Neoliberalism Produces Subjects Prone To Authoritarianism

More than an economic model, neoliberalism is a social engineering construct that, by producing isolated and psychologically fragile individuals, creates fertile ground for the flourishing of authoritarian and fascist tendencies.

Today, neoliberalism is more than just a political and economic rationality. It is a form of social engineering that shapes social relations, determines ways of life, forms of behavior, and produces new forms of subjectivity. Under its dominion, individuals are transformed into generic beings, isolated social atoms, without critical autonomy, incapable of understanding the reified totality that subjugates them. In this context, neoliberal rationality weakens individuals, shaping an authoritarian character. Thus, it mobilizes psychological and affective processes, orienting them towards political and economic ends.

With the advance of neoliberalism in the late 1980s in Europe and the United States (and in Brazil in the 1990s), privatizations, deregulation of the economy, cuts in public spending, and the weakening of unions occurred, reducing social protection. People were left to face unemployment, precarious work, and growing inequality alone. The result was a greater weakening of individuals, who, faced with the oppressive forces of reality, felt powerless and frustrated. From this, a resurgence of fascist tendencies in society can be observed.

 As Bresser-Pereira (2020) assessed, when there is a crisis of democracy, it becomes a target for neo-fascist minority groups. Thus, the current crisis of democracy is not simply a political crisis, but involves profound economic and social dimensions. The crisis occurs not because democratic institutions have failed, but because the economic model has failed, producing consequences on the social and political level. It was the failure of neoliberal policies that fueled this wave of neo-fascist governments around the world. Authoritarian regimes emerge within democracy because of the emergence of a historical form of capitalism that is extremely “aggressive, destabilizing, and disruptive” (BRESSER-PEREIRA, 2020, p. 52).

Today, neoliberal society has become an increasingly managed society that encloses individuals by determining socially established patterns of thought and behavior. In this sense, neoliberalism is defined by the union between capital and democratic institutions, seeking greater rationality and technical and administrative efficiency in order to achieve better organization, control, and planning of individuals. Thus, social organization remains heteronomous; that is, no person can truly exist in capitalist society according to their own determinations. The ego, adjusted to reality, has learned order and subordination through the all-encompassing economic apparatus (ADORNO, 1985).

Proponents of neoliberalism have always prided themselves on being the spokespeople for freedom, always preaching the idea of ​​a free economy and a state that guarantees individual liberties. However, this freedom is only apparent. Despite not intervening in the coordination of economic activity, the state continues to intervene in the private sphere and in social conflicts. According to Safatle (2020, pp. 21-22): “[…] what neoliberalism preached were direct interventions in the configuration of social conflicts and in the psychic structure of individuals. More than an economic model, neoliberalism was social engineering.” Based on this modus operandi, the objective of neoliberalism was to eliminate all forms of critical discourse from entities, unions, organizations, and associations of civil society that seek to question neoliberal freedom.

The French thinker Michel Foucault (2008) understood neoliberalism not only as an economic policy, but as a form of rationality that is inscribed within the practices of governing. Governing in the sense of rationally coordinating and organizing human existence, controlling and directing the conduct of individuals, as well as constraining their actions and reactions. Thus, neoliberalism is a form of governmentality that imposes a normative system and a rationality that extends to all spheres of social life. The human body and biological processes become the center of power strategies. There is a management of the lives of populations that come to be administered by the State, such as birth rates, pandemics, sexuality, hygiene, and diseases. The objective is to make the individual's body useful for productivity.

In their book, *La Nouvelle Raison du Monde * (2009), Dardot and Laval sought to show, based on Foucault's concept of governmentality, that neoliberalism is a form of rationality that shapes forms of behavior, social relations, and political institutions in Western democracies. This normative rationality transforms human relations, determining ways of living and producing new forms of subjectivity. In this sense, neoliberalism should be understood as a coordinated and organized system of norms and practices that imposes competition among individuals as the foundation of society. This competitive model is not merely a characteristic of the market or the state, but transforms individuals into entrepreneurs of themselves, encouraging self-exploitation, competition, and class conflict.

Following this same line of reasoning, in his book *The Burnout Society*, South Korean Byulg-Chul Han argued that we live today in a society of performance, self-exploitation, and overwork. It is no longer a disciplinary society, which since the 19th century has used techniques and practices to coordinate and organize the lives of individuals: “The society of the 21st century is no longer a disciplinary society, but a performance society” (HAN, 2015, p. 14). Each individual becomes responsible for themselves, for their success or failure. There is a constant obligation of productivity and self-improvement. In this form of society, the individual voluntarily exploits themselves. The illusion lies in the false feeling of freedom that a person feels when they are becoming better and better, more and more productive. By believing that they are self-actualizing, they are actually exploiting themselves to the point of exhaustion. The result is mental illnesses such as depression, attention deficits, burnout syndrome, and anxiety attacks.

