Protectionist vs. Neoliberal Authoritarianisms
Since his second inauguration as President of the United States, D. Trump has dominated the news, particularly due to his brutal attitude and arbitrary decisions that endanger American democracy, which is based on the existence of checks and balances. In this context, it is ironic to hear Vice President J.D. Vance scolding Europeans for their lack of freedom of speech—a supposed deficiency that would weaken their democracies! However, the absence of limits on free speech in the United States has directly contributed to Trump’s narrow victory: he was able to spread lies with impunity and convince masses of citizens that a bright future awaited them if they elected him. This victory now grants his clan a global platform and, consequently, the opportunity to propagate a brand of conservative authoritarianism.
In Europe, after Hungary, Italy, and the Netherlands, France and Germany could soon be governed by far-right movements promoting a protectionist authoritarianism, as opposed to neoliberal1 authoritarianisms that flourished in the early 1980s and had been theorized as early as the 1930s2. Authoritarianism did not emerge overnight—it has been a deep-seated trend in Western countries since the end of the postwar economic boom known as the “Trente Glorieuses,” which combined strong growth with limited inequality. This era is unlikely to return, as innovations no longer drive productivity gains as they once did.3.
Neoliberal approaches are more compatible with democracy, as they, like the unimpeded market economy, rely on free competition between actors. However, they can be considered authoritarian insofar as the state, by removing barriers to economic competition in a context of unemployment rather than full employment, indirectly imposes requirements of flexibility, adaptation, and retraining on workers. This also weakens their bargaining power.
Neoliberalism is often criticized for making individuals responsible for their own fate, ensuring that they not only accept the objectives set for them but eventually set themselves their objectives and engage in self-evaluation. I believe that such criticism amounts to outright rejection of a positive legacy of the Enlightenment: the idea that each citizen can attain a degree of autonomy. Admittedly, this economic autonomy is not comparable to the ability to formulate well-argued and constructive philosophical critiques, but it is a minimal form of autonomy that does not exclude critical faculties. To discourage responsibility is to foster the creation of masses that may spontaneously embrace authoritarianism.
Critics of neoliberalism tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just because this intellectual movement supports policies with unequal consequences does not mean it should be dismissed entirely. After all, what alternative is there to neoliberalism when another authoritarian movement, communism, has already been ruled out? The only remaining alternative is a protectionist authoritarianism, which no longer relies on a structured ideology but on nostalgic idealizations of power. Calling Trumpism an ideology seems like an overstatement for a hollow concept that is not underpinned by any coherent logic—only by fragmented imaginaries and a desire to undermine the rational foundations of democracy: laws and justice.
If there is one part of the world better equipped to resist the rise of protectionist authoritarianism, it is Europe. In fact, bearing the memory of the atrocities of the two world wars, Europe is best positioned to push back against isolationism, intolerance, and xenophobia. However, nothing is set in stone—France and Germany could succumb in turn, from one year to the next, from one month to the next.
The Sources of Authoritarianism and Denial
Western societies have never been wealthier—materially, financially, and epistemologically. After two centuries of extraordinary growth, they possess an opulence, a level of knowledge, and a degree of technical sophistication that no 18th-century philosopher could have imagined. And yet, they appear psychologically miserable, overwhelmed by inequality, cultural tensions, armed conflicts, economic competition and domination, environmental crises, and health crises.
Instead of philosophical moderation, Western nations exhibit excess in all forms. Climate change is, in fact, both a natural and real metaphor for the societal overheating, the frantic economic race that humanity has embarked on and seems unable to control. A race towards what? No one knows, as no clear objective has been set. Everyone compares themselves to others, taking the elites as their benchmark, as David Hume and Adam Smith already observed in their time. Since the wealthiest occupy stratospheric layers of society and continue to rise, it seems clear that limits do not exist.
