities for class conciliation exhausted, and following a series of defeats for the working and popular classes in both Germany and Italy, fascism emerged as the resulting political “form” that allowed for the control of these more homogeneous working and popular masses within the framework of a shift in the mode of accumulation. This political, and also cultural, “form” saw the lumpenproletariat, articulated with the ideologies of the middle sectors, as in the case of Bonapartism, play a significant role.
Now, if in Europe fascism turned out to be the political “form” that capitalism assumed at that historical moment of the class struggle, that is, a type of political regime that sought to discipline the working and popular masses through both repressive and hegemonic mechanisms, in Latin America that dictatorial “form” was different, because here the dominant classes, as Lechner (1977) argued, promoted more repression than hegemony, among other things because the Latin American capitalist societies of the 20th century were societies where - unlike Europe or the United States (where a certain homogeneity was observed) - a structural heterogeneity was present among the working and popular classes (also Lechner, 1977).
This non-hegemonic character of the dominant capitalist classes in Latin America, which implied a kind of “non-class” or dependent class status also subject to the interests of foreign capital, and which generated the presence of unstable political “forms,” both in the case of dictatorships and formal democracies, is what led Gunder Frank (1973) to speak of a “lumpenbourgeoisie” as well as “lumpendevelopment.” Although this characteristic political instability was also marked by the development of class struggle in the region, by the protest actions carried out by the organized working and popular classes, even despite the aforementioned structural heterogeneity.
Thus, the non-hegemonic political “form” that these dominant capitalist classes—the lumpenproletariat—found to control the working and popular masses was the civic-military dictatorship, which, in all cases, were simultaneously—like European fascism—capitalist dictatorial political “forms.” Although at that historical moment, despite the lumpenproletariat characteristics of the dominant capitalist classes, due to the resistance these dictatorships encountered from a still remarkably organized working and popular class, we cannot yet speak of lumpen-capitalism. It would be more accurate to speak of a “form” of underdeveloped, peripheral, or “populist” Latin American capitalism.[4]This last “form” of capitalism is what the last civic-military (also capitalist) dictatorships of the mid-seventies sought to eradicate from the region.
This, on the other hand, indicates that populist (or even developmentalist) political “forms” were, until the 1970s, the ones that embodied in Latin America the hegemonic reformist attempt at class compromise between capitalists and workers, and not—beyond conservative or nationalist rhetoric—the non-hegemonic political “form” defended by the dominant Latin American capitalist classes—lumpenproletariat.
The “lumpen” and “mid cult” as “forms” of current Latin American mediated capitalism
Frank's description, applicable to Latin American capitalism of the 1960s and 70s, would be radically altered by the rise of the last civic-military dictatorships in the mid-1970s. These regimes were responsible for carrying out the capitalist transformation that entailed the shift from the underdeveloped or populist form of capitalism to its neoliberal-conservative form.
These recent dictatorships aimed to completely transform the previous functioning of Latin American capitalism, preventing any backsliding or questioning of capitalism. This required not only repressive policies but also economic policies that restructured social, political, and cultural power relations, enabling the implementation of a whole series of cultural and communication policies. In Argentina, Adrián Piva (2020) analyzed the transformations in the class structure and stratification of national capitalist society between 1947 and 2019. He concluded that during the last dictatorship, a profound shift occurred in the balance of power between social classes, characterized by a decline in the industrial working class and a rupture of its class identity, resulting from the growth of self-employment and the expansion of the service sector, a reduction and concentration of the dominant classes, growth of the middle class, and a sharp rise in unemployment.
This process, which Piva describes for Argentina, also took place in Pinochet's Chile and in the other countries where similar military dictatorships were established, namely Uruguay, Brazil, Bolivia, and Central America (with the necessary differences given the characteristics of each country). It led to the emergence of authoritarian bureaucratic "state forms" (O'Donnell, 2023), but these also featured a strong informational and communicational component, in the same vein as the military intelligence doctrine known as the National Security Doctrine (NSD), as detailed by Risler (2018) – also – in the Argentine case.