What we are experiencing today is the psychological weakening of individuals, who become powerless in the face of the technological apparatus of the capitalist industrial world. This weakening has fostered the fascist tendencies in society that we have seen in the 21st century. For Gurski and Perrone (2021), this new fascism is a globalized phenomenon that does not possess homogeneous characteristics. It has multiple characteristics, since it constitutes a mixture of nationalism, xenophobia, racism, charismatic leadership, reactionary identitarianism, and regressive anti-globalization policies, which can assume different shades and naturally loosen the bonds of solidarity in social life. Therefore, in the 21st century, the class struggle is based on the psychological mobilization of the masses – that is, on internal resources, such as emotions and affections. Hence the resurgence of fascism in its new guises and symbolisms, gaining strength in the daily lives of the masses through the formation of subjectivity. Modifying values, transforming concepts, and mystifying reality. This new fascism consolidates itself as an ideology that shapes subjectivity through a utilitarian and fragmented worldview, which sustains a perverse neoliberal economic policy, in accordance with the new phase of financialization of capital (SCHLESENER, 2021).

According to the Brazilian sociologist Octavio Ianni, neoliberalism is not merely a socioeconomic doctrine that advocates the old values ​​of classical liberalism, but rather, it represents forms of socialization that "imply the increasing administration of the activities and ideas of individuals and collectivities" (IANNI, 1998, p. 112). In this sense, neoliberal rationality generalizes social tensions, contradictions, and struggles, aiming to condition the dynamics of the economy and the expanded reproduction of capital. Since neoliberal governments cannot convince individuals with arguments, given that their economic policies suppress social rights, make work more precarious, and exacerbate inequalities, their actions turn to psychological manipulation, mobilizing unconscious, irrational, and affective processes. The goal is to channel individuals' frustrations toward a specific end: "Hence the demands, protests, and social struggles, often mixed with ethnicism, xenophobia, racism, sexism, fundamentalism, and other expressions of social inequalities multiplied throughout the world" (IANNI, 1998, p. 113).

Despite neoliberal discourse constantly reaffirming its commitment to democracy, individual liberties, free trade, and the free market, “the truth is that its 'religion' is Nazism-Fascism” (IANNI, 1998, p. 114). For Ianni (1998), Nazism-Fascism must be understood as an extreme and exacerbated product of the same social forces predominant in the globally administered society under neoliberal models. It is a form of rationality that produces the inequalities, tensions, and contradictions that permeate the entire social body.

What we can observe in the globalized world is that neoliberalism both produces and takes advantage of the inner weakness of individuals, creating an atmosphere of irrational aggression by mobilizing psychological and affective processes, guiding individuals towards its political and economic ends. In doing so, it contributes to the formation of an authoritarian character through various channels, such as the culture industry, state institutions, the family, the church, the internet, and social networks, fostering feelings and emotions in individuals, developing tensions, resentments, prejudices, hatred, and individualistic values. As Adorno (2015a, p. 184) observed: “It may well be the secret of fascist propaganda that it simply takes men for what they are: true children of today’s standardized mass culture, largely deprived of their autonomy and spontaneity” (ADORNO, 2015a, p. 184).

 The promotion of fascist personality by neoliberalism uses the culture industry as its main means of dissemination. It is well known that the content and images of this semi-culture are manipulated by the culture industry, which places great emphasis on violence. It portrays only what is of interest to capital, emphasizing only one dimension of events, especially the spectacular: “The appeal to surprising and impactful scenes soon brings with it shocking or brutal scenes. There is an aestheticization of violence” (IANNI 1998, p. 116). With the advance of neoliberalism on a global scale, prejudices such as racism, xenophobia, and antisemitism, which had diminished, resurface as ghosts of a past haunting the present and threatening civilizational achievements. Thus, the culture industry feeds the subjectivity of its viewers and readers, channeling their aggressive impulses against the socially excluded. It criminalizes certain social strata or groups, making them guilty of social problems. For example, the image of the Arab as a terrorist is constructed under the pretext of combating fundamentalism. Homosexuals become perverted and destructive of Christian values ​​and the family. The poor are seen as lazy and indolent, being accused of living off social welfare. The miserable, the poor, and the excluded from society become scapegoats for the world's ills, not its victims. Thus, individuals, collectives, peoples, nations, and nationalities are condemned (IANNI, 1998).

