The 40th lecture of the “Adventus Amicorum” salon series hosted by the Institute of Area Studies, Peking University (PKUIAS), which also served as the 360th lecture of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences at Peking University, was held on December 6, 2024. The lecturer was Prof. Perry Anderson, a historian and social theorist, renowned contemporary Marxist historian and thinker and professor of history and sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of such works as Lineages of the Absolutist State, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, Considerations on Western Marxism, English Questions, The Origins of Postmodernity, and The New Old World. Prof. Perry shared his thoughts on the topic, “Whither the West?” The lecture was moderated by Zhang Yongle, deputy director of PKUIAS. The discussants were Yin Zhiguang, a professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University; Tian Geng, an associate professor at the Department of Sociology, Peking University; and Duan Demin, an associate professor at the Department of Political Science of the School of Government, Peking University, and the deputy director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, Peking University.
In his lecture, Anderson first defined his concept of “the West.” The term usually refers to all developed capitalist countries, but in this lecture, Anderson specified that he would be using “the West” to refer only to the “Atlantic zone of capitalism,” including North America and Europe.
To understand the West, it is necessary to understand neoliberalism. Since the late 1970s, neoliberalism has become the dominant economic order in the West. Neoliberalism usually includes deregulation of finance and trade, privatization of public services, reduction of social expenditures, etc. Neoliberalism began in the UK and the US in the 1970s, and developed rapidly and achieved success in the 1980s. However, the success of neoliberalism was based on the significant expansion of credit. Eventually, the debt pyramid collapsed, leading to the 2008 financial crisis. The scale of this crisis was comparable to that of the 1929 Wall Street crash. However, the difference was that after 2008, there was no “Great Depression” but a rapid recovery.
Anderson pointed out that the “Great Depression” was the starting point for understanding the current political situation in the West. In November 1929, when the US stock market encountered “Black Friday,” the US, France, and Sweden were all governed by conservatives, while the UK and Germany were governed by social democrats. However, these governments all adhered to the mainstream economic theory at that time, continuing to uphold the gold standard and implementing balanced budget policies, which actually exacerbated the economic crisis. It was not until the end of 1932 and the beginning of 1933 that unconventional economic policies were successively adopted in Sweden, Germany, and the US. Although the economic means used by these countries were based on different ideological theories, the core was to strengthen the role of the state in the market. World War II ended the Great Depression in the US and systematized its break with classical liberal economic practices. This system was called “embedded liberalism,” which combined the gold-dollar standard, countercyclical monetary and fiscal policies, high and stable employment levels and welfare guarantees, and successfully promoted the economic development of the capitalist world. In the 1970s, this system declined due to economic stagflation, and neoliberalism emerged.
Neoliberalism advanced triumphantly until the 2008 financial crisis. However, the situation after the 2008 financial crisis was completely different from that in 1929. In the US, the Obama administration immediately injected huge amounts of public funds to rescue banks, insurance companies, and nearly bankrupt enterprises, but these funds were never used to improve public services such as healthcare and education. The Federal Reserve implemented a “quantitative easing” policy, secretly printing large amounts of money to save the stock market. Anderson pointed out that although these measures seemed to violate the principles of neoliberalism, they were actually an extension of neoliberalism, and the core was still the continuous expansion of credit far exceeding economic growth. Therefore, after the financial crisis was resolved, neoliberalism resumed operation.
Why could neoliberalism recover after the severe impact of the financial crisis? Anderson believed that there were two key conditions. First, no other theoretical paradigm emerged to replace the dominant position of neoliberalism. As the Polish economist Michał Kalecki predicted, economics has long been “paralyzed” by mathematics, which has greatly inhibited any form of original thinking. Second, almost all significant political movements, whether demanding the abolition of capitalism or its reform, had disappeared by the beginning of this century. Western social democratic parties no longer showed any resistance to capital and instead sided with neoliberalism.
This does not mean that neoliberalism has had no opponents. After 2008, the negative impacts of neoliberalism gradually emerged. Socially, inequality increased sharply, and wages stagnated for a long time; politically, meaningful electoral choices gradually disappeared, voter participation declined, and an increasingly strengthened oligarchy replaced the expression of public opinion. This system also began to generate populism as an opposing force.