The sweeping transformation of Latin American capitalist societies, which began in the mid-1970s following the last dictatorships in Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Bolivia, had its counterpart in other countries—such as Mexico, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Peru—under formally democratic political regimes. And in all cases, according to Poulantzas (2007, Mexico, Siglo XXI), it entailed a process of concentration of the dominant capitalist classes and disintegration and fragmentation of the working and popular classes.
This process involved the capitalist states emerging after the dictatorships carrying out these functions (organization of the dominant classes and disorganization of the subordinate classes) also through the increased influence of mass media and the cultural industry, which expanded throughout Latin America. In line with these two functions performed by capitalist states, mass media also developed other functions, originally identified in the United States during the 1940s and 50s (Lasswell, 1986; Lazarsfeld and Merton, 1986; Klapper, 1960; Wright, 1986), such as the enforcement of social norms, social control, and entertainment. These functions led to the formation of a "mid-cult" media culture (MacDonald, 1974 and Eco, 1997), which transformed both elite and popular cultures. This means that once the balance of power was modified by the last dictatorships, it became possible in the formal post-dictatorial democratic political regimes for the mass media and mass culture –mid cult– to influence those social sectors that, like the lumpenproletariat (Marx, 1975)[5]The self-employed and the middle classes were ideologically “available”.
This “mid-cultural” or “mid-cult” discourse, which is neither right-wing nor left-wing (the presence of this trait in postmodernist discourse is not accidental), emerged as a dominant ideological construct during the years of “democratic transition” in Latin America. From this point onward, mass media and the cultural industry (with the aforementioned functions—social control, entertainment, etc.) began to efficiently fulfill the role of social equilibrators, contributing to the reproduction of capitalist society as a whole, within the framework of a new representative political “form”: capitalist democracy. This new form was more effective at resolving conflicts than previous de facto regimes.
The discourse based on “objectivity” and “balance” imposed a point of view where class differences were equated based on the figure of the “citizen”, and assumed that all confrontation occurred –in an abstract way– under equal conditions[6]. Favoring the subsequent triumph of the dominant capitalist classes that took place in the governments of the “Washington Consensus”, such as those of Fujimori in Peru, Menem in Argentina, Lacalle and Battle in Uruguay, Collor de Melo and Cardoso in Brazil, Bucaram or Mahuad in Ecuador, Sánchez de Lozada in Bolivia, Salinas de Gortari in Mexico, etc.
Under these new conditions of capitalism, the 1990s were the decade of neoliberal-conservative hegemony (Bonnet, 2008). The novelty at the time was this hegemonic possibility for the dominant capitalist classes within a democratic framework without resorting to traditional military rule. But this was possible not because the development of a new capitalist “form” itself had modified the “lumpen” characteristics that Gunder Frank described in the Latin American ruling classes during the 1960s and 70s (both Menem and Fujimori were prime examples of this “lumpen” bourgeoisie), but rather the opposite: because this declassed, now mid-cult “lumpen” characteristic also extended to the middle sectors, the self-employed, and the unemployed; that is, to a broad spectrum of the population. This made it available with respect to the dominant discursive “formatting” of the mass media and the cultural industry, two of the most important cultural “forms” assumed by mass capitalist societies, at the time, mediated societies that had to balance social functioning for capitalist stability.
However, this hegemonic “form”—the only dominant hegemonic form that managed to consolidate itself in Latin America—began to be questioned in light of its disastrous economic and social consequences. This led to the rearticulation of the various working classes and social and popular movements affected by the neoliberal economic policies of dominant big capital, and to social, political, and cultural confrontation against those same capitalist classes.
It was interesting to observe during that time the role assumed by the mass media and the cultural industry. While these cultural "forms" had initially supported the conservative neoliberal governments, as the latter lost support, they began to question them, given that the limitations of neoliberal policies and the many dysfunctions they generated (such as the emergence of anomic behaviors, stemming from both the growth of unemployment and underemployment, as well as social conflict) became increasingly apparent.
What Thwaites Rey (2016) called the “cycle of challenge to neoliberalism in Latin America” (CINAL) took shape, manifesting itself –beyond the mass media– with the emergence of Zapatismo in early 1994, with the overthrow of President Bucaram by Ecuadorian social and indigenous movements in 1997, with the election of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in 1998, with the revolt that forced the resignation of President De la Rúa in December 2001 in Argentina, with the election of Lula in 2002 in Brazil and with the overthrow of President Sánchez de Lozada in 2003 by Bolivian social movements, among other notable events.
