Road to Fascization: Crisis of Social Cohesion, Alienation, and the Search for Alternatives

The defining feature of neoliberalism is that this system — itself a product of the organic crisis that capitalism entered in the early 1970s — has turned the state of permanent crisis into a constitutive element of its distinctive utopia. Drawing on Reinhart Koselleck's conceptualisation, we can understand a crisis as a decisive turning point at which things can no longer continue as before and a fundamental decision must be made about how to proceed (Koselleck and Richter, 2006: 359). Thus, this understanding of crisis highlights its dual nature both as a moment of decision and as the end of a particular period.

In the Beginning, There Was Crisis…

The emergence of neoliberalism in the 1970s coincides precisely with such a moment. It is a turning point at which the old form of capitalism becomes unsustainable. The old methods could no longer guarantee the profitability of capital; in fact, they had become an obstacle to it. Thus, the ruling classes came to the conclusion that capitalism had to be organized differently. As the term ‘legitimacy crisis’ suggest, due to lack of economic, political and ideological capacity of the capitalist classes, the postwar period of capitalism came to an end. Current profilability rates no longer ensured full employment, and wages did not rise back to their former levels. The state could no longer preserve the welfare system, and the relatively stable consensus between classes built around it dissolved.

It could be said that capitalism survived precisely at this moment through a kind of élan vital. In a sense, neoliberalism can be regarded as a move by capitalism to return to its essence. However, it is also an indication that this mode of production has lost its capacity to fulfil its promises. The necessities imposed by the crisis led to the emergence of neoliberalism, which became the contradictory response of crisis-ridden capitalism, involving both a return to its essence and a simultaneous aspiration to negate its limits to time and space. This move is contradictory because, while it has brought the world under the dominance of capitalism more than ever since the 1970s, it has simultaneously sought to realise the fantasy of transcending capitalism's structural limits.

Capitalism is based on the relationship between labour and capital within the framework of the wage labour relationship. The fact that value can only be produced in specific spaces and times makes capitalism dependent on time and space. To the extent that capitalists can establish dominance over time and space in neoliberal times, they transform this dependency into an advantage. Intensification of productivity and establishing the efficient global chains of commodity exchange helped them to subordinate labourers around the globe. This went hand-in-hand with de-industrialisation and vanishing of the most well-organised branches of the working-class.

Real subsumption asserts that with the evolution of capitalism, all social relations become forms of labour exploitation and that, broadly speaking, the lives of working-class individuals collectively become subservient to capital accumulation.

The utopian leap of capitalists in the form of neoliberalism is shaped by the desire to rid themselves of this dependency. The goal is to free capital from the constraints of time and space, remove the obstacles posed by labour and transform the world into an earthly paradise.

Capitalist Domination and Alienation

This desire corresponds to what Marx termed 'real subsumption': the transformation of labour into a function of capital (1993). He defined this as the restructuring of social relations in accordance with the demands of the capitalist mode of production. As capital establishes real domination over workers, people are compelled to accept that all social relations are created by capital. Real subsumption asserts that with the evolution of capitalism, all social relations become forms of labour exploitation and that, broadly speaking, the lives of working-class individuals collectively become subservient to capital accumulation. The issue is no longer how workers, as an autonomous social entity, will be governed or what concessions they will accept; rather, the issue is how to equip workers to produce value as effectively as possible and how to align their will accordingly.

For neoliberal capitalism to survive, it is essential that all scientific and technological developments can be applied to increase value production. Rather than workers who oppose capital and have the capacity for collective resistance, the desired outcome is "cyborg" individuals who are programmed to constantly reproduce and generate value during and outside of working hours. These masses, equipped with production technologies yet simultaneously disciplined, constitute the social foundation of capital's domination over society in the neoliberal era. This requires the deepening of the alienating effects of the capitalist mode of production.

Thus, in this new period, alienation must have two distinct dimensions. Pushing each of these dimensions to their limits within existing social relations is necessary for establishing conditions of real subsumption, enabling capitalists to construct their visions of the future. The first of these two dimensions, which operate mostly simultaneously, is the negative/divisive dimension. At this stage, individuals are deprived of the ability to recognise their own needs and decide which personal, social or species-related capacities they possess. Along with this, their ability to communicate with others and form communities is also impaired. Humans are separated from one another and from their own potential in the realms of perception, affect and desire. In the face of a power complex constituted by machines, financial language and the media, they lose power over their own lives (Lazzarato, 2014: 12–31). All that is left for them is to observe politics as a reflection of their indebted and securitised lives (Hardt and Negri, 2012: 18–32).