Anderson pointed out that different types of populism have one thing in common, that is, they reject the international system established in the West since the 1980s. They oppose not capitalism itself but its current socioeconomic form. The common enemy of all types of populism is the current political system in which center-right and center-left parties hold power alternately and vested interest groups dominate the neoliberal order. The three core targets of populist movements are the consequences of the neoliberal order: inequality, oligarchy, and factor mobility (including the movement of labor). The differences among different populist movements lie in the weights they assign to each target. Right-wing populism mainly focuses on the free movement of production factors, and uses the public’s xenophobic and racist sentiments to fight back. The immigration issue has become the main issue for right-wing populism to win the support of vulnerable groups. Left-wing populism regards inequality as the greatest enemy.
Next, Anderson reviewed the development history of Western populism. Europe is the birthplace of contemporary populism and remains the region with the widest distribution and most diverse forms of populist movements. The history of European populism can be traced back to the early 1970s in Scandinavia. In 1972, the Progress Parties of Denmark and Norway were established, and then right-wing populist parties, such as the Front National in France, the Swedish Democrats, the Northern League in Italy and the UK Independence Party, emerged. These right-wing parties strongly criticized the corruption and closure of the national political system and opposed the decisions of the European Union. Left-wing populist forces emerged only after the 2008 financial crisis, such as the Five Star Movement in Italy and Syriza in Greece. This shows that the fundamental reason for the rise of left-wing populism is socioeconomic inequality, rather than the weakening of ethnic boundaries, which is the basic difference between left-wing and right-wing populism. However, in the seven years after the 2008 financial crisis, the political impact of populism was relatively limited and completely incomparable to the political storm that swept across Europe and the US in the 1930s.
In 2016, a series of political events made the Western populist movement reach an important moment and further influenced the global political pattern. Facing internal party pressure and the threat of losing votes to the UK Independence Party, the ruling Conservative Party in the UK decided to hold a referendum on whether the UK should leave the EU. The Conservative Party leaders originally thought that most people would oppose Brexit because the British elite mostly supported remaining in the EU. However, the referendum result was unexpected, and most people supported Brexit. This reflected the resistance of marginalized regions and classes to neoliberalism and was the first time in history that populism became the mainstream public opinion in a capitalist country, changing the historical process of the country. Shortly after that, Donald Trump won the US presidential election, and his campaign style was completely in line with right-wing populism. The proportion of the working class among Trump’s supporters was even higher than that among Brexit supporters, and about 70 percent of his supporters had no college education. In addition, another wave of populism emerged in the US, and the Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders became a strong challenger in the presidential primaries. It is estimated that about a quarter of the US voters in 2016 tended to right-wing populism, and about a fifth tended to left-wing populism. This shows the wide presence and profound influence of populism among US voters.
Populism further expanded in Europe. In 2017, the British Labor Party under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn won a majority of seats in Parliament, and a large number of young people joined the party, gradually moving the Labor Party in the direction of left-wing populism. In 2018, two populist parties in Italy jointly won more than 50 percent of the votes. In 2019, the representative of right-wing populism, Boris Johnson, defeated Corbyn and won the election.
Anderson pointed out that right-wing populism had an advantage over left-wing populism. That’s because both left-wing and right-wing populism strongly criticize inequality and oligarchy, but only right-wing populism can freely attack the immigration issue; the xenophobic sentiment toward immigrants has become one of Trump’s trademarks. The left-wing cannot easily follow this position. At present, left-wing populism has not yet come up with a clear stance on the immigration issue. If this situation continues, right-wing populism is likely to continue to prevail in the competition between the two. However, neither right-wing nor left-wing populism has so far proposed effective solutions to the social problems they condemn. Populism lacks a systematic program and solutions. Even if populist parties come to power, they cannot make systematic and effective reforms and cannot threaten the status of neoliberalism.
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the world into lockdown. Trump failed in his bid to be reelected, and Johnson was overthrown by his party in 2022. Meanwhile, under the impact of the pandemic, international trade plummeted, the US stock market crashed, and inflation and unemployment in OECD countries rose significantly. After Joe Biden took office, the US government launched large-scale intervention policies to stabilize the US economy. Supporters of the Biden administration proudly called this series of policies the 21st-century version of the “New Deal.” Others praised Biden for reviving the Cold War-era strategy of building foreign alliances to deal with “dangerous enemies.” The post-pandemic economic vitality of the Biden administration once again left other developed countries far behind. The media praised the US government’s ability to control inflation, its care for minority groups, and its fair and inclusive social policies, but US voters seemed unimpressed. In the summer of 2024, Biden was forced to give up his bid for reelection, and Kamala Harris, who replaced him as a candidate, was defeated by Trump in the general election.