However, the critique of the neoliberal “form” of capitalism by some of the movements that led CINAL did not necessarily imply a critique of capitalism itself. Thus, subsequent progressive political movements that challenged neoliberalism (Chávez in Venezuela, Lula in Brazil, Kirchner in Argentina, Morales in Bolivia, Vázquez in Uruguay, etc.) sought to implement policies that could be generically termed “post-neoliberal,” understanding “post-neoliberalism” as the new “form” assumed by the dynamics of class struggle—that is, the confrontation between capital and labor—in the region at that specific historical moment.
However, once the hegemony of the conservative neoliberal “form” of capitalism entered into crisis and progressive forces that attempted to carry out post-neoliberal policies were installed in democratic governments, a phenomenon of institutionalization of the social movements that had starred in CINAL (the unemployed, indigenous, feminist, environmental, decolonial movements, etc.) occurred, and the consequence of which were the limits that began to be observed in those same progressive governments, which failed to establish a lasting hegemony for post-neoliberal policies (that is, a hegemony that articulates a new mode of accumulation different from neoliberalism). The limits of post-neoliberal public policies, which sought to establish some kind of regulation to the functioning of capitalism, began to be questioned by large capitalists, and this questioning received an important echo in the mass media – to which we should now add the different social networks – and in the cultural industry, which went from questioning the dysfunctional consequences of neoliberalism to questioning the limits that post-neoliberal policies established to the deployment of “free” capitalist accumulation.
Because when post-neoliberal governments, within this balanced power dynamic, attempted to implement progressive policies, the dominant mass media (especially broadcasting) began to develop a type of function that in a previous work (Gómez, 2018) we termed “destabilizing,” since it involved significant participation by these capitalist mass media cultural “forms” in the so-called “soft coups” (Honduras in 2009, Paraguay in 2012, Brazil in 2016, Bolivia in 2019). This is when the mass media abandoned their previous balancing function to play a role of open opposition (a well-known journalist from Argentina’s largest media conglomerate acknowledged that they engaged in “war journalism,” referring to this new role and function) to any government that sought to limit, even in a very limited way, capitalist profit and profitability in general. This showed that big business no longer needed to resort to military coups to remove governments deemed "inconvenient" to its dominant interests. It was enough to use the discursive influence of these media outlets in conjunction with the actions of the judicial—and political—powers.
This shows that if the civic-military dictatorships—whose function was identical to that of European fascism—were the political “forms” that emerged in Latin America as a way to control and channel the masses within capitalist institutions, within the framework of a general capitalist “form” characterized by developmentalist or populist features until the mid-1970s, these processes can now be carried out through a political “form” such as capitalist democracy. However, this is after certain modifications that had to be developed in these same political “forms”—including state-run ones—of operation, especially on the discursive level, which now incorporate public communication elements that show little concern for rational justification and which are frankly “lumpen,” along with a repressive counterpart that notably recalls some of the old persecutory practices against dissent and non-hegemonic forces of those later dictatorships.
According to William Davies (2016), this is the third phase of neoliberalism, which began with the capitalist crisis of 2008 and continues onward. He calls it "punitive neoliberalism," in which he observes not only repressive and sanctioning features but also a complete lack of justification and rational argumentation for these types of policies. This, he adds, implies a type of neoliberalism that is both repressive and "post-hegemonic."[7]But what is also interesting about Davies's argument is the connection between this article and another of his later ones (2021), in which he describes "platform capitalism".[8] such as that which promotes the emergence of polarizing, binary (digital) types of discourse that present virtually no satisfactory argumentative construction.
This analysis aligns with what we are presenting here, although Davies focuses more on the functioning of capitalism in developed countries than on the specificities of Latin America, where the challenge to neoliberalism led to the emergence of governments that sought to implement post-neoliberal policies. Thus, the current conservative neoliberal reaction in Latin America against these post-neoliberal policies has taken on such a reactionary and radicalized character that its virulence borders on neofascism, albeit one mediated and institutionalized through the intricacies of current capitalist democracies.
