Table Of ContentBack to the ‘30s?
Recurring Crises of
Capitalism, Liberalism,
and Democracy
Edited by
Jeremy Rayner · Susan Falls
George Souvlis · Taylor C. Nelms
Back to the ‘30s?
“All history is contemporary history. But very few historians self-consciously
explicate what this might mean. Translating the dictum into concretely focused
investigations is rarer still. Pressing beyond the facile analogies and over-hasty
comparisons,thisfinelyconceivedvolumedemonstratescarefullyandpersuasively
how exactly Europe’s interwar crises can help us to think effectively about the
present.”
—Geoff Eley, Karl Pohrt Distinguished University Professor of Contemporary
History, University of Michigan, USA
“Breaking with the schematic and formalistic approach that dominates much of
socialscience,thisvolumeappliestheresourcesofcriticaltheorytoawiderange
of case studies to generate new insights into the current moment. A must read
for anyone interested in contemporary politics.”
—Dylan Riley, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Berkeley, USA
“By juxtaposing the last decade of global politics with the decade that followed
the New York Stock Exchange crash of 1929, Back to the ‘30s? piles up parallels
between fascism’s golden age and the most recent rise of authoritarianism.
Masterfully compiled, this book offers a compelling socio-political thesis, an
exceptional collection of analyses, and a keen sensitivity to history’s most
important questions. Its strong emphasis on the Global South, Eastern Europe,
East Asia, Australia, and the European periphery lends it a unique force and
relevance. All readers interested in the rise of international right-wing populism
and neo-fascism will want this on their shelf.”
—Nitzan Lebovic, Associate Professor of History, Lehigh University, USA
“Comparing the 1930s to the 2010s, through a multidisciplinary approach
applied to a variety of cases, this very interesting collection helps to
understand today’s Gramscian Interregnum by pointing to the interrelation of
specific forms of capitalist accumulation and authoritarian political turns, as well
as to counter-hegemonic practices.”
—Donatella Della Porta, Professor of Sociology and Political Science, Scuola
Normale Superiore, Florence, Italy
“Amidst the maelstrom of financial emergencies, violent institutional read-
justments, hegemonic crises and exploding counter-hegemonic alternatives,
the first decades of the twenty-first century have invited direct compar-
isons with the ‘dark’ 1930s. Mapping critical insights from, while also
underlining caveats that inhere in, historical analogies between the two
moments offers a much-needed corrective to the extremes of histor-
ical uniqueness or the notion of a ‘back to the 1930s’ déjà vu. This
uniquely wide-ranging and intellectually prolific volume provides so much
more that a collection of diverse methodological and geographic perspectives
on the merits and limits of historical parallelism. Collectively, the twenty contri-
butions chart ways in which the experience of the 1930s can be productively
summoned to inform both critiques and validations of a historically analogous
perspective no matter how distinctive and different the current moment may
be.”
—Aristotle Kallis, Professor of Modern & Contemporary History, Keele University
“Capitalism and liberal democracy are once again in crisis. What can we learn
about our future and the possibilities for mass action from looking back at the
1930s?Theauthorsofthisvolumeprovideinsightfulandpenetratinganswersby
examiningrightwingmovementsofthe1930sandtodayinavarietyofcountries
and by exploring the role of ideas in shaping peoples’ understandings of their
historical moments and in inspiring both action and resignation. This volume
will spur new thinking and can help left activists gain a better understanding of
where to focus their energies.”
—Richard Lachman, Professor of Sociology, University of Albany, State University
of New York, USA
· · ·
Jeremy Rayner Susan Falls George Souvlis
Taylor C. Nelms
Editors
Back to the ‘30s?
Recurring Crises of Capitalism, Liberalism, and
Democracy
Editors
Jeremy Rayner Susan Falls
Centro de Economía Pública y Department of Anthropology
Sectores Estratégicos Savannah College of Art and Design
InstitutodeAltosEstudiosNacionales Savannah, GA, USA
Quito, Ecuador
Taylor C. Nelms
George Souvlis Filene Research Institute
University of Ioannina Madison, WI, USA
Ioannina, Greece
ISBN 978-3-030-41585-3 ISBN 978-3-030-41586-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41586-0
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Cover illustration: Sumptuous Wreckage of the Present by Liz Sargent (detail). Provided
bycourtesyoftheartist.Medium:acrylicondura-larDate:2019Dimensions:29”×44”
Threadlikemassesascendanddescendfromanimpliedhorizonline,whilewebsofvarying
movement layer over one another. Evocative of a landscape ending where it begins, the
gradually shifting patterns crescendo and dissipate as they repeat again, an imperceptible
order emerges. My process tangles and twists, unravels and knots, snarls and entraps—
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To the writers and workers of the 2130s
Prologue
As Back to the ‘30s? goes to press, the world is facing another poten-
tiallytransformativecrisis:theCOVID-19pandemic,accompaniedbythe
“worst economic downturn since the Great Depression,” according to
the IMF. Worse, that is, since the Great Recession, whose comparability
to the Great Depression provided one major inspiration for the present
volume. This crisis could be understood as a singular event brought on
by a freak virus, or—as some of the contributors to this volume would
argue—asanonlypartially-contingentoutcomeofalongerperiodofstag-
nation, “downswing,” “financial expansion,” or “systemic chaos,” with
structural similarities to the interwar period. As we observe in the intro-
duction to this volume, the world economy has been depressed for most
oftheperiodsince2008,whilethecoronavirusshockexposedthedegree
towhichthe“recovery”fromthatcrisisdependedontheaccumulationof
debt,includingahugeoverhangofjunkycorporatebondsandtheprolif-
eration of “zombie” firms that must borrow just to pay interest. Even
more than in 2008, US and European central banks responded to the
Great Lockdown with a massive credit expansion (less so China, which
now faces new constraints). This injection of credit did not stop unem-
ployment from expanding at a historically unprecedented rate, as even
healthy businesses were shuttered to control the pandemic. It remains to
be seen whether a chain of defaults will lead to an enduring depression.