It is noticeable that fascist tendencies are encouraged in films, soap operas, talk shows, and television journalism: violence and aggression; exaltation of authority and police forces; appeal to conventions; encouragement of conformity; stereotypical thinking; hatred of what is different; superstitious thinking; exaggerated realism, etc. All these conservative characteristics are stimulated by the culture industry. The objective is to activate emotional forces to direct the will of individuals towards political and economic interests. As Kehl (2000, p. 149) states: “A society in which the imaginary prevails, in which imaginary formations elaborate reality – that reality to which we have no access – is a society that is, in a way, totalitarian, regardless of the situation of the government, the State, or the police.”

Another instrument employed by neoliberalism to coordinate and control the masses is the dissemination of fear. Today, men no longer need to fear the mythical forces of nature or wild animals, but must fear the annihilating forces of society. The fear of hunger, misery, crime, violence, and social exclusion has replaced the primitive man's fear of the forces of nature: "Just as the ancestral fear of the Greek hero of succumbing to nature, in the bourgeois individual this fear is updated in his relationship with the market: competition is felt as a threat, which must be overcome or defeated by it" (BATISTA, 2008, p. 9).

In neoliberal capitalism, individuals must submit to the imperatives of efficiency and productivity in order to survive. With technical and scientific advancement, the struggle for existence would no longer be necessary, since humanity has created all the material and intellectual conditions to end hunger, misery, and the fight for life. However, to maintain its power and hegemony, capitalism has fixed instincts in an earlier stage of human evolution and maintained the struggle for existence. Humans are forced to regress their instincts to anthropologically more primitive stages. This regressive condition characterizes reified modern societies. It is fundamental to the maintenance of the capitalist mode of production. As Adorno (2015b, p. 77) assesses: “The fear of being excluded [ Angst ], the social sanction of economic behavior, has long been internalized through other taboos, becoming sedimented in the individual. This fear has historically become second nature.”

If in primitive man the Ego is formed out of fear of death, in the face of the destructive forces of nature; in modern man the Ego is formed out of fear of the annihilating forces of society. It is through the same instinct of self-preservation that the Ego develops. Just as primitive man mimicked the mythical forces of nature to preserve his life, modern man mimics the oppressive forces of society to survive. The individual imitates the patterns of behavior, thought, and conduct socially necessary for the preservation of his existence. He identifies with reality. As an extremely integrated and atomized being, he rationalizes his action and behavior with the sole objective of earning a living. As Horkheimer (2002, p. 46) states: “Through repetition and imitation of the circumstances surrounding him, adaptation to all the powerful groups to which he may eventually belong, transformation of himself from a human being into a member of the organization, sacrifice of his potentialities for the sake of the ability to adapt and gain influence in such organizations, he manages to survive. His survival is accomplished by the oldest of biological means of survival, that is, mimicry.”

The dissemination of fear as a means of controlling and coordinating individuals is typical of neoliberal rationality. According to Schlesener (2021), the fear of losing one's job, of going hungry, of not having a place to live, or of not being able to protect one's children, paralyzes workers and makes them accept any job offer or give up looking for work, trying to survive with humiliating alternatives. More than physical violence, the psychological violence experienced daily by a large part of the population hinders any form of resistance. If individuals seek to live in society, there is no other way but to adapt to the conditions of existence; they must conform and give up their autonomous subjectivity, which relates to the idea of ​​democracy (Adorno, 1995). 

In a passage from Minima Moralia , "Slow and Steady," Adorno (2008) compares the haste of individuals in large urban centers to the fear of primitive man when running from an animal in the jungle. Contemporary man carries mnemonic traces of past eras. Today, even though individuals benefit from the comforts provided by technical and scientific progress, and do not fear wild animals, they still fear the annihilating forces of society, which become second nature. For this reason, they are always in a hurry to fulfill their commitments: “There was a time when one ran from dangers that did not allow for rest, and this is still inadvertently demonstrated by those who run after the bus. Traffic regulation no longer needs to worry about wild animals, but it has not managed to pacify the rush, which is foreign to bourgeois walking. The truth becomes visible that one is not sure of security, that we are condemned to flee from the unbridled powers of life, even when we are mere vehicles” (ADORNO, 2008, p. 158).

By instilling fear in people, the goal of neoliberalism is to make individuals increasingly docile and adaptable. The struggle for survival must be transformed into standardized efficiency. In a society where the individual must become an entrepreneur of themselves, they must become a desirable commodity. They must seek in the market the skills, abilities, and knowledge to become increasingly better as a commodity. Their individual growth increasingly depends on their capacity for adaptation, for submission to the imperatives of reality. Thus, "individual performance is motivated, guided, and measured by standards external to the individual, standards that relate to predetermined tasks and functions" (MARCUSE, 1999, p. 78).

By MICHEL AIRES DE SOUZA DIAS 

05/11/2025

Taken from A Terra é Redonda