Does the problem lie in a Hobbesian infinite desire, in an unquenchable will to power as described by Nietzsche? We have been repeatedly told for too long that these traits are natural, whereas archaeological4 evidence suggests they are cultural. Certainly, culture becomes a second nature, and questioning it is extremely difficult, but we have reached a stage of civilization where we can no longer avoid a profound reassessment of some of our values. Which ones?
The pursuit of individual prosperity matured from the 16th to the 18th century, in a context of international conflicts over land acquisition, where commerce emerged as a pacifying element. It accompanied the First Industrial Revolution and became intertwined with the ideal of freedom. In the 19th century, economic labor became a major philosophical component of prosperity and gradually transformed into a fundamental societal value, whereas it had been largely denigrated since antiquity
Today, the ideals (values) of freedom-prosperity and work are fracturing under the impact of, on one hand, globalization, which pits nations with vastly different income levels against each other, and on the other hand, new technologies, which tend to replace humans rather than generate productivity gains that create jobs. Meanwhile, climate change has not yet led to substantial questioning of values; economic policies, through so-called « sustainable development, » continue striving to reconcile prosperity with environmental concerns.
Returning to the technical issue: as a computer scientist and a user of ChatGPT, I observe how AI is performing an increasing number of coding, analytical, and soon even production tasks as an autonomous agent. While AI currently lacks logic, abstraction, and intuition, it is only a matter of time before new models acquire these capabilities, thus exponentially increasing their faculties. The question is not “Will humanity be surpassed by AI?” but rather when will it happen? That moment is fast approaching.
It is impossible to compete with intelligences that, in theory, can accumulate all human knowledge; we can only strive to contain them and impose ethical limits. However, today’s mentalities are not oriented toward imposing limits! On the contrary, contemporary authoritarian movements—Trumpism foremost among them—are actively discrediting and even dismantling numerous limits, such as norms and laws. They represent a denial of globalization and digitalization, which compel us to question our values, to rethink how we perceive the world, and to redefine how we wish to live in it.
Humans, having been conditioned for at least two centuries by the pursuit of prosperity and the belief in labor as a socializing and emancipatory force, will only reconsider these values if they are forced to do so. In particular, the wealthiest will refuse to share or withdraw from their privileges until they find themselves in the same predicament as everyone else—just as happened, for instance, during World War II. History shows that societies must undergo extraordinary pressure before they alter their core values. We are therefore likely heading into dark times, of which Trumpism is merely a foretaste.
However, it is worth emphasizing that the current evolution of the world is largely a matter of psychological perspective. The Earth remains as magnificent as ever, many human relationships remain joyful, and our societies have never been so developed. If we are adrift, it is because our inquiries remain superficial, because philosophy has been held in abeyance for decades now, largely due to excessive specialization. Above all, it is because the vision of an enlightened society has run aground on the shores of a fool’s paradise.
Notes
1.↑ The expression “authoritarian liberalism” was couched in 1933 by the German jurist Herman Heller : https://shs.cairn.info/revue-critique-2021-6-page-499?lang=fr
2.↑ Pierre Dardot, Christian Laval, La nouvelle raison du monde, Essai sur la société néolibérale, La Découverte, 2020 (2009) ; Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism, Harvard University Press, 2018.
3.↑ On this topic, see the approaches of William Baumol, Robert J. Gordon, John Fernald, Daron Acemoglu et Pascual Restrepo, Joseph A. Tainter, Nicholas Bloom… Recent summary of the question by Ben Deboeck.
4.↑ https://damiengimenez.fr/wpdgi_article_en/idealization-in-history/#Human_Power ; Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, Power and Progress, Basic Books, 2023 : “Existing estimates indicate that foragers worked somewhere around five hours per day, ate a wide variety of plants and plenty of meat, and had healthy lives, achieving levels of life expectancy at birth that ranged from twenty-one to thirty-seven years. [. . .] Settled grain cultivators worked probably twice as much, more than ten hours per day. The work became much harder as well, especially after grains emerged as the main crop. There is plenty of evidence suggesting that their diets deteriorated, compared with the less settled lifestyle.”