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Boris Frankel

The dominance of neoliberal policies in Anglo-American countries during

the past two decades has not only had a profound impact on the character and

programmes of major parties, but has also led to dramatic changes within

the ranks of former Marxists and critical theorists.1 These former radicals now

either believe that the old categories of Left and Right are irrelevant, or argue

that the political concepts used by these historical movements have been

largely rendered obsolete by contemporary conditions.2 Here, I would like to

specifically focus upon the quite different, contextually driven responses to

neoliberal regimes by two post-Marxist schools of thought that are expressed in

the American journal Telos and British journals, especially Economy and Society.These new exponents of an anti-Marxist Realpolitik not only oppose the

universal values of the radical Left, but draw upon a mixture of traditions

and theories that continue to be associated with anti-class and anti-Marxist

elite theory. Moreover, the recent upsurge of right-wing populist movements

in OECD countries has been complemented by Telos theoretical cultivation of

Confronting Neoliberal Regimes:

The Post-Marxist Embrace ofPopulism and Realpolitik

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postmodern populism. These anti-socialist analyses should not beignored for they raise a number of pertinent questions to do with thepossibility and the form of a viable alternative politics given the impactof neoliberalism, globalization and postmodern cultural processes oncontemporary societies.

Before discussing these post-Marxist theorists, it is important to recall

that in the decades preceding the rise of Mussolini and Hitler, a body ofclassical elite theory emerged that also claimed to understand the work-ings of Realpolitik. Gaetano Mosca and Vilfredo Pareto directed much oftheir critique against the optimism of socialists who believed in educa-tion and the goal of equality. They dismissed Marxism as a metaphysicaltheory that ignored the real workings of politics. In this respect, thereare certain similarities between classical elite theories and recent post-modern critiques of class analysis and grand narratives. Max Weber,who ended up a quasi-liberal democrat, warned against the illusions ofadvocates of direct democracy. Not only would the experts replace the

revolutionaries once the barricades came down but, he argued, each steptowards greater equality would only lead to further bureaucratization.Likewise, Robert Michelss disillusioning critique of the gap betweenleaders and rank-and-file members in the pre-1915 German SocialDemocratic Party ultimately ended, as we know, in the iron law of oli-garchy which he applied to all organizations.

In his book The Destruction of Reason, published in 1952, Lukcs arguedthat the preoccupation of the elite theorists, of Nietzsche and Heidegger,and of other philosophical tendencies with irrationality, tragic exist-entialism, vitalism and cynicism all culminated in their support forfascism.3 While there is a certain degree of truth in Lukcs polemicalthesisfor example, Pareto and Michelss admiration of Mussolini, orHeidegger and Schmitts embrace of Nazismwe also know that elitetheory led to a redefinition of liberal democratic theory in the form ofSchumpeterian and American pluralist notions of a circulation of elites.4

1 I would like to thank Peter Christoff and Julie Stephens for their valuable help inimproving this paper.2 I am not referring here to beyond Left and Right theorists such as Norberto Bobbio andAnthony Giddens. See A. Giddens, Beyond Left and Right The Future of Radical Politics,Cambridge 1994, and N. Bobbio,Left and Right: The Significance of a Political Distinction,Cambridge 1996. The latter fit into a body of liberal-left academic analysis that stillbelieves in universal values and, in Giddens case, is publicly identified with Blairs radi-cal centre version of neoliberalism. Nor am I referring to New Age movements and theo-rists who reject conventional political divisions. Post-industrial theorists such as AlvinToffler have also long prophesied the emergence of a totally new type of politics basedupon post-materialist cybernetic fusions of the local and the global. See his The ThirdWave, London 1980.3 G. Lukcs, The Destruction of Reason, trans. P. Palmer, London 1980. Despite manyrhetorical generalizations, Lukcs book is worth rereading in the light of the recent rise ofright-wing populist and nationalist movements. Jrgen Habermass critique of contem-

porary forms of irrationalism and anti-universalist values contained in post-structuralistand other theories can perhaps be seen as a more sophisticated and updated version ofLukcss thesis, minus the latters Soviet Marxist polemics. See for instance, The NewConservatism, Cambridge 1989.4 Well before Lukcs critique, Herbert Marcuse drew out the connections between fas-cism and various strands of existential and liberal philosophy in his 1934 essay, TheStruggle Against Liberalism in the Totalitarian View of the State, reprinted inNegations,trans. J. J. Shapiro, Boston 1968.

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These pluralist notions of power became, and largely remain, the founda-tion of middle-class conceptions of citizenship in the twentieth century.Despite serious flaws in Webers theory of bureaucracy and Michelss ironlaw of oligarchy, no radical democrat can afford to ignore the fundamen-tal issues raised by these theorists. Similarly, one does not have to agreewith Mosca and Paretos ahistorical and stereotypical divisions of peopleinto lions and foxes, or the supposed inherent genetic differences between

the elite and the masses, to recognize the necessity of understandingback-room political machinations, the irrational aspects of voting behav-iour and other forms of undemocratic practice in contemporary societies.

Over eighty years ago Michels warned that: The problem of socialism isnot merely a problem in economics .. . Socialism is also an administrativeproblem, a problem of democracy, and this not in the technical andadministrative sphere alone, but also in the sphere of psychology.5 Forthree decades, the New Left, the counter-culture and new social move-ments have struggled to develop democratic alternatives to Stalinist dic-tatorships, command planning, bureaucratic social democratic welfarestates and correct line revolutionary sects. Just as Lenin found Paretoscritique of Marxism much more difficult to deal with than conventionalbourgeois criticisms so, too, the new post-Marxist practitioners ofRealpolitik theory challenge views and objectives widely held by social-ists and new social movements.

The Political Context

If the classical elite theorists were responding to the rise of socialism andliberalism, the new generation of Realpolitik analysts have developedpessimistic and disillusioned concepts of democracy and power aftertheir earlier contributions to the New Left and after what Telos claims isthe historically obsolete civil war between the Left and the Right. Thesenew post-Marxian theorists do not present themselves as anti-democra-tic. On the contrary, one school grouped around Telos claim that only arevived form of organic populism can counter corporate capitalism andthe dominant cultural and political elites. In nineteenth-century Russia,Marxism developed after the Narodniks and other populist movements

failed to persuade the masses to join their cause. Thus there is a certainirony in Telos turning to populism after abandoning its earlier develop-ment of Marxist critique.

The other school of post-Marxist theoristswhom I term the Anglo-Foucauldiansuse Economy and Society as their flagship, even though thejournal is not exclusively committed to their views and publishes adiverse body of material. The Anglo-Foucauldians also argue thatMarxism is obsolete and point to its inability to come to terms with thenew forms of liberal regimes of truth and governmentality. Not surpris-

ingly, their ideas, which have been evolving since the late 1970s and the1980s, reflect responses to the specific historical conditions in NorthAmerica, Britain and Australia. Their political context is the decline ofthe Left during almost two decades of Conservative Party rule in Britainand thirteen years of Labor government in Australia.

5 R. Michels,Political Parties, trans. E. and C. Paul, New York 1962, p. 350.

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Both anti-Marxist schools share a strong opposition to universalistic val-ues and institutions even though they articulate different political per-spectives and depart from quite dissimilar Marxist and post-Marxistfoundations. Despite these differences, there are certain affinitiesbetween the two schools such as their common rejection of overarchingpolicies associated with socialist parties, and the use of the writings ofconservative authoritarian Carl Schmitt to support their critique of radi-

cal left theory and practice.

Paul Piccone and the Telos group address issues arising from Americanpolitical culture since the 1960s and specifically, the impact of socio-economic policies on communities since the Reaganite policies of the1980s. These issues range from the effect of deindustrialization andneoliberal reforms on traditional working-class and rural constituencies,to the rise of various forms of religious fundamentalism and a plethora ofpopulist reactions against the cultural liberalism promoted by feminists,gays and other new social movements.

If the Anglo-Foucauldians philosophical inspiration comes from Niet-zsche and Heidegger via Foucault, their political terrain is very much thehistorical changes to the welfare state implemented by the neoliberalregimes of Thatcher, Major and Blair in the UK, and Hawke, Keatingand Howard in Australia. The Anglo-Foucauldian or governmentalitytheorists such as Nikolas Rose, Peter Miller and Graham Burchell mayhave London as their publication headquarters, but rely heavily on theAustralian contingent of Barry Hindess, Ian Hunter, Jeffrey Minson andothers for mutual theoretical sustenance and networking via conferences

and preparation of manuscripts. Their History of the Present networknow extends to a number of universities in Australia, Britain and Canada.As we shall see, this network contains a mixture of former Althusserians,Foucauldian exponents of governmentality as well as others who comefrom various theoretical traditions. Some are still committed to anti-capi-talist social change. As ex-radicals of the generation of 68, most share adissatisfaction with Marxist and neo-Marxist approaches and display astrong dislike of political romanticism. For example, writers such as BarryHindess still express a guarded commitment to various forms of democra-tization. Like Michels in his socialist phase, the Anglo-Foucauldians raise

crucial issues concerning the relationship between citizenship, democracyand socialism. Hindess, for example, is also a vigorous critic of Michels andothers who believe in strong charismatic leaders. Hence, it is very unlikelythat the Anglo-Foucauldians anti-class analysis and hyper negativity willlead to them following the path that Michels took from disillusionmentwith democratic socialism to the embrace of fascism. In Telos case, how-ever, the so-called transcendence of old distinctions between Left andRight has already involved a journey from 1960s critical theory to anembrace of conservative American populism, European radical Right the-ories and anti-Left movements such as the Lega Nord.6

The new Realpolitik analysts claim that the Left are still geared to thepolitical economy of a past era and hence fail to either recognize the

6 See for instance, special issues on the Leagues in Italy, Telos, no. 90, Winter 199192,and on the French New Right, Telos, nos. 9899, Winter 199394.