vii
viii PROLOGUE
There are other historical resonances in this moment, beyond
the obvious comparisons to the pandemic of 1918. There were invoca-
tionsoftheSecondWorldWar:Trumptooktocallinghimselfa“wartime
president,”atleastforatime,Guterres,theUNSecretaryGeneral,spoke
of the “greatest challenge since WW II,” etc. The political significance
of this rhetoric, from solidarity to suppression of dissent, might merit its
own dedicated study. Economically, however, the Great Lockdown looks
verylittlelikeawar.Virusesdonotrequiremassiveexpendituresofmate-
rial; on the contrary, the rate of destruction, and turnover, of things has
decreased enormously. If we are in a period of stagnation with an over-
hangofdebt,themanufactureofmasksandrespiratorswillnotgetusout
of it, in the way the Second World War ended the Great Depression.
Politically, the signs are ambiguous. Some have predicted that coron-
avirus will spell the end of the right-wing authoritarian populist resur-
gence, or have looked forward to a new, more expansive solidarity
grounded by a renewed welfare state, or even the supersession of capi-
talism. Others are wary. Giorgio Agamben seems sure that we are
headed for a quasi-permanent reduction to “bare life”: if he was roundly
and rightly critiqued for his callousness toward coronavirus deaths, and
inability to appreciate the expansive bios of social distancing as solidarity,
he may also be at least partially right about these long-term effects,
as COVID-19 makes for still-unknown biopolitical potentials, perhaps
including increased policing and surveillance. On the other hand, one
of the most tangible results so far has been the rise of Black Lives
Matter, both one of the largest social movements in US history, and a
movement with global reach, challenging not only racist state violence
but the very apparatus of policing itself. At the same time, while social
democrats, liberals, and most of those who still believe in responsible
public conduct and policy have pursued containment with a remark-
able degree of unanimity, the “populist” right has produced a striking
variety of reactions: some, such as Bolsonaro and Trump, have down-
playedtherisksorfomentedprotestsagainstcontainmentmeasures(with
predictablydisastrousresults),whileothers,suchasOrbán,haveusedthe
crisis as an excuse to effectively put an end to the remaining freedoms
of liberal democracy. The 1930s produced a biopolitics—necropolitics—
of genocide, most iconically (but not only) in the Nazi camps. What
bio/necropolitics, and what political economy, might emerge from the
PROLOGUE ix
conjuncture of pandemic, depression, and rising right-wing authoritari-
anism? We hope and expect that this volume will provide some modest
insights with which to address this urgent question.
Jeremy Rayner
Susan Falls
George Souvlis
Taylor C. Nelms
Acknowledgments
This collection was jumpstarted by a series of discussions between the
editors, as we began to puzzle about the kinds of comparisons we saw
being drawn between the contemporary moment and the first decades
of the twentieth century. It started, that is, with an observation, but this
book took shape through conversation. Its first form was as a confer-
encepanelatthe2017meetingsofAmericanAnthropologicalAssociation
organized by Jeremy Rayner and Taylor Nelms. We wanted to find a way
tothinkacrossborders(geographic,disciplinary,linguistic,andtemporal)
abouttheechoesofhistory—andabouthowitisthatpeoplecometohear
and to enact those echoes in particular ways. We were overwhelmed by
the response. Our first thanks go to the initial participants on that panel
(Nicholas Copeland, Chungse Jung, Bryan Moorefield, and Zoë West,
who gave papers alongside Susan Falls and Jeremy Rayner). While not
everyoneonourpaneldevelopedachapterforthisbook,theexplorations
we made together helped to forge our initial paths.
As a book manuscript, the project gathered momentum and took on
a shape and expansiveness we could never have imagined, largely due to
the inspired work of George Souvlis.
Many contributors developed ideas for this book during the Histor-
ical Materialism Athens Conference 2019 on panels such as “Back to the
30s?CrisisandTransition,”“Backtothe30s?Nationalism,Populism,and
the Limits of Liberalism,” and “Crisis, Rupture and European Constitu-
tionalImaginaries.”Otherspresentedworkonthesechaptersatthe2019
xi