In Anderson’s view, it is still unclear what Trump’s second presidency means for the US and the world. In 2025, the domestic situation in the US may change, and he might not fulfill his campaign promises, such as imposing a 50 percent tariff on all goods from China or deporting 11 million illegal immigrants in the US. However, it is worth noting that Trump now has more power than in 2016. Therefore, he may also fulfill his promises, especially in foreign policy. Trump may end the conflict in Ukraine by cutting off aid to Kiev, or he may escalate the war if Russia refuses his terms for a truce. Trump believes that unpredictability is an advantage, and even if the EU and the UK do not like his actions, they will surely follow the US.
Two days before Trump was elected president, the German government collapsed. Chancellor Olaf Scholz dismissed the finance minister and thus lost the support of the liberal third party on which his coalition depended for a parliamentary majority. New elections will have to be held in the spring, and the probability of victory for the Social Democrats and their allies is extremely low. In France, the government appointed by President Macron was also overthrown by a combination of right-wing and left-wing populist parties in the National Assembly due to its budget austerity policy.
Therefore, Anderson opined that, ever since the neoliberal system was established in the 1980s, the question “Whither the West?” has never before been so difficult to answer as now. Politically, the right-wing populism represented by Trump is about to dominate in the US. Meanwhile, France and Germany are in a power vacuum, and the situation in every country is unstable, insecure, and unpredictable. Economically, although the US economy has resumed growth after 2008, the growth rate is still lower than that of China. Socioeconomic inequality in the West has continued to expand, with the result that not only has the debt problem caused by the 2008 financial crisis not been resolved but it has become more serious. In this context, the conflict between liberalism and populism, which has dominated the Western political stage since the turn of the century, has become increasingly fierce. Although liberalism has suffered setbacks and made compromises, it has maintained its dominant position by constantly adjusting its strategies; meanwhile, populism has expanded in scale but lacks a long-term effective strategy. Anderson pointed out that this is just as the great Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci wrote in prison nearly a hundred years ago: the crisis lies in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born. In this transitional period, various abnormal phenomena will continue to emerge. Today, we are in this transitional period, and only through a more profound crisis can we find a way out.
In the discussion session, the three discussants held in-depth exchanges with Perry Anderson. Yin Zhiguang asked questions about the role of internationalism in the development of the West, the background of the rise of right-wing populism, and whether the rise of the China-led Global South could be a possible alternative. Tian Geng asked questions about the lineage of crisis perception and response measures against neoliberalism and possible internationalist responses. Duan Demin asked questions about the commonality between right-wing populism and neoliberalism, China’s contribution to global equality, and China’s position in contemporary geopolitics. Anderson responded that although internationalism had encountered many setbacks, its potential still existed, and the key was to find solutions in the face of challenges. In recent years, there have been many important theoretical achievements in the left-wing ideological field, such as Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology, which has had a great impact in the US. However, his solutions are very fragile in practice. At present, there is still no comprehensive and useful framework that can cover all ideas and figures that are considered to have the potential to bring radical or subversive effects. One common feature of right-wing populism is suspicion and disregard for climate issues, which has brought negative impacts, such as hindering global cooperation, exacerbating inequality, and deteriorating the environment to the Global South countries. Regarding the China issue, Western countries regard China as an enemy, and their hostility toward China has triggered a discussion on whether a “new Cold War” has begun. The current confrontation is not only the traditional Cold War model between the US and Russia but also the increasingly intensified confrontation between the US and China.
Finally, Anderson and the audience engaged in in-depth discussions on populism and nationalism, and the DEI policy and institutional change in the US. Zhang Yongle, offered his concluding remarks on the seminar: he thanked Anderson for his intellectual inspiration, compared the different global situations between Anderson’s visit to Peking University in 2016 and this visit, and expressed his hopes that the teachers and students attending the lecture would continue, like Prof. Anderson, to think about the global situation and the future of humanity.