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new technologies of regulation, or else advance political programmesthat only further processes of bureaucratization and cultural homoge-nization. It is therefore important to identify those elements in theirwork that pose serious challenges to the Left as well as highlighting theinherent dangers for social theorists when embracing an eclectic rangeof social philosophies formerly associated with anti-egalitarian and anti-democratic politics.

The Telos Response to Modernization and Globalization

Telos has mirrored political developments for almost thirty years.Beginning in Spring 1968, the original Telos group of critical theoristsstarted to go their different ways in the 1970s, openly splitting as aresult of Telos opposition to the peace movement in the early 1980sand conflict between editors over attitudes to Marxism and liberalism.7

It has become barely recognizable from its origins since Paul Piccone,the editor, began devoting more and more space to articles by right-wingauthors and promoting populist politics in the late 1980s and 1990s.Nevertheless, certain aspects have not changed. Telos has never been con-nected to actual political movements or struggles. It has always been pri-marily a journal devoted to the publication and interpretation ofEuropean critical theory and social philosophy. This detachment fromAmerican politics and social analysis was never adequately overcome byformer members of the editorial board. Even its recent heavy champi-oning of American populism is in part achieved through the filter ofFrench, German and Italian right-wing theory and politics. If most of

the earlier critical theorists have left the editorial board, this is not todeny a certain logical evolution of Paul Piccones early positions into hiscurrent embrace of populism. Also, it is important to recognize thedefining stamp that Piccone has placed upon Telos over the years. As theeditor and owner of Telos, Piccone is a volatile personality, displayinga mixture of explosive energy, authoritarian dictatorship and open, un-inhibited democratic exchange of ideas. It is these very qualities thathave made debates in Telos interesting and also partially explains whyPicconein his idiosyncratic mannerhas not been frightened toexplore and absorb ideas from the Right.

At a socio-political level, it is important not to lose sight of the wither-ing conditions confronting advocates of radical change in the US duringthe past thirty years. No other capitalist country has yet experienced thedegree of depoliticization and fundamental erosion and commodificationof a civic culture as has the US. The absence of a large labour or socialdemocratic party and the thorough marginalization of left movements isreflected in the inability to halt or reverse neoliberal economic policiesand cuts to social programmes. Increased levels of racism, poverty, wors-ening conditions at work and in communities, as well as the familiar fea-

tures of urban malaise and political neglect appear intractable. Millionsof people who have long since ceased to vote, let alone be active in social

7 For a genealogy of Telos from the perspective of its editor, see P. Piccone, TheTribulations of Left Social Criticism: A Reply to Palti, Telos, no. 107, Spring 1996, pp.13968. See also E.J. Palti, Is there a Telos Right? in the same issue, pp. 12127. Paltiscritique renders the question mark in his title redundant.

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movements or parties. When these depressing features are put alongsideincreased cultural commodification, the rampant conspicuous con-sumption of the past decade and the mass intellectual investment in cul-tural studies and postmodern theory at the expense of radical politics,it is easier to understand the socio-economic and cultural conditionsconfronting the Telos group.8 Although many of the post-Marxian, post-modern responses to contemporary America have comfortably coexisted

with neoliberal political and economic policies, most postmodernistsand practitioners of cultural studies would see themselves as anti-right-wing. Not so Telos. What is peculiar about the Telos interpretation ofAmerican conditions, is the transcendence or synthesis of theoreticalexplanations from Left and Right.

Spectacular Politics

In his Six Theses on the Inevitability of Populism, Piccone providesa historical and political framework for his advocacy of populism inAmerica.9 These theses begin with a pessimistic yet plausible account ofthe depoliticization and technocratic routine of political participation inthe US. According to Piccone, if groups reject this technocratic normal-ity they are ignored by the media and dismissed by the bureaucracy. Inan age of spectacular politicsnot to be confused with Guy Debordssociety of the spectaclewhen the media only pays attention to theextraordinary, political activity tends to take the form of civil disobedi-ence because ordinary protests, marches and meetings are ignored.Moreover, such spectacular politics requires the pre-packaging of politi-

cal issues to fit the media form. Ambiguities are edited out and thecontext is assumed as normal. All politics is reduced to single issuesamenable to automatic moralistic formatting and made ready for techno-cratic processing. Hence only minor alterations are possible as politicalobjectives must be attained within the depoliticizing rules of the game.Technocratic co-optation is thus already prefigured by the very act ofspectactularizing politics.

The residues of left critique are also visible in Piccones account ofFordism. After World War i, the strategy of the culture industry to

Americanize itself had the aim of forging national identity and a uniformmarket out of a fragmented multi-ethnic society effectively ruled by aWASP elite and based upon racist and sexist exclusionary mechanisms.This social homogenization greatly facilitated standardized mass oligop-olistic capitalist production and American consumers, higher standardsof living yet abysmal cultural impoverishment. But the Fordist era ofcultural and economic homogenization plus military Keynesianismfailed to usher in social equality. The rediscovery of cultural particular-ism, prefigured by the culture industry from the mid 1960s, smoothlyfed into Lyndon Johnsons Great Society corporatist strategy of enfran-

chising previously excluded groups to allegedly guarantee formal repre-sentation. More importantly, this incorporation strategy diversified the

8 On intellectuals and culture, see, for instance, Todd Gitlins Twilight of Common Dreams:Why America is Wracked by Culture Wars, New York 1995.9 See Piccone, The Empire Strikes Out: A Roundtable on Populist Politics, Telos, no. 87,Spring 1991, pp. 47.

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polity enough to restore a minimal negativity without which the bur-eaucratic apparatus threatened to choke the productive system intoeconomic paralysis.

Here Piccone is extending his earlier thesis of artificial negativityareworking of the Italian class analyses of Mario Tronti and Serge Bolognainto a broader cultural and political interpretation of the role of new

social movements in the 1960s and 1970s.10

Telos promoted a modifiedversion of Italian left theory which saw the conflict over the historicalchanges from craft workers to the Fordist mass worker as essential to cap-italist innovation. Without labour conflict, the bosses would have losttheir competitive edge and ceased being innovative. In contrast toTrontis Marxism, Piccones concept of artificial negativity lays thebasis for his subsequent move from the Frankfurt School to a right-wingcritique of the welfare state. Today, he argues, capitalist relations are nolonger questioned but the myth of a totally administered society(Adorno, Marcuse) explodes with the realization that the unintended

consequences of social pathologies necessitate ever growing bureaucraticintervention. However, this intervention is counter-productive in that itstrengthens the very conditions that gave rise to administrative interven-tionpoor productivity, motivation, rationality and so forth. Crisismanagement replaces planning as unforeseen disruptions due to bureau-cratic over-administration are ritualistically articulated through civildisobediencefor, example, conflict over abortion, gay rights, racism orschool control.

Centralizers Versus Populists

Accordingly, class domination dissipates into class chaos, and politicalbattle lines are redrawn: traditional class struggle between labour andcapital is now redefined in terms of new confrontations between populistproblems and New Class pseudo-solutions.11 Thus Piccone sees the mainnew political divisions as one between centralizers, committed to an

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10 M. Tronti, Workers and Capital, Telos, no. 14, Winter 1972, pp. 2562, and S.Bologna, Class Composition and the Theory of the Party, Telos, no. 13, Fall 1972, pp.427. Piccones introduction to both articles makes it clear that he rejects Bolognas andTrontis class analysis even though he admires their analysis of the genesis of the mass

worker. See P. Piccone, The Crisis of One-Dimensionality, Telos, no. 35, Spring 1978, pp.4354. According to Piccone, the Weberian vision of constant rationalization and bureau-cratization becomes counter-productive precisely when it successfully penetrates what itseeks to rationalize. Taylorization, homogenization and Marcusean one-dimensionalitybecome dysfunctional to the capitalist system. That is why the Ralph Naders, BarryCommoners, feminists, blacks and other social movement activists provide the non-bureaucratic control mechanisms that alert the paralyzed system and help it developmechanisms appropriate for a post-Fordist political economy. In other words, the move-ments of the 1960s did not constitute a real negation of the system but played merely auseful modernizing role. Piccones theory rests on the notion of Capital as a super all-knowing Subject whose rationality cannot ultimately lose. See my critique in Identifying

Dominant Misconceptions of States, Thesis Eleven, no. 4, 1982, pp. 97119.11 Piccones use of the term New Class is quite similar to the New Rights application ofthis concept to describe welfare state professionals and other social movement organiza-tions and public-sector employees. The main difference is that he links the New Classagenda to the Enlightenment philosophical tradition and all statist programmatic poli-cies whether communist, fascist or liberal social democratic. See Piccone, BeyondPseudo-Culture? Reconstructing Fundamental Political Concepts, Telos, no. 95, Spring1995, pp. 314.

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extension of the state redistributive apparatus allegedly meant to solveall social problemshence victimology as the New Class favouritemode of ideological self-legitimationand populists committed tolocal autonomy, fiscal austerity and participatory forms of democracy.Following Carl Schmitts concept of motorized legislationwhat islawful today may no longer be so tomorrow, thus the need to constantlyjustify interventions legally via changed legislationPiccone sees this

super-legality resulting in the systematic delegitimation of the socialglue that keeps social order together, namely popular trust. Politics ascivil disobedience hypostatizes morality above legality and threatens todestroy it. Civil disobedience is exceptional politics and where it replacesnormal politics it tends to destroy politics as collective will formationbecause a clash of values present themselves as non-negotiable. The Lefthas been a major accomplice in all this. It no longer relates to the realpeople, the working class, or anybody: it simply addresses Washingtonin the name of an anonymous, mediatized populace through TV, thenewspapers and the demonstrations necessary to attract attention. Whenit does not feed into this statist logic, it simply deploys super-legalityagainst what it always dismissed anyway as bourgeois legality. ForPiccone, this is a disastrous no-win situation.

Given the breakdown of the old New Deal state in the past decade or so,and besieged by fiscal, ecological and motivational crises, the old legalfoundation loses its universal validity and becomes one particular codeamong others. Reacting against modernizing influences, Telos believesthat legality can only be relegitimated locally, in a context where it can

once again re-establish continuity with morality and formalize it. This isbecause pre-modern modes of organization based on ethnic, national,linguistic and/or religious lines still manage to mediate a great deal ofeveryday life beneath the bureaucratic glaze and the modernist veneer.Hence, the fashionable sociological calls for the reconstitution of civilsociety are futile: before it can constitute itself as such, civil societyneeds a communitarian structure which no longer exists, and whosereconstitution cannot be formulated as a bureaucratic projectno mat-ter how well funded. In fact, Piccone argues that the experience of theGreat Society state intervention to sustain faltering communities is that,

far from a catalyst for social reconstruction, this intervention simplyaccelerates disintegration. He claims that it is no accident that commu-nities subject to the least government intervention, such as the Asian, arethriving, whilst others targeted for maximum penetration such as theAfro-American, continue disintegrating at a rapid pace. Those commu-nities with strong organically developed traditions and customs willthrive, and those which have been homogenized will not.

Piccones strange blend of left-wing anti-cultural homogenization andright-wing anti-multiculturalism is evident in his observation that those

who claim to be Irish-American, Afro-American and so on still behaveexactly like everyone else because they consume the same cultural prod-ucts. The hyphen is totally irrelevant from the viewpoint of the newlogic of domination. Real residual communities that have resistedhomogenization are not the ones celebrated by the culture industry.Hence, cultural particularism has deteriorated into an ideology ofupwardly mobile middle-class cadres providing advantages to people

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who can readily certify their particularistic oppressed identity. As aNew Class project, multiculturalism ends up empowering only amulticultural bureaucratic elite to manage the further disintegration ofmediatized communities they are allegedly helping to reconstitute.Horkheimer and Adorno, he says, traced anti-Semitism to the identitylogic of Enlightenment ideology. The culturally recalcitrant Jew, whorefused to forfeit his particularity in this process of capitalist homog-

enization, had to go or be exterminated. Now, the culture industrybenignly continues exactly the same project of universal homogen-ization. Defeated in battle, fascism has won the cultural war.12 Today,Piccone argues, only a handful of die-hard left intellectuals still raveagainst the culture industry. Redefined as a respectable academic disci-pline, popular culture has long ceased to be considered as the opiate ofthe masses.

Paradoxically, Piccone sees the essence of the Frankfurt School critiquecontinued not by the Left, but by French New Right theorists such asAlain Benoisteven though subsumed under the broader critique ofthe US and its cultural hegemony. Hence, cultural homogenization canonly be fought by championing particularistic cultures and strongautonomous communities operating within a new federal legal struc-ture.13 Populist communitarianism preserves the plurality of organictraditions and necessitates a vigorous opposition to all forms of bureau-cratic centralization sponsored by either transnational corporate forcesor national New Class welfare professionals and admirers of commercialpopular culture.

The Political Miasma of Populism

Piccone combines vestiges of critical theory with American small-townpopulism, anarchist anti-statism, European right-wing regionalism,nationalist mythology and a profound anti-modernism. Thus, the con-crete existence of organic communities in remote corners of the Mid-West or in the mountainous Swiss cantons only means that in theseplaces it is probably much easier to lead a satisfying life within a viablepolitical organization free of the pathologies of modernity: homelessness,

criminality, irresponsibility, decadence and ultimately self-destruc-tion.14 The advocacy of strong local communities in opposition to cen-tral state bureaucracies has forced Telos to develop theoretical allianceswith a range of right-wing socio-cultural forces whose level of intoler-ance and anti-distributionist politics is incompatible with the residues ofegalitarian social justice and cultural openness held by some members of

12 See P. Piccone, Old Prejudices or a New Political Paradigm?, Telos, nos. 9899, Winter1993-Fall 1994, pp. 322.13 The rejection of cultural homogenization and American capitalism has a long tradition

on both Left and Right. For example, on the hundredth anniversary of Nietzsches birth,the Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg delivered a speech in Prague in 1944 in which heclaimed that National Socialism defends organically grown nations against Asiaticnations of the East and American capitalism of the West. See W. von der Will, Nietzscheand National Socialism, unpublished paper presented at University of California,Berkeley, March 1997. The anti-internationalism ofTelos championing of organic com-munities also falls back on a similar rhetoric of anti-capitalist homogenization.14 Piccone, The Tribulations of Left Social Criticism, p. 165.

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the Telos editorial board. But as an intellectual journal engaged in noelectoral politics or other organizational politics, the incompatible theo-retical marriage of left and right social philosophies is able to survive inthe detached pages of Telos rather than in the actual political field. Inother words, it is one thing to promote organic communities in Telos, andit is quite another thing to mobilize grass roots forces if these same localconstituencies have already been successfully mobilized by Christian

fundamentalists, Gingrichs Republicans or a whole range of other orga-nizations in the US and Europe ranging from radical Greens through tosurvivalist militias. The politically unreal desire to introduce the region-alist model of the Lega Nord to the USA is only one example of the infatu-ation with Europe of Telos editors who have never been able to come toterms with the dynamics of their own American society.

While Piccone dominates Telos, other contributing editors such as GaryUlmen, Russell Berman, Frank Adler and Tim Luke have also helpedto develop the new theory of populism and federalism, and introduce

readers to the European New Right, the works of Carl Schmitt andthe history of American populist movements.15 Because of the mixture ofsophisticated, penetrating insights offset by exaggerated generalizations,political naivet as well as crude obsessiveness, the Telos perspectivedefies neat classification. Like the work of Christopher Laschwhoselast writings on populism Telos promotedmany of the articles in Telosadvance arguments that are simultaneously critical of capitalism and yetculturally quite conservative.16 Internal differences are also evident asvarious editors stress particular political issues at the expense of others.For example, Russell Berman reflects the Telos wing that supports pop-

ulism within a revived sense of nationhood rather than old style nation-alism. Like Lasch, Berman believes that universalise internationalismstretches loyalty too thinly and is attacked as profoundly unrealistic andanti-humanistic as it denies all the complexity of lived particularitiesand identities.17 As Berman puts it, living an ethic of loving-thy-neigh-bour may be difficult; an ethic of loving everyone simply on the basis ofthe fact of their human being is impossible. The more such a draconianobligation is asserted, the more resentment it provokes. Local andnational ties of loyalty are perpetually loosened, but they are not, andcannot be replaced by a liveable universalist ethic. The willingness foraltruistic sacrifice is always concrete and particular; it cannot be inflatedthrough infinite abstraction.18

But localism, while preferred by Berman to internationalism, is equallyunrealistic. If internationalism denies the finite, then localism is too nar-

15 See, for instance, P. Piccone and G. Ulmen, Schmitts Testament and the Future ofEurope: Four Exchanges, Telos, no. 85, Fall 1990, pp. 93148; P. Piccone and G. Ulmen,Populism and the New Politics, Telos, no. 103, Spring 1995, pp. 38; T. Luke,Searching for Alternatives: Postmodern Populism and Ecology, in the same issue, pp.

87110; F. Adler, The Original Model of American Democracy and the Turn to Statism,Telos, no. 104. Summer 1995, pp. 6876, and R. Berman, Popular Culture and PopulistCulture, Telos, no. 87, Spring 1991, pp. 5970.16 See The Second Elizabethtown Telos Conference (April 57, 1991), Telos, no. 88,Summer 1991 which discussed Laschs work.17 See Christopher Lasch, The True and Only Heaven, New York 1991, p. 36.18 R. Berman, Beyond Localism and Universalism; Nationhood and Solidarity, Telos, no.105, Spring 1995, p. 47.

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row, cutting off humanity from the infinite. Hence, Berman offersnationhood as the new mediating arena for localist cultures and newforms of nation-to-nation relations. Nationhood will be different to thecurrent forms of nationalism and nation states which are geared to glob-alism and cultural homogenization.19 However, Berman is unclear andunconvincing when trying to establish how this abstract concept ofnationhood can be adequately differentiated from and immunized

against the negative aspects of nationalism. For how can the infinitequalities of nationhood be any more concrete to particular communitiesthan the unlived and so-called unrealistic nature of internationalism? Itis impossible to have lived, face-to-face relationships with most citizensin small towns of 20,000 people, let alone nationhoods of millions ofcitizens. Paradoxically, Berman developed his critique of universal inter-nationalism while the very atrocities of Bosnia and former regions of theUSSR were fuelled by revived national hatreds. Bermans attempt todevelop a third way between homogenized corporate globalismwhichhe mistakenly equates with a universalist ethicand local parochialism,taps into sentiments and fears held by various movements on the Rightand Left. Although federalism has had a wide variety of liberal, anar-chist, socialist and Green supporters, Bermans advocacy of nationhoodand federalism is politically naive. Moreover, it bolsters the dislikewhich Telos regularly shows for internationalism and especially for thosewriters such as Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm who discover notthe deeply historically rooted organic communities ofTelos dreams, butthe relatively recent and invented nature of traditions and imaginedcommunities20

Rescuing Populism

Although highly critical of postmodern cultural studies, Picconewishes to sharply delineate postmodern populism as he calls it, fromthe conventional sociological image of populism as a mob of know-nothing farmers in overalls, brandishing pitchforks, lynching blacksand chasing Jews, immigrants and other undesirable elements out oftown.21 He shares Christopher Laschs support for populism against thecorporate elite, but does not believe that Laschs traditional commun-

itarianism can be revived today. Increasingly critical of egalitarian poli-cies, Telos attacks the social democratic, liberal Left for promotingcultural homogenization under the guise of multiculturalism and thewelfare state. Accordingly, corporate America and transnational cap-italism encounter no genuine opposition. Here Telos extrapolates fromthe undoubted complicity of social democratic and labour parties in

19 Ibid., pp. 4952.20 See, for instance, P. Piccone, Beyond Pseudo-Culture? Reconstituting FundamentalPolitical Concepts, Telos, no. 95, Spring 1993, p. 13. According to Piccone, Anderson

and Hobsbawm represent the cynical Enlightenment tradition furthering the New Classand the inexorable progression to a vague classless society. He also argues that whereasnationalism was once a right-wing predilection opposed to leftist cosmopolitanism, in theage of postmodern fragmentation it is the Left as redefined by the New Class that, sincethe theoretization of socialism in one country, has turned conservative and has becomethe most committed defender of statism, managerialism and the status quo in general.Secession or Reform? The Case of Canada, Telos, no. 106, Winter 1996, pp. 467.21 P. Piccone, Postmodern Populism, Telos, no. 103, Spring 1995, pp. 4586.

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the furtherance of global and national corporate accumulation prac-tices. Hence, Telos response is to support populist culture againstpopular culture.

In contrast to many critics of neoliberalism who nostalgically and un-critically long for a restoration of the welfare state services and econ-omy of the three decades after 1945, Telos theorists at least raise the

major negative consequences of global corporatism that have theirorigin in the Keynesian welfare-warfare economy. They are also particu-larly sensitive to the mediatization or spectacular nature of contempo-rary bi-partisan politics and how political opposition is coopted orrendered ineffective. The criticism of former leftists become culturalstudies aficionados, while full of conservative hyperbole, neverthelessoccasionally hits the marka testimony to the lack of radical critique inpopular culture and its disciples. Moreover, the recognition that thevalues and lifestyles of the dominant government and corporate de-cision-makers are seriously at odds with large cross-sections of theelectorate in countries such as the US and Australia, is amply illustratedon a daily basis.

This revolt of the elitesas Lasch terms itraises a whole series ofquestions about the contemporary meaning of citizenship and democ-racy.22 Piccones belief in populism as the panacea to the contemporarymalaise is itself symptomatic of the larger issue that has confrontedall advocates of a third way between capitalist welfare states and one-party bureaucratic dictatorships since the 1950s. More specifically, it

reinforces that old dilemma which has continually challenged the Left,namely, how to develop appropriate strategies that are actively supportedby the mass of the population. How does the Left avoid policies thatunintentionally strengthen homogenizing and disempowering corporateand bureaucratic forces? How does it avoid repeating Telos direct andindirect support for a whole variety of reactionary movements andauthoritarian values? In other words, is it possible for the Left to avoidright-wing populist values and yet gain the support of those workers andgrass-roots constituencies who have a sense of place, fear losing theirjobs, services and communities as businesses go off-shore to low-wage

countries, and blame either immigrants, feminists, gays or Greens fordestroying their culture?

Right-Wing Prejudices in a Critical Theory Framework

Whereas in the 1960s and 1970s Telos promoted left-wing Europeansocial philosophy, its recent conversion to the agendas of various right-wing nationalists, regionalists and cultural traditionalists is primarilydriven by a culturalist agenda which in key respects mirrors the disre-gard that many postmodernist cultural studies practitioners have for

political economy. What is noteworthy about Telos conversion fromleft-wing critique of capitalist culture to right-wing opposition toEuropean corporatism and American global cultural homogenization,

22 C. Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy, New York 1995; see alsoAidan Rankins review of this book, Christopher Lasch and the Moral Agony of the Left,NLR 215, pp. 14955.

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is that all its socio-political editorial judgements are now filteredthrough the prism of organic communal culture. Telos right-wingcommunitarianism is in marked contrast to the recent articulation ofliberal and social democratic communitarianism and social capitaltheories that also express alarm over the way free-market individualistculture is destroying public institutions, values of communal solidar-ity, trust and care. Similarly, Telos shows some interest in environmental

issues as part of its populist agenda, but it turns its back on the com-munitarian philosophies of the German Greens and other left and anti-capitalist social movement critics of cultural homogenization. Why isthis so?

Reflecting the dominant American individualist culturedespite theirtrumpeting of communitarianismPiccone and company turn theirbacks on left egalitarian and social justice strategies. Since the 1970s,there has been a resurgence of anti-statist currents going well beyondfree-market individualism. All kinds of backlash populists, agrarian

fascists or Christian populist militiawho wage war on the Zionistoccupation government in Washingtonare symptomatic of some-thing more complex than what sociologists call a reaction againstmodernity. The proliferation of both violent and peaceful anti-govern-ment movements, cults and philosophies is also testimony to the impassein American politics. With the established party system, committed tomarket restructuring that guarantees further massive disruption andpain to workers and their families, and the inability of left oppositionalgroups to effect change through the institutional structure, it is littlewonder that authoritarian and religious forms of populism attempt to

surmount this impasse. Thus anti-statism and anti-egalitarianism feedoff one another and become indispensable ingredients of the Telosagenda. Given this right-wing anti-statismand having long aban-doned its flirtation with anti-statist currents of unorthodox Marxismit is only logical that Telos should now be attracted to all sorts of culturalparticularistsfrom the Northern Leagues in Italy, the French right-wing advocates of cultural difference against the EU, to the residues oforganic communitarianism in the US, whether black religious groups orthe same constituencies mobilized by the Republican Right but minusRepublican politicians. Not surprisingly, Telos supports the EuropeanNew Rights slogan of a Europe of a hundred flags and regions againsthomogenized nation states and a homogenized EU.23 Thus, several majorweaknesses, unacceptable prejudices and implausible scenarios recur inTelos articles.

23 For a survey of the connections between the works of Schmitt, Junger et al. andEuropean Rightists from Benoist in France to Zhirinovski in Russia and Telos in the US,see G. Dahl, Will The Other God Fail Again? On the Possible Return of theConservative Revolution, Theory, Culture and Society, vol. 13, no. 1, 1996, pp. 2550.Dahl also draws attention to the way the European New Right has used post-structuralist

theory to support its campaign for cultural difference against the supranationalism of theEuropean Union. Postmodernists are either attacked as the enemy or used to bolster con-servative agendas. The ambivalence of postmodernism and identity politicsthat is,their compatibility with either greater democratization and multiculturalism or anti-uni-versalism and right-wing nationalist and communal intoleranceis becoming more evi-dent. See also Hans-Georg Betz,Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe, New York1994, for a survey of how various right-wing movements have responded to globalizationand European integration.

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Weaknesses in the Telos Approach

First, there is the obsessive attack on what Piccone and colleagues callthe New Class of professionals in government, the universities and thecorporate sector.24 Sociologically and politically, there is little to distin-guish Telos polemical use of this term from the very same concept usedby conservative and New Right anti-welfare state ideologues and think

tanks. Piccone deploys half-truths and caricatures to homogenize awhole variety of socio-political perspectives, occupations and varyingroles in the public and private sectors. Because the New Class is demo-nized in such a crude manner, the causal relationship drawn between theproblems debilitating American society and their possible solution,leads to an increasingly right-wing politics. Typical of this demonizationof the New Class is Piccones repetition of free-market propagandaabout how the destruction of local communities is attributable tobureaucratic intervention rather than mass unemployment, poverty andlack of cultural capital. Telos echoes the dominant ideology of self-help

individualism in a society that has one of the least developed welfarestates in the OECD. Piccones notion of self-reliance is a throwback to theaustere Protestant ethic. The promotion of voluntary associations andcharitable bodies such as the Salvation Army as substitutes for a compre-hensive public welfare system merely confirms Piccones complete lackof empathy with the poor and the unemployedwhom he describes asaddictive beneficiariesa typical manifestation of his obsessive hatredof welfare states.25 Other Telos writers such as Robert Bresler voice awhole set of extreme right-wing viewsattacking left-wing academics,gay studies, womens studies, multiculturalismand concluding with a

warning that populist anger will be white hot if Gingrichs RepublicanCongress produces more timid centrism!26

Underpinning Telos move to the Right is the absence of a feasible alter-native political economic model that could effectively counter corporateglobalism and deliver communitarian forms of local democracy. Picconeand company ultimately fall back on the small-scale capitalist systembecause they have no political economy of redistribution.27 Given Teloslack of interest in universal citizen rights, there is little thought given towhat social rights citizens would have inside and outside their organic

24 See my discussion of the concept New Class in From The Prophets Deserts Come,Melbourne 1992, ch. 3.25 See P. Piccone, Introduction, Telos, no. 106, Winter 1996, p. 6 where he endorses theright-wing call to dismantle Canadas federal welfare system in order to solve the debtproblem. Also Telos Staff, Nationhood, Nationalism and Identity: A Symposium, Telos,no. 105, Fall 1995, p. 102. This symposium highlights the varying positions ofTelos edi-tors and is notable for Piccones libertarian attack on state schooling, a tolerance of allforms of particularismswhether Nazism, creationism or religious fundamentalisminthe name of a living culture of the people so long as it is not the abstract universalism ofthe bureaucratic elite (p. 105).26

R. Bresler, The End of New Deal Liberalism and the Rise of Populism, Telos, no. 104,Summer 1995, pp. 1326.27 As a sign of their embrace of small-business populism, their 1991 Elizabethtown con-ference sponsors included the Institute for Business and Society and the Young AmericanFederation. Telos justified this by claiming that there is a growing realization on the partof some organizations previously associated with the Right that the old Right/Left dis-tinction is no longer meaningful and a redrawing of the political lines is overdue. TheSecond Elizabethtown Conference, p. 7.

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communities and what administrativeas opposed to legal mecha-nismswould be necessary to prevent mass discrimination, poverty andsocial injustice.

While Telos attacks the homogenized popular culture created by corpora-tions, it is utterly naive to believe that local small businesses can consti-tute a serious challenge to the dominant power of transnational

corporations. Solving the problems of mass unemployment, decayingurban infrastructure or the absence of natural resources and local sourcesof employment and production, requires a conception of the macro-eco-nomic processes of production, distribution and coordination thatextend well beyond the local unit. Moreover, the creation of a genuinecommunitarian society would entail the promotion of clear alternativesto the existing military-industrial complex, and to the mass unemploy-ment and crisis in profitability that would result from its dismantling.Yet, all these elementary forms of political economy are absent from pop-ulist proposals as they vehemently reject socialist, social democratic or

eco-socialists models but opt for the illusory panacea of small-businessand voluntarism.

As defensive strategies against the steam-rolling bureaucratic practicesof supranational and national administrative and economic forces, vari-ous community, associational, federal and regional movements do holdpart of the answer to a more democratic politicsbut only if suchdefences do not become parochial, exclusive or possessive. Habermasnotes that one of the virtues of contemporary welfare states in WesternEurope is that nationalist bonding has been modified by the progressive

inclusion of the population as citizens. New forms of legally mediatedsolidarity have emerged as the democratic process has guaranteed socialintegration via the entitlement to social rights and the provision of socialservices.28 So far, most models of decentralized or self-sufficient commu-nities have failed to specify how the millions of people currently pro-vided with welfare incomes and servicesa situation that is far fromgenerous or adequatewill survive or feel included if alternative organiccommunities and associations lack the requisite local fiscal, material andorganizational resources or are principally based on notions of ethnic orracial exclusivity.

Not surprisingly, Telos is attracted to the Lega Nord and French NewRight critique of neoliberalism in the name of local and regional tradi-tional forms of business and unequal communities. But exclusiveregional or nationalist strategies are relatively powerless to stem culturalhomogenization or prevent the destruction of community practices thatTelos values. Whether it be Quebec or Northern Italy, populists will havelittle power to change social relations if the same corporations currentlydominating these regional economies continue to operate in the newly

revived organic communities. Telos fails to confront the reality thatfederalism within the EU will either be a continuation of a Europedominated by big corporations, or the creation of a federation of statesor regions based upon an extension of universal social legislation andpublicly controlled productive forces. European, Australian and even

28J. Habermas, National Unification and Popular Sovereignty, NLR 219, p. 11.

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American citizens are not going to support the complete dismantling ofsocial welfare provisions and public-sector employment in the name ofabstract lived communities that will leave the field totally free for mar-ket forces to exacerbate already grossly inadequate investment in publicwelfare and community facilities.

We, the (Homogeneous) People

As mentioned earlier, Telos displays a paradoxical commitment to a mix-ture of open libertarian values and narrow, sexist, ethnic, homophobicand other conservative prejudices. Endorsing Schmitts belief in thesubstantial homogeneity of the whole people as the precondition ofparliamentary government, Piccone and Ulmen argue that preferenceto European rather than Asian or African immigrants is not necessarilyracist. There is a cultural dimension to the social composition of theUS, and the desire to maintain a Western society with a Judeo-Christianprofile is neither irrational nor xenophobic.29 Try selling this to NativeAmericans, members of Black Islamic communities, Asian Americansof various backgrounds and a whole range of Hispanic Americans!Not only does Telos attitude to immigrants sound disturbingly similarto that of mono-cultural racists and chauvinists in Europe, Australia,Asia and North America, but it also stands for a world characterizedby social immobility and parochial exclusiveness. Telos has failed tocome to terms with the legacy of mass migration in recent decades andeither refuses to recognize the rights of immigrant communities, oropts for intolerant assimilationist policiesan ever-reliable sign of

fear and prejudice.

Ultimately, Piccones organic communities are no more capable of lead-ing a postmodern populist revival than Laschs nostalgic nineteenth-cen-tury forms of populism. Criticizing former Telos editors, Andrew Arato,

Jean Cohen and John Keanewho, as admirers of Habermas, he callsHabermaniacsPiccone argues that the reconstitution of civil societyis impossible without first developing communitarianism. Conversely,one may ask how is it possible for intolerant right-wing populists andreligious fundamentalists to suddenly transform themselves into toler-

ant local democrats and create a new pluralist civic culture? The oldermembers of the Frankfurt School theorized themselves into the cul-de-sac of the totally administered societythus making it impossible toidentify the historical subjects who would break through capitalist re-ification. Similarly, Piccone himself argued in the late 1970s that theorganic negativity necessary to challenge bureaucratic artificial nega-tivity no longer existed since both the organic community and thenon-homogenized individual had been destroyed by the culture industryand the capitalist production and administrative system.30 Leaving asidethe whole issue of what constitutes an organic community, it is clear

that even Piccone vaguely recognizes that mass political opposition can-not be manufactured by theorists craving for commercial-free, unconta-minated communities.

29 P. Piccone and G. Ulmen, Introduction to Special issue on Populism ii, Telos, no. 104,Summer 1995, p. 10.30 See Piccone, The Crisis of One Dimensionality, Telos, no. 35, Spring 1978, p. 48.

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Despite his belief that the Lega Nord has found a face-to-face politicalstyle that surmounts one-dimensional, total administration theory,Piccone still feels uneasy about the organizational authoritarianism ofleaders such as Umberto Bossi. Still, it is the Lega Nords championingof the federal model that makes Piccone suspend fundamental criticismof Bossi and his populists. As Piccone puts it: The federal model todayconstitutes the only rational compromise between the multicultural

chaos and subsequent bureaucratic domination of existing liberaldemocracies and the monoethnic dogmatism of post-communist soci-eties or National-Socialist regimes seeking a return to pre-modernpseudo-alternatives.31 But how organic communities are going toavoid the politics of monoethnic dogmatism if multiculturalism isrejected remains a mystery. Like his current hero Carl Schmittwhoopted for the authoritarian order of the Third Reich in preference to thedemocratic chaos of WeimarPiccone postulates contemporary prob-lems in terms of overcoming chaos and motorized legislation caused bythe interventionist welfare state.32

According to Piccone and Ulmen, Telos has fused Husserls critique ofthe crisis of modern science, Schmitts critique of legal positivism,Marx/Lukcs critique of reification, and Adorno/Horkheimers critiqueof instrumental reason with more recent populist and right-wingcritiques of the New Class and centralizing states.33 The rightwardmarch of critical theory thus ends up in a romantic notion of the organiccommunity and the thinly disguised politics of resentmentfor exam-ple, Telos obsessive hatred of reforms such as affirmative action. Like CarlSchmitts choice of fascism over disorder, Piccone and company make a

decisionist leap, a vitalist critique of American disorder and malaise inthe name of the local people. But the mythical or real organic popularfolk, whom Telos theorists have now substituted for the proletariat as thesubject and object of radical change, would most likely reject these bigcity intellectuals as rootless cosmopolitan members of the very sameprofessional elite that Telos disparagingly calls the New Class. In regis-tering the populist voices of nostalgia, disempowerment, resentmentand loss, Telos reminds us that politics from abovewhether of the Leftor the Rightexacts a high price if not adequately connected to politicsfrom below.

Unable to resist the narrow values and politics of parochial forcesbecause Piccone and colleagues are themselves compromised by dog-matic prejudicesTelos has now gone beyond the point of no return. The

31 Piccone, Federal Populism in Italy, Telos, no. 90, Winter 199192, p. 15.32 See Mark Neocleous, Friend or Enemy? Reading Schmitt Politically, Radical Philo-

sophy, no. 79, September-October 1996, pp. 1323. This article criticizes those on the Leftand former leftists who make excuses for Schmitts fascism and use him, as Habermas says,as a means to fill the gap left by a non-existent Marxist theory of democracy. Following

critics of Schmitt such as Marcuse, Habermas and Martin Jay, Neocleous points to the factthat Schmitt strongly resisted socialism and the Enlightenment tradition, admiredMussolinis fascist state as a model and did not want to save Weimar but only the author-itarian aspects of the Weimar constitution. For a strong critique of Schmitts unrecon-structed post-war anti-Semitism and authoritarianism, see Mark Lilla, The Enemy ofLiberalism,New York Review, 15 May 1997, pp. 3844, and W. Scheuerman, Between the

Norm and the Exception, Cambridge, Mass. 1997.33 P. Piccone and G. Ulmen, Schmitts Testament and the Future of Europe, p. 138.

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conditions of American capitalism have long produced myriad forms ofrage and political impotency. As Adorno and Horkheimer, two of Telosearlier heroes, observed:

A childs ceaseless queries are always symptoms of a hidden pain, ofa first question to which it found no answer and which it did notknow how to frame appropriately. . . If the childs repeated attempts

are balked, or too brutally frustrated, it may turn its attention ina different direction. It is then richer in experience, as the sayinggoes, but an imperceptible scar, a tiny callused area of insensitivity,is apt to form at the spot where the urge was stifled. Such scars leadto deformities. They can build hard and able characters; they canbreed stupidityas a symptom of pathological deficiency, of blind-ness and impotency, if they are quiescent; in the form of malice,spite, and fanaticism, if they produce a cancer within.34

In an America characterized by the absence of a strong left mass opposi-tional movement, Telos right turn to populism is hardly an exceptionalevent. All kinds of gurus, left and right sects, apocalyptic prophets andquacks are levelled by the market. Like most of the other brands, Telosorganic populism may attract disillusioned customers by offeringanother pseudo-panacea to cure Americas ills. But it will probably incurthe same fate of political impotence as other theories in search of a massmovement.

Anglo-Foucauldians and the New Resigned Pessimism

If Telos is obsessed with local autonomy and popular sovereignty, theFoucauldian Realpolitik analysts rely partially on Schmitts critique ofpolitical romanticism to dismiss the socialist and liberal idea of self-gov-erning communities as utopian,35 and to show why the notion of a fullydeveloped self-reflective and self-determining subject is equally un-real.36 Like Telos, the Anglo-Foucauldians attack universalist ideas, butdo so from quite different theoretical positions. This critique of univ-ersalism leads them to also attack totalizing theories such as thoseadvocated by Telos and critical theorists. While the governmentality

theorists are equally preoccupied with the welfare state, they do notengage in polemics against the New Class. Interestingly enough,Laschs critique of social welfare experts in Haven in a Heartless Worldwaspublished in the same year as Jacques Donzelots Foucauldian analysis,The Policing of Families.37 Rose and Miller go beyond Donzelots conceptof government through the family. This is because Donzelots late1970s genealogy was still written under the sway of Keynesian welfare

34 Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, The Genesis of Stupidity, in Dialectic ofEnlightenment, Verso, London 1979, pp. 2578.35

See, for instance, J. Minson, Questions of Conduct: Sexual Harassment, Citizenship,Government, London 1993, pp. 811.36 This is a central theme in the work of Ian Hunter. See, for example,Rethinking the School,Sydney 1994.37Jacques Donzelot, The Policing of Families, traps. R. Hurley, New York 1979. The bookwas reviewed sympathetically by Lasch. Paul Hirsts sympathetic review in Politics and

Power, no. 3, 1980, led to a split in the editorial board with various feminists and theirsupporters leaving the journal.

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state systems even though the English edition was published in the yearthat Thatcher came to power. The Anglo-Foucauldians write a decadelater after neoliberalism has given rise to the concept of self-regulatedforms of governmentality which, Rose claims, have begun to replacecentral bureaucratic forms of policing by experts.

The Economy and Society or governmentality theorists are post-Marxists

indebted to Foucault, Weber and Nietzsche. But there are significantvariations in their primary object of analysis and also in their level ofcommitment to social change. Roses critique, Governing the Soul, em-erges from his long work in social psychology. Hindess focuses on demo-cratic theory and power which is an extension of his earlier engagementwith Marxist politics. Hunter, Minson and others based at GriffithUniversity in Brisbane are preoccupied with schooling, bureaucracy andethics. They are possibly the most conservative of the group. Minson,like Hindess and others, are refugees from Thatchers Britain and weresupportive of the Hawke and Keating 1983 to 1996 Labor governments,

even though Labor implemented many neoliberal socio-economicreforms.38 In a political climate that saw widespread criticisms of seniorbureaucrats for their attack upon public services and the promotion ofmarket liberal restructuring, Hunter, Minson and Meredyth becamenotorious for their role as leading apologists for bureaucracy and theneoliberal Dawkins reforms of universities in Australia.39 These reformssubjected intellectual activity and organizational structures to narrowforms of accountability informed by productivist and neoliberal marketpractices.40

It is difficult to ascertain the political commitments of several lessprominent members of the History of the Present network. This isbecause their work is largely characterized by textual analyses ofFoucault and straight applications of neo-Foucauldian theory to topics

38 For example, Tony Bennett and Colin Mercerformer Gramscianswho, through theInstitute for Cultural Policy Studies, now heavily criticized Marxist culture critique andpromoted the training of cultural policy technicians in tourism and popular cultureindustries. This instrumental and productivist concept of culture is closely tied to Hunterand Minsons eulogy of bureaucracy and conventional politics and, up until 1996, fittedin perfectly with the new market approach adopted by the Hawke and Keating gov-

ernments. For further discussion, see my analysis in From The Prophets Deserts Come, ch. 7.On the Australian Labour governments, see my essay Beyond Labourism and Socialism:How the Australian Labor Party Developed the Model of New Labour ,NLR 221, pp. 333.39 See, for example, I. Hunter and J. Minion, The Good Bureaucrat, Australian Left

Review, November 1992, pp. 2630, and D. Meredyth, Humanists and Rationalists,Australian Left Review, May 1992, pp. 1216. These were part of a concentrated attackupon Michael Puseys influential anti-neoliberal work entitled Economic Rationalism inCanberra, Melbourne 1991. It is important to note thatAustralian Left Review was underthe editorship of David Burchellalso now a member of the History of the Present net-workand ceased being Marxist as it became an apologist for Labor government policies

in the last years of its life.40 See I. Hunter, D. Meredyth, et al.,Accounting For the Humanities, Institute for CulturalPolicy Studies, Brisbane 1991. Also see B. Hindess and I. Hunter, eds, The Rules of theGame Accountability, special issue ofThe Australian Universities Review, no. 1, 1991.What pervades the contributions of Hindess, Hunter and Tony Bennett is the abstractdiscussion of autonomy versus accountabilitya discussion which is largely decontextu-alized from the overall attack by the Labor government on the public sector and its enthu-siastic adoption of market practices during the 1980s and 1990s.

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ranging from schooling and alcoholism to mental patients and theunemployed.41 Others, most notably Paul Hirst and Grahame Thomp-son, have had long personal and intellectual associations with Hindessand Rose. Yet, their economic and political analyses have so far beenlargely free of the governmentality approachalthough Thompson hasbecome editor of Economy and Society and is a joint convenor of theHistory of the Present network in London. Like some other members

of the Economy and Society editorial board, Thompson and Hirst sustain anovert commitment to liberal left politics and analysis.42 Although Hirstis also attracted to Schmitts critique of political romanticism, hescathingly dismisses the postmodernist intelligentsia that frivolouslyand half-comprehendingly follows Derrida, Foucault and Lacan. . . 43

According to Hirst: An intelligentsia safe enough in its Western citiesand campuses, denied comforting myths about history and the workingclass, deprived of functions by mass culture and mass administration, haslittle left but to make political despair, relativism and the end of intellec-tual and moral order the occasion for its own political tristesse.44 As I willdiscuss later, Hirsts work is itself criticized as being politically roman-tic. Hence, given these political differences, rather than attempt adetailed survey of the diverse output of the Anglo-Foucauldians, I willconcentrate on key aspects of their theory.

Dominant Characteristics of Advanced Liberalism

Since the publication of his book Governing the Soul,45 Nikolas Rose hasdeveloped his new theory of power via a series of articles, some writtenjointly with Peter Miller.46 Recently, Roses earlier arguments have

assumed a more totalizing form as outlined in articles such as The Deathof the Social? Refiguring the Territory of Government.47 According toRose, over the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, early formsof liberalism gave way to a new formula of rule called the state of wel-fare. The authority of expertise became inextricably linked to the formalpolitical apparatus of rule in attempts to tame and govern the undesir-

41 See, for example, the work of M. Dean, D. Tyler, D. McCallum, T. Osborne, M. Val-verde and others. For a number of these people, as the fashions changed from Marxismin the 1970s to Foucauldian analysis in the 1980s, so the concepts in their academic

papers changed without any noticeable departure from their politically detached scholarlymanner.42 While Hirst and Thompson refer to the writings of the Anglo-Foucauldians, theirrecent political economic work, for example, Globalization in Question, Cambridge 1996, isnot dependent on the governmentality framework. Also, unlike Telos of recent years,Economy and Society publishes a variety of perspectives despite the prominent space given tothe Anglo-Foucauldians.43 P. Hirst,Representative Democracy and its Limits, Cambridge 1990, p. 136.44 Ibid., p. 137. While rejecting Habermass rational society and his critique of Schmitt,Hirst endorses Habermas for his loathing of the postmodernist intelligentsia. But, heargues, Carl Schmitt provided a clear diagnosis of the postmodernist political romantic

even as he wrote about Adam Muller. (Ibid.)45 N. Rose, Governing the Soul: The Shaping of the Private Self, London 1989.46 See, for example, N. Rose, Government, Authority and Expertise in Advanced Liberal-ism, Economy and Society, August 1993, pp. 28399; N. Rose and P. Miller, PoliticalPower Beyond the State: Problematics of Government, British Journal of Sociology, vol. 43,no. 2, 1992, pp. 173205.47 N. Rose, The Death of the Social? Refiguring the Territory of Government, Economy

and Society, vol. 25, no. 3, 1996, pp. 32756.

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able consequences of industrial life, wage labour and urban existence.Solidarity was re-established by expert authority. This process wasachieved not so much by the central state extending its tentaclesthroughout society, but by the invention of various rules for rule whichsought to transform the state into a centre that could programmeshape, guide, channel, direct, controlevents and persons distant fromit. Persons and activities were to be governed through society, that is to

say, through acting upon them in relation to a social norm, and consti-tuting their experiences and evaluations in a social form.48

In recent years, this liberal type of state of welfare has begun to beactively replaced with new forms of rule, which Rose calls advanced lib-eralism. If earlier liberal states were characterized by governmentthrough the socialthe social being equivalent to the single territor-ial space of the nationadvanced liberalism is increasingly relying upontechnologies and expertise of government through community. Rosedoes not argue that the forms of administration and policies associated

with the social have disappeared. Rather, the new advanced liberal tech-nologies or rationalities coexist with earlier forms of the welfare state andthe policies adopted by supra-national bodies such as the EuropeanUnion. But in countries such as Britain and Australia, the social isincreasingly giving way to the community as the new territory for theadministration of individual and collective existence. In other words,Thatcherism and other neoliberal regimes detach the substantiveauthority of expertise from the apparatuses of political rule, relocatingexperts within a market governed by the rationalities of competition,accountability and consumer demand.49

In contrast to Telos theorists who polemicize against the New Class ofexperts who supposedly intervene and destroy organic communities, thegovernmentality theorists argue that in the past twenty years these cen-tralized forms of bureaucratic expertise have themselves begun to be re-placed by advanced liberal technologies of rule. It is the community thatbecomes the new plane upon which micro-moral relations among per-sons are conceptualized and administered. According to Rose, the spatialand ethical de-totalization of the social is evident in the following:

First, government from the social point of view entailed an organicallyinterconnected society and a politico-ethical form in the notion of socialcitizenship. Today, in contrast, a diversity of heterogeneous and overlap-ping communities is thought to actually or potentially command ourallegiance. They may be based on moral communitiessay, religiousor feministor lifestyle communities involving dress and modes oflife, or communities of commitment to local activism, health problemsand disabilities. Some may be defined by geographical locales and othersmay be virtual communities based upon symbols, networks and iden-

tities that conform to no one place or time.

50

While most of these diversecommunities are to be found within larger collectivities such as thenation state, it is the new forms of identity and allegiance that give rise

48 Rose, Government, Authority and Expertise, p. 285.49 Ibid.50 N. Rose, Death of the Social?, p. 333.

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to much contemporary political disputation over the meaning of citizen-ship, given the plethora of competing loyalties and assertion of exclusiverights. Programmes of mass schooling, public housing, broadcastingand social welfare had at their heart the image of a socially identifiedcitizen. By contrast, the vocabulary and identity of community appearsless remote, more direct and less politically artificial. But the moralpluralism which issues from the proliferation of multiple identities and

loyaltiesfor example, ethnic communities, people with AIDS or localresidentsgives rise to new forms of administration, ethical commit-ments and forms of identity.

Government Through Community

Second, government through community thus involves a variety ofstrategies for inventing and instrumentalizing these dimensions of al-legiance between individuals and communities in the service of projectsof regulation, reform or mobilization.51 Neoliberal regimes promotediverse communities having choice, control over their own fate, self-regulation, empowerment, personal responsibility and so forth. Thesequalities simultaneously fit in with pro-market policies that cut centraland local welfare services while mobilizing communities to takegreater responsibility in looking after themselves. By activating per-sonal commitment and moral affinity with communities based uponhealth problems, kinship, religion, residence, and so forth, communitybecomes not simply the territory of government, but a means of gov-ernment: its ties, bonds, forces, and affiliations are to be celebrated,

encouraged, nurtured, shaped, and instrumentalized in the hope of pro-ducing consequences that are desirable for all and for each.52 Rose givestwo examples of this new process. One is related to health promotionstrategies in the gay community which simultaneously involved self-help organizations, logics of inclusion and exclusion and processesencouraging responsibility and autonomy. The other example of gov-ernment through community is the promotion of inner city renewalschemes based upon community entrepreneurship and communalpride. In short, activating diverse communities can give rise to newpolitical contests as activist organizations demand new programmes,

resources or policies. It can also lead to new forms of government regu-lation and control as communities are instrumentalized and madethe means whereby former national programmes are gutted and re-constituted via the symbolic language and technologies of rule throughcommunities.

Third, we are witnessing the desocialization of economic government.During the first sixty years of the twentieth century, a whole set of socialinsurance, unemployment policies, tax regimes, tariff and interest ratemechanisms were established to better manage the labour market and

increase productivity and social integration. Following Hindess andothers, Rose argues that, given the development of large transnationalmarkets, economic relations are no longer synonymous with nationaleconomies. Although ruling parties still have to manage national

51 Ibid., p. 334.52 Ibid., p. 335.

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populations with the territorialized political machinery available tothem, they no longer conceive of themselves as operating upon a natu-rally functioning and systematically integrated national populationwhose social coherence is a condition for its economic security.53

Accordingly, the economic fate of citizens within a national territory arenow uncoupled from one another as government of the social in thename of the national economy gives way to government of particular

zonesregions, towns, sectors, communitiesin the interests of eco-nomic circuits which flow between regions and across national bound-aries.54 Hence, citizens and enterprises are increasingly urged todevelop and promote their own skills, flexibility and entrepreneurship.For example, unemployment policies are replaced by schemes such asthe Australian Working Nation, whereby the unemployed arerequired to enhance and package themselves and their own economiccapital so that they become job ready. The privatization of riskbecomes incorporated into public benefit entitlements and targetedgroupsAborigines, migrants, youthhelp refine the new forms ofregulation.55

With the social and the economic now seen as antagonistic, Rose pointsto a whole series of social apparatuses that are to be restructured in theimage of the market. Economic government is to be desocialized in thename of maximizing the entrepreneurial comportment of the individ-ual.56 Utilizing the work of Pat OMalley in Melbourne, Rose notes theincreasing self-reliance upon Neighbourhood Watch and other forms oflocal policing, the replacement of social insurance policies with private

medical insurance, private superannuation for private pensions and soforth.57 Alongside these new forms of self-regulation are the new govern-ment definitions of inclusiveness and marginalization. The subjects ofgovernment are no longer a common social group. Inclusive communi-ties of consumption are subjected to highly managed regulation of theminutiae of private lifefor example, healthy, non-addictive lifestyles,dietary and fitness regimes. Identity politics and community self-regu-lation are not based upon earlier forms of government intervention byexperts but rather involve the active exercise of individual consumerchoice. The inclusive communities whose lifestyle is determined by

various forms of private consumption, insurance, health promotion andso on, are demarcated from the high risk and marginalized anti-commu-nities found in decaying council estates and the shop doorways of innercities. A plethora of quasi-autonomous agencies are now working withinthese savage spaces, with the anti-communities on the margins.Voluntary workers, private profitable outfits, hostels, old peoples homes,private agencies training the unemployedall are replacing or reduc-ing welfare bureaucracies because the management of misery can becomepotentially profitable.58

53

Ibid., p. 330.54 Ibid., p. 339.55 See M. Dean, Governing the Unemployed in an Active Society, Economy and Society,vol. 24, no. 4, 1995, pp. 55983.56 Rose, Death of the Social?, p. 340.57 See P. OMalley, Risk, Power and Crime Prevention, Economy and Society, vol. 21, no. 3,1992, pp. 25275.58 Rose, Death of the Social? pp. 3467.

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Finally, Rose outlines in detail a range of new technologies of govern-ment that make possible the move from social solidarity to privatizedconstructions of self, security, inclusion and marginalization. If pro-fessionals were able to regulate welfare clients as part of mass, centralizedsocial programmes, advanced liberalism changes the relationship be-tween the centre and the experts on the one hand, and the application ofexpertise on the other. Professional conduct codes, litigious actions and

review bodies have all helped to change the management of profession-als. But it is the allocation of budgetary and audit responsibilities to pro-fessionals in hospitals, educational institutions and a raft of public bodiesthat transforms the role of experts. Professionals are now required to cal-culate their actions not in the esoteric languages of their own expertisebut by translating them into costs and benefits that can be given anaccounting value.59 The decentralization of responsibility onto theshoulders of professionals is not to be confused with the devolution ofpower. The audit may open professional activity to public scrutiny, butthe prevalent effect is to require a plethora of cost centres to conform tocentral controlsa market logic that transforms expert knowledge intotechnical language conforming also to the logic of the accountant. Notsurprisingly, it is the ill, the disadvantaged and the public consumersof services who directly confront the consequences of cost-cutting mech-anisms. Professionals are increasingly forced to adjust their expertiseto the new forms of rulefor example, by rationing their time withpatients, engaging in fund raising, making the user pay or stretching themeagre dollar further as budgetary criteria start to bite.

Attacking the Obsolete Language of Marxism

In their detailed documentation of the new rationalities and technologiesimplemented by neoliberal regimes, Rose and other governmentalistshave many excellent and perceptive insights to offer us. My quarrel isnot with their recognition of the manner in which market values and thetechnologies of government through community are tied to the active,neo-conservative pursuit of individual, family and group notions of iden-tity, autonomy, self-fulfilment and choice. As Graham Burchell notes,the Thatcher and Major governments in the UK are not to be understood

as merely rolling back the State. They were also very inventive in con-structing new forms of enterprise in a whole host of areas and institu-tions. Government increasingly impinges upon individuals in their veryindividuality, in their practical relationships to themselves in the con-duct of their lives; it concerns them at the very heart of themselves bymaking its rationality the condition of their active freedom.60 Thesesubtle analyses of the active participation of communities and indiv-iduals in the transformation of the mass organized Keynesian welfarestate are necessary correctives to all those who only advance conspir-atorial and coercive theories of market fundamentalism, homogenous

and crude notions of the New Class, or nostalgic desires for the returnto a less differentiated, common set of public and individual servicesand identities.

59 Ibid., p. 351.60 G. Burchell, Liberal Government and Techniques of the Self, Economy and Society, vol.22, no. 3, 1993, p. 276. This theme is elaborated in detail byRose in Governing the Soul.

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Insofar as the Anglo-Foucauldians help us to come to terms with impor-tant socio-cultural, political and economic changes, their work containsmuch that is valuable. But governmentality theory also has an explic-itly anti-Marxist and implicitly anti-socialist and anti-radical sting in itstail. While it is not desirable to return to a politics or to forms of admin-istration that were associated with the suppression or lack of recognitionof a whole range of ethnic, sexual, cultural, medical and ecological move-

ments and identities, this is not equivalent to writing off those necessaryuniversalistic political objectives that overcome the often uncooperativeand inward looking aspect of identity politics.

Pursuing a Foucauldian critique of totalizing theory, Barry, Osborneand Rose state that: Diagnosis of the present is a fraught exercise; all toooften in social theory the temptation has been to impose some overbear-ing, melancholy singularity upon our presentlate capitalism, post-modernity, the risk society.61 However, instead of succumbing towhat Rose and the governmentality theorists call such excessive andportentous interpretations, they offer instead their own overbearing,excessive, portentous and singular concept, that of advanced liberal-ism. In fact, the concept advanced liberalism has many of the totaliz-ing qualities of parallel Marxian concepts such as primitive capitalismand advanced capitalism that the governmentalists reject. And this isprecisely the strength of Roses analysis, despite his deluded assumptionthat helike other governmentality theoristsis not engaged in atotalizing analysis of neoliberal regimes. For how otherwise is he able tocomprehend the death of the social and the emergence of government

through community?

In highlighting the way Foucauldian analysis is privileged over what thegovernmentalists see as the inadequacy of Marxism, I do not wish toengage in an orthodox or pedantic defence of Marxism. Much more isat stake here. Take for example, Miller and Roses sweeping proclama-tion concerning the obsolescence of Marxist and liberal analyses. Asthey put it:

The political vocabulary structured by oppositions between state

and civil society, public and private, government and market,coercion and consent, sovereignty and autonomy, and the like,does not adequately characterize the diverse ways in which ruleis exercised in advanced liberal democracies. Political poweris exercised today through a profusion of shifting alliances be-tween diverse authorities in projects to govern a multitude offacets of economic activity, social life and individual conduct.Power is not so much a matter of imposing constraints upon citi-zens as of making up citizens capable of bearing a kind of regu-lated freedom. Personal autonomy is not the antithesis of political

power, but a key term in its exercise, the more so because mostindividuals are not merely subjects of power but play a part inits operations.62

61 A. Barry, T. Osborne and N. Rose, Liberalism, Neoliberalism and Governmentality:Introduction, Economy and Society, vol. 22, no. 3, p. 265.62 N. Rose and P. Miller, Political Power Beyond the State, p. 174.

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If Miller and Rose are simply referring to the way that the stateor public-sector institutions have long ceased being mere political-ad-ministrative apparatuses and are actively engaged in market and non-market practices belonging to what many Marxists and liberals callthe economy and civil society, then there is little to argue about.63

But questioning the boundaries of the state and civil society is notequivalent to abandoning the distinction between public and private,

coercion and consent or even crucial enduring differences betweengovernments and market forces. Like Telos, which now rejects Marxianpolitical economy for scape-goating capitalism as the cause of contem-porary problems,64 the Anglo-Foucauldians equally do everything pos-sible to deodorize anything that smells of Marxian or neo-Marxianpolitical economy. This has long been evident in their fundamental shiftfrom Althusserian Marxism in the early 1970s to various formsof anti-epistemological, anti-foundationalist theories from the late1970s onwards.65

The Bath-Water of Marxism

But whereas Cutler, Hirst, Hussain and Hindess were still vitally con-cerned, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with analyzing the dyna-mics of British capitalismas opposed to what they saw as endlessdiscussions of a general model of the capitalist mode of prod-uction66Rose, Miller and the other governmentality theorists havecompleted a theoretical metamorphosis so that any residues of Marxianpolitical economy have been purged. It is not just that class hasbecome a taboo concept, but even terms such as capitalism or capital-

ist rarely, if ever, appear in their writings for possible fear of beingcontaminated by an obsolete political vocabulary. Since the 1960s, ithas become clear that Foucaults valuable analyses of the genealogy ofparticular socio-cultural institutions can be used for radical politicalanalysis or for liberal or conservative purposes. However, his writings

63 See my non-Foucauldian and anti-Althusserian analysis of ideal types of the state, theeconomy and civil society in Beyond the State?, London 1983. Mark Neocleous inAdmin-istering Civil Society, London 1996, argues against Foucault, Donzelot and Rose for dis-pensing with the distinction between state and civil society, devaluing the central role ofthe state and reducing everything to the catch-all concept of the social. Foucaults con-cepts war, resistance, power and the social are weaker than Marxs conceptualiza-tion of struggle for domination between exploiting and exploited classes as the essence ofcivil society, in which the state is inherently involved. Foucaults rejection of the state-civil society distinction and expansion of war encourages us to conflate all struggles intoone universal struggle, rename it social warfare, and leave it at that. This not onlyfails to explain why the social order appears to be one of perpetual war and what role, ifany, the state has within this. . . (p. 86) While agreeing with Neocleouss critique of theFoucauldians, it is still necessary to reject the vague use of clear spheres of civil societyand the state