Mediated neo-fascisms and mid-cult within the framework of lumpen capitalism
Today, we find ourselves at a Latin American juncture (though this could be extended, with certain differences, to other continents) in which the crisis of the conservative neoliberal capitalist “form” did not lead to the subsequent consolidation of a new, hegemonic, post-neoliberal “form” of capitalism, but neither can it imply a return to previous neoliberal “forms.” This current situation explains why today the dominant capitalist classes—which, both in Latin America and now in Europe and the USA, exhibit notable “lumpen” characteristics, as paradigmatically illustrated by the discourse of the Argentine anarcho-capitalist president Milei—are developing a trial-and-error approach (Bonnet and Alvarez Huwiler, 2022) in their quest to rebuild a conservative neoliberal hegemony in crisis, whose return is unfeasible. Thus, the current “lumpen” form coincides with the aforementioned “post-hegemonic” discursive moment to which Davies referred.
The emergence of these new, radicalized Latin American right-wing movements, little concerned with constructing factual evidence or rational arguments, but at the same time deeply influenced by media logic (we must not forget that figures like Bolsonaro and Milei, as well as others like Macri or Trump himself, rose to prominence through “traditional” mass media or new social networks, spreading a large amount of fake news), which is why we define them as mediated and mid-cult neofascisms; they are the extreme response offered by dominant “lumpen” capital to a social majority that also adopts “lumpen” ideological and cultural characteristics—disenfranchised and highly ideologically receptive. It is no longer, as in the era of conservative neoliberal hegemony, a question of the triumph of the “end of history” or the triumph of the “yuppie” discourse—postmodern, cynical—of the full (capitalist) present, as Grüner (2022) shows us. This is the triumph of a capitalism that seeks to legitimize itself without legitimation, that is, through the "lumpen" discourse, present -above all- in mass media such as television (the mass broadcasting medium with the greatest penetration and presence throughout the region) or social networks (Facebook, X -Twitter- or Instagram), but which is also found in the dominant (mediated) political discourse and in the whole of current society.
Finally, it's worth recalling the fetishistic and ideological nature of the "lumpen" discourse that extends to the entirety of society (like the "false totality" to which Adorno refers), because despite it—or rather, through it—the capitalist classes never cease to defend their interests, unlike the working and popular classes who end up betting against it. Isn't it time to revisit the old question posed in the 1970s by Goran Thernborn (1987) about how the dominant—capitalist—classes continue to hold sway?
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[1] Member of the CLACSO Working Groups “The State as Contradiction” and “Communication, Cultures and Politics”. Member of the CLACSO Research Directorate.
[2] In a recent article, Pablo Dávalos (2023) revisits Gunder Frank's work on Latin American "lumpendevelopment" to explain that the capitalist mode of accumulation in Ecuador has "lumpen" characteristics. According to Dávalos, this mode of accumulation is permeated by a logic of drug trafficking, facilitated by the dollarization of the Ecuadorian economy.
[3] While Lenin refers to imperialism as a “higher stage” of capitalism, some of his explanations may contradict the workings of the law of value formulated by Marx. For a discussion on this, see Astarita (2006).
[4] In an early article, Horacio Tarcus (1992) characterized as “populist” the form-State that entered into crisis in Argentina in the mid-eighties of the twentieth century, starting from the last military dictatorship of 1976, but which consolidated its change in 1990, in force of the democratic political regime.
[5] In his book *The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte*, Marx characterizes the "lumpenproletariat" as a declassed social sector, easily co-opted by Bonaparte in exchange for "brandy and sausage." This attitude of Bonaparte—a lumpenman—towards the lumpenproletariat (and the petty bourgeoisie and small rural landowners) contrasts sharply with his approach to the proletariat, which, as Marx details throughout the book, operates in a more conflictive, cohesive, and self-interested manner. Of course, this is all within a specific historical context of the power dynamics between social classes.
[6] A good example of this discourse of the “transition” and of its attempt to “corporately” equalize class organizations (business and trade union), can be found in Portantiero and Nun (1988).
[7] On the concept of “posthegemony” see Beasley-Murray (2010) and Starcenbaum (2016).
[8] Srnicek (2018).
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