In the second positive/homogenising dimension, the separate capacities are reactivated. It is not sufficient to weaken people’s influence over their own potential and turn them into passive individuals. These capacities must be developed and utilised in a way that facilitates capital accumulation. The individual becomes an investor in themselves. Rather than collective emancipation, an opportunistic character is created that seeks to turn crises into opportunities. This individual, who is constantly calculating and constructing life as an economic entity while assuming responsibility through risk management, constitutes the ideal neoliberal capitalist.

Believing ourselves to be free and clinging to the possibility of self-realisation makes it easier for us to endure our actual living and working conditions.

However, what is promised to this individual is precarity and vulnerability. The illusion of flexible working conditions is that 'we are shaping our own lives according to our desires', but in reality it forces us to participate in the subjugation of capital. Believing ourselves to be free and clinging to the possibility of self-realisation makes it easier for us to endure our actual living and working conditions. In this way, we become open to exploitation. Economised experiences generate insecurity, fear of failure and the threat of social decline (Lorey, 2006: 6). As the economy spreads into all areas of life, including politics, social relations become organised according to corporate logic (Dardot and Laval, 2012: 365–370). Within this framework, concepts such as enterprise, risk and accountability shape our subjectivity, while performance criteria become the dominant determinant (Dardot and Laval, 2012: 393–394).

Given how deeply these two dimensions permeate our everyday lives, it is important to note that, contrary to its exclusion from recent theoretical debates, alienation continues to exist in a much more intensified form.

The Crisis of Social Cohesion and the Shadow of Fascism

The production of authoritarian regimes by capitalism is by no means exceptional; under conditions of crisis and catastrophe, this becomes far more likely, and this needs to be articulated more frequently and forcefully. One could start by reminding Engels's observation that the real religion of the modern bourgeoisie is Bonapartism. However, as has often been written in recent years, the situation in Turkey and the international arena has become even more serious than Bonapartism. We are witnessing a process of fascistisation that progresses in the form of a series of 'reforms', punctuated by ruptures and partial regressions.

Each form of fascism takes shape in accordance with the capitalist context from which it emerges and the crisis conditions it exploits. In this sense, the trap of fascistisation into which we have fallen over the last decade has taken shape around the nature of global neoliberal capitalism and the crisis of this system. The reason for revisiting neoliberalism is that, as a defining feature of contemporary capitalism, it has the capacity to shape people's socio-political subjectivity, and continues to do so even if it is deadlocked in many other respects. We observe that, in response to many problems, people still think, feel and act under the influence of neoliberal subjectivity.

The erosion of social cohesion and the right's success in convincing the masses that they are the force capable of responding to the need for sociality constitutes the social foundation on which today's rising fascism is built.

At this point, I would like to emphasise again the concept of real subsumption mentioned above. In the context of neoliberalism, new forms of alienation hinder individuals to materialize their potential accordingly eith their own interests, but simultaneously, reinforce their potentials to be actively useful for capital accumulation processes: The severing of people’s relationships with their fundamental life activities and their alienation from both the present and their future as indebted and precarious subjects breaks the social bonds of those already outside class-based organisations. This destroys social cohesion and turns sociality into a need that authoritarian movements can exploit. This paves the way for the creation of a social group susceptible to the racist, climate change-denying, misogynistic and similar lies of the far right.

Thus, the erosion of social cohesion — and, more importantly, the right's success in convincing the masses that they are the primary force capable of responding to the resulting need for sociality — constitutes the social foundation on which today's rising fascism is built. The role of the ongoing crisis of neoliberalism, which began in 2008, in the emergence of this problem has been widely discussed; I will not repeat that discussion here. However, it is likely that the crisis of neoliberal capitalism is pushing the ruling classes beyond the conditions of real subsumption towards a fascist-inspired search for absolute domination. We can already observe global precursors of this. There is an international wave of fascization in which actors learn from one another and form transnational networks of individuals and institutions.

The prolonged period of turbulence that began as a financial crisis in 2008 and later evolved into a crisis of neoliberalism continues to shape the destiny of modern societies today by generating multiple, interconnected crises. The numerous crises that threaten the existence of our world as we know it — ranging from food and water shortages to health crises, rising authoritarianism, climate change and growing poverty — are continuously expanding into new areas of life. The current crisis is creating political conditions in which states are losing their ability to manage internal societal contradictions, opening up expansive spaces for divisive conflicts among social classes, identities, and cultures. The consequences of the crisis of neoliberalism, which has severed social bonds, have evolved into a broader crisis that is causing modern societies to lose their social cohesion, and their ability to politically organise to find adequate responses to the crisis itself. This condition is increasingly referred to in literature as a 'polycrisis', but I prefer to call it a crisis of social cohesion.

The phenomenon I call the crisis of social cohesion appears as a deepened version of the conditions that Gramsci termed an organic crisis—namely, the rupture between socio-economic conditions and ethical-political forms, and the erosion of ideological hegemony—now intensified by the climate crisis and the crisis in the sphere of social reproduction. By intensifying social alienation, it transforms political subjectivities and changes how people live their lives. Political subjectivity concerns people’s consciousness and the roles they play in society; it refers to how they define themselves from the perspective of a worldview and how they relate to the institutions that govern and affect them. In this sense, it concerns how citizens conduct themselves in the public sphere and how they participate in decision-making processes on public matters. Under conditions of a crisis of social cohesion, the issue ultimately becomes that the public, even though riddled with contradictions, ceases to be a tangible, visible truth for people as a rational whole called society, and those who were once part of the same whole come to be perceived as enemies. This loss of cohesion has produced waves of emancipation in which the contradictions inherent in neoliberal capitalist societies became visible, and these waves occasionally still make themselves felt. Yet in every instance following the retreat of these waves, authoritarian movements grow stronger and more audacious. Instead of the fundamental contradictions that shape modern capitalist society, false dichotomies are placed before the masses, and a narcotic vigilance (reaction) is generated through the constant administration of hatred and fear.

The authoritarian wave of the past decade has exerted a more intense influence due to its transformation of the existing reaction into a counter-movement. This encompasses the targeting of organisations defending freedoms and the deepening of the opportunistic nature of the neoliberal subject. Another defining feature of this new situation is that alongside this counter-movement, fascization also involves implementing a concrete political project based on a specific coalition of capital (Robinson, 2025). The coalition of technology cartels (the so-called 'tech bros'), financial capital and the war industry seeks to expropriate the commons on a global scale, exploiting resources such as knowledge and labour through extra-market methods to increase profit rates and total profits. Politically, this takes the form of producing more 'Trumps' and enhancing cooperation among existing fascist actors and institutions.

The loss of social cohesion that paves the way for fascist tendencies is also perceived as a loss of knowledge, reason and truth. As concepts such as truth and fact lose their authority, the post-truth condition that has emerged has given rise to anti-intellectualism. This has led to a backlash against demands for freedom, restrictions on academic freedoms and an intensification of violence against intellectual activity that seeks truth. Among the issues we are discussing, the term 'irrationalism' perhaps corresponds most directly to this point. Many of the phenomena we have witnessed recently, such as the rise of relativism, the replacement of knowledge by belief and the decline of intellectual standards, feed contemporary irrationalism. With the development of digital media, these currents have begun to strengthen. Following the decline in global resistance between 2011 and 2013, social media became a battleground and was taken over by reactionary movements. The main actors in this process coincide with ultra-neoliberal figures who today spearhead the quest for absolute domination. In my view, this confirms the continued validity of Marxist theory in revealing the relationship between contemporary irrationalism, fascist tendencies, and the search for ultimate victory by capital.

The Construction of the Socialist Alternative: Critique, Utopia, and the Form of the Commune

During this period, when capitalism is seeking to survive by adopting fascist tendencies, socialists can make a difference by taking an uncompromising intellectual stance and organising realistic ideas about an alternative world. This dual approach highlights the contradictions of the existing order while simultaneously fostering the hope necessary for transformation. However, today the socialist movement is facing problems such as shifting social ground, defeats and a loss of confidence. Furthermore, it is accused of being responsible for the social destruction caused by neoliberalism under labels such as 'cultural Marxism'.

Utopia should not merely be considered a dream of the future, but rather a value that can transform the present as a dynamic force.

Breaking out of this situation requires the renewal of both modes of thought and forms of organisation. In intellectual terms, critique and utopia are the fundamental pillars of the struggle for a new society. Critique exposes the mechanisms of alienation and domination created by capitalism and renders the contradictions behind what is accepted as 'normal' visible. It breaks the cycle of acceptance of what happens as normal. In the post-truth era, this means defending facts and scientific reason. The denial of the climate crisis, sexism, racism and other forms of domination must also be subject to critique. Such critique enables recognition claims to be addressed in relation to class exploitation and capitalist commodity production.

On the other hand, utopia should not merely be considered a dream of the future, but rather a value that can transform the present as a dynamic force. Rather than being understood as a static plan, it should be seen as a dynamic horizon that mobilises the present. Utopia signifies fidelity to the idