The Great Recoil

In this era of economic crisis, social distress, and ecological threats, the term “populism” has come to sum up anxiety about our political future. While it is mostly associated with rightwing demagogues such as Donald Trump, Matteo Salvini, and Jair Bolsonaro, various figures of the “post-crash Left”, such as Bernie Sanders, Jeremy Corbyn, and Pablo Iglesias, have also been branded “populist”, for the way they express that distrust of the elites and belief in ordinary people that have become key motifs of our zeitgeist.

The Great Recoil suggests that we have entered a post-neoliberal and populist era, in which the populist idiom of sovereignty, protection, and control has become hegemonic on both the Left and the Right. Weaving concepts from classics such as Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Gramsci, Polanyi, and Schumpeter with commentaries on the words and deeds of contemporary populist leaders, the book argues that populism is successful because it captures widespread anger at the chaos unleashed by globalisation and a popular demand for community and security that is politically ambiguous.

Rather than casting itself as anti-populist, the Left needs to articulate this idiom towards progressive ends, developing a post-global socialism committed to protecting the people and controlling the markets while re-asserting the power of the state.