Historical Dynamics of the Far Right in the Capitalist World-System
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2026.1463Keywords:
Far-right, fascism, populism, Bonapartism, world-systems analysis, systemic chaos, world hegemonyAbstract
This article develops a longue durée world-systems account of the contemporary resurgence of the far right. Against interpretations that treat far-right politics as an anomaly or a contingent product of authoritarian leaders, we argue that it has recurrently emerged during moments of world hegemonic crisis, when crises of capitalist accumulation deepen, geopolitical rivalry intensifies, and worldwide social unrest begins to generate broader crises of authority at both domestic and international levels. Comparing three historical conjunctures—the breakdown of Dutch world hegemony and the rise of Bonapartism, the terminal crisis of British world hegemony and classical fascism, and the crisis of U.S. world hegemony and the contemporary far right—we show that these formations belong to the same broad historical family, even though they cannot be reduced to one another. We argue that what links these movements is not a fixed ideology or organizational model, but a recurring political logic: the attempt to resolve systemic chaos through exclusion, repression, militarization, and the hierarchical reconstitution of the nation and world order. The article’s central contribution is to specify the ways in which the contemporary far right resembles, and differs from, its historical predecessors. We argue that it is a new and geographically uneven formation shaped by neoliberal financialization, uneven development between the Global North and South, and consequences of “new imperialism”.
References
Akram-Lodhi, A. H. 2022. I will follow? Authoritarian populism, past and present The Journal of Peasant Studies, 49(6), 1316–1330
Arendt, Hannah. 1945. “Imperialism, Nationalism, Chauvinism.” The Review of Politics 7(4):441–463.
Arrighi, Giovanni. 1985. “From Fascism to Democratic Socialism: Logic and Limits of a Transition.” Pp. 243–279 in Semiperipheral Development: The Politics of Southern Europe in the Twentieth Century, edited by Giovanni Arrighi. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.
Arrighi, Giovanni. 1994. The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times. London: Verso.
Arrighi, Giovanni. 2005. “Hegemony Unravelling 1.” New Left Review II(32), March–April, pp.23-80
Arrighi, Giovanni, and Beverly J. Silver. 1999. Chaos and Governance in the Modern World System. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Arrighi, Giovanni, Po-keung Hui, Krishnendu Ray, and Thomas Ehrlich Reifer. 1999. "Geopolitics and high finance." Pp. 37-96. In Chaos and governance in the modern world system, edited by Giovanni Arrighi and Beverly Silver. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Arrighi, Giovanni, Terence K. Hopkins and Immanuel Wallerstein. 1989. Antisystemic Movements. London: Verso
Beissinger, Mark R. 2022. The Revolutionary City: Urbanization and the Global Transformation of Rebellion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Braudel, Fernand. [1979] 1984. The Perspective of the World. Vol. 3. New York: Harper and Row.
Césaire, Aimé. [1955] 1972. Discourse on Colonialism. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Chase-Dunn, Christopher, Peter Grimes, and Eugene N. Anderson. 2019. Cyclical Evolution of the Global Right. Canadian Review of Sociology 56(4), pp.529-555
Chidambaram, Soundarya. 2012. “The ‘Right’ Kind of Welfare in South India’s Urban Slums: Seva vs. Patronage and the Success of Hindu Nationalist Organizations.” Asian Survey 52(2):298–320.
Davidson, Neil and Richard Saull. 2017. “Neoliberalism and the far-right: A contradictory embrace.” Critical Sociology 43(4-5), 707–724.
Dean, Jodi. 2025. Capital’s Grave: Neofeudalism and the New Class Struggle. London: Verso
Dimitrov, George. 2002. Against Fascism and War. New York: International Publishers.
Dobb, Maurice H. 1937. Political Economy and Capitalism: Some Essays in Economic Tradition. London: Routledge.
Engels, Friedrich. 1891. “Introduction to The Civil War in France.” In Karl Marx, The Civil War in France. Retrieved from https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/intro.htm.
Farrell, J. T. 1945. Historical image of Napoleon: The emperor as prince of glory. The New International, 11(4), 115–119.
Foster, John Bellamy. 2017. “Neo-Fascism in the White House.” Monthly Review 68(11).
Fraser, Nancy. 2019. The old is dying and the new cannot be born. London: Verso
Galanis, Giorgos, Christian Koutny, and Isabella Weber. 2024. “Systemic Cycles of Accumulation and Chaos in the World Capitalist System: A Missing Link.” Socio-Economic Review 22(4):1843–1863.
Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Edited and translated by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. New York: International Publishers.
Griffin, Roger. 1991. The Nature of Fascism. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Inglehart, Ronald, and Pippa Norris. 2017. “Trump and the Populist Authoritarian Parties: “The Silent Revolution” in Reverse.” Perspectives on Politics 15 (2), 443-454.
Jaffrelot, C. (2015a). “The class element in the 2014 Indian election and the BJP’s success with special reference to the Hindi belt.” Studies in Indian Politics 3(1), 19–38.
Judis, John B. 2016. The Populist Explosion. New York: Columbia Global Reports.
Kandil, Hazem. 2011. “Revolt in Egypt.” New Left Review 68:17–55. Retrieved from https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii68/articles/hazem-kandil-revolt-in-egypt.
Karataşlı, Şahan Savaş. 2013. Financial Expansions, Hegemonic Transitions and Nationalism. PhD dissertation, Johns Hopkins University.
Karataşlı, Şahan Savaş. 2019. “The Twenty-First Century Revolutions and Internationalism: A World-Historical Perspective.” Globalizations 16(7):985–997. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2019.1651525.
Karataşlı, Şahan Savaş. 2020. “Capitalism and Nationalism in the Longue Durée: Hegemony, Crisis, and State-Seeking Nationalist Mobilization, 1492–2013.” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 61(4):233–263.
Karataşlı, Şahan Savaş. 2023. “Hegemonic World Orders, Distributional (In)Justice and Global Social Change.” International Affairs 99(1):23–39.
Karataşlı, Şahan Savaş, and Şefika Kumral. 2013. “Financialization and International (Dis)Order: A Comparative Analysis of the Perspectives of Karl Polanyi and John Hobson.” Berkeley Journal of Sociology 57(1):40–73.
Kitchen, Martin. 2003. “Fascism and the Capitalist System: A Marxist View.” Pp. 58 in The Fascism Reader, edited by Aristotle A. Kallis. New York: Routledge.
Kumral, Şefika. 2014. “Hegemonic Transition, War and Opportunities for Fascist Militarism.” Pp. 64–84 in The Longue Durée of the Far-Right: An International Historical Sociology, edited by Richard Saull, Alexander Anievas, Neil Davidson, and Adam Fabry. London: Routledge.
Kumral, Şefika. 2022. “Globalization, Crisis and Right-Wing Populists in the Global South: The Cases of India and Turkey.” Globalizations 20(5):752–781. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2021.2025294.
Kumral, Şefika. 2025. “The Far Right in the Global South, Geopolitical Conflict, and the Fascist Present.” International Politics 62(4):499–506. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-024-00606-4.
Kumral, Şefika, and Şahan Savaş Karataşlı. 2020. “Capitalism, Labour and the Global Populist Radical Right.” Global Labour Journal 11(2):152–155. https://doi.org/10.15173/glj.v11i2.4308.
Lamont, Michèle, Bo Yun Park, and Elena Ayala-Hurtado. 2017. “Trump’s Electoral Speeches and His Appeal to the American White Working Class.” The British Journal of Sociology 68(S1):S153–S180. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12315.
Lefebvre, Georges. 1969. Napoleon: From 18 Brumaire to Tilsit, 1799-1807. New York: Columbia University Press
Lenin, Vladimir I. [1915] 1964. The Collapse of the Second International. Pp. 213–214 in Collected Works, Vol. 21. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Retrieved from https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/csi/ii.htm#v21pp74h-212.
Lenin, Vladimir I. [1916] 1964. Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Pp. 105 in Collected Works, Vol. 22. Moscow: Progress Publishers.
Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1981. Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Mann, Michael. 2004. Fascists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Marx, Karl. [1867] 1990. Capital: Volume I. London: Penguin.
Marx, Karl. [1852] 1979. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Pp. 185–186 in Marx and Engels Collected Works, Vol. 11. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Retrieved from https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/18th-brumaire/.
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. ([1848] 1978). “Manifesto of the Communist Party.” Pp. 469–500 in The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed., edited by Robert C. Tucker. New York: W. W. Norton.
McVeigh, Rory. 2009. The Rise of the Ku Klux Klan: Right-Wing Movements and National Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Mudde, C. 2007. Populist radical right parties in Europe. Cambridge University Press.
Mudde, C. 2010. The populist radical right: A pathological normalcy. West European Politics, 33(6), 1167–1186
Nolte, Ernst. 1969. Three Faces of Fascism: Action Française, Italian Fascism, National Socialism. New York: Mentor Books.
Nord, P. (2021). Right on: The origins of the French right. Institut Montaigne. https://www.institutmontaigne.org/en/expressions/right-origins-french-right
Paxton, Robert O. 2004. The Anatomy of Fascism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Payne, Stanley G. (1980). Fascism: Comparison and Definition, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Plys, Kristin. 2022. “Theories of Antifascism in the Interwar Mediterranean Part I: Fascism in the Longue Durée.” Journal of World-Systems Research 28(2):344–358. https://doi.org/10.5195/jwsr.2022.1105.
Polanyi, Karl. 2001 [1944]. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston: Beacon Press.
Poulantzas, Nicos. 1974. Fascism and Dictatorship: The Third International and the Problem of Fascism. London: New Left Books.
Rémond, René. 2016. The right wing in France: From 1815 to de Gaulle. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Riley, Dylan. 2010. The Civic Foundations of Fascism in Europe: Italy, Spain, and Romania, 1870–1945. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Riley, Dylan. 2018. “What Is Trump?” New Left Review 114:5–31.
Robinson, W. I. (2019). Capital has an Internationale and it is going fascist: time for an international of the global popular classes. Journal of World-Systems Research 25(2):289-296
Saleh, Yassin al-Haj. 2023. “The Liquid Imperialism That Engulfed Syria.” New Lines Magazine, September 7. Retrieved from https://newlinesmag.com/argument/the-liquid-imperialism-that-engulfed-syria/.
Saull, Richard. 2023. Capital, Race and Space, Volume I-II: Chicago: Haymarket Books.
Saull, Richard. 2025. “Introduction: explaining the far right over the longue durée through capital, race and space”, International Politics 62:474–479
Saull, Richard, Alexander Anievas, Neil Davidson, and Adam Fabry, eds. 2014. The Longue Durée of the Far-Right: An International Historical Sociology. London: Routledge.
Shaw, Roger. (1936). The Five Fascists. South Atlantic Quarterly, 35(4), 349-355.
Silver, Beverly J. 2003. Forces of Labor: Workers’ Movements and Globalization since 1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Silver, Beverly J. 2019. "'Plunges Into Utter Destruction' and the Limits of Historical Capitalism". Capitalism in Transformation, edited by R. Atzmüller et al, Edward Elgar Publishing.
Silver, Beverly J., and Corey R. Payne. 2020. “Crises of World Hegemony and the Speeding Up of Social History.” Pp. 15 in Hegemony and World Order, edited by Piotr Dutkiewicz and Tom Casier. London: Routledge.
Silver, B. J., & Slater, E. 1999. “The social origins of world hegemonies”. Pp 151-216 in Chaos and governance in the modern world system, edited by Giovanni Arrighi and Beverly Silver. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Talmon, Jacob Leib. 1981. The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution: The Origins of Ideological Polarization. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Thalheimer, August. 1928. On Fascism. Retrieved from http://bataillesocialiste.wordpress.com/english-pages/1928-on-fascism-thalheimer/.
Trotsky, Leon. 1944. Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It. New York: Pathfinder Press. Retrieved from https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1944/1944-fas.htm.
Tuğal, Cihan. 2009. Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Tuğal, Cihan. 2024. “Democratic Autocracy: A Populist Update to Fascism under Neoliberal Conditions.” Historical Materialism 32(3):45–82. https://doi.org/10.1163/1569206x-20242360.
Tuğal, Cihan. 2024. “Let’s Measure the Far-Right Threat Seriously.” Jacobin, November 26. Retrieved from https://jacobin.com/2024/11/far-right-threat-donald-trump.
Varoufakis, Yanis. 2023. Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism. New York: Melville House
Wodak, Ruth. 2019. “The Trajectory of Far-Right Populism: A Discourse-Analytical Perspective.” Pp. 21–37 in The Far Right and the Environment, edited by Bernhard Forchtner. London: Routledge.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 Sefika Kumral, Şahan Savaş Karataşli
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- The Author retains copyright in the Work, where the term “Work” shall include all digital objects that may result in subsequent electronic publication or distribution.
- Upon acceptance of the Work, the author shall grant to the Publisher the right of first publication of the Work.
- The Author shall grant to the Publisher and its agents the nonexclusive perpetual right and license to publish, archive, and make accessible the Work in whole or in part in all forms of media now or hereafter known under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License or its equivalent, which, for the avoidance of doubt, allows others to copy, distribute, and transmit the Work under the following conditions:
- Attribution—other users must attribute the Work in the manner specified by the author as indicated on the journal Web site;
- The Author is able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the nonexclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the Work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), as long as there is provided in the document an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post online a prepublication manuscript (but not the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version of the Work) in institutional repositories or on their Websites prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Any such posting made before acceptance and publication of the Work shall be updated upon publication to include a reference to the Publisher-assigned DOI (Digital Object Identifier) and a link to the online abstract for the final published Work in the Journal.
- Upon Publisher’s request, the Author agrees to furnish promptly to Publisher, at the Author’s own expense, written evidence of the permissions, licenses, and consents for use of third-party material included within the Work, except as determined by Publisher to be covered by the principles of Fair Use.
- The Author represents and warrants that:
- the Work is the Author’s original work;
- the Author has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights in the Work to any third party;
- the Work is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher;
- the Work has not previously been published;
- the Work contains no misrepresentation or infringement of the Work or property of other authors or third parties; and
- the Work contains no libel, invasion of privacy, or other unlawful matter.
- The Author agrees to indemnify and hold Publisher harmless from Author’s breach of the representations and warranties contained in Paragraph 6 above, as well as any claim or proceeding relating to Publisher’s use and publication of any content contained in the Work, including third-party content.
Revised 7/16/2018. Revision Description: Removed outdated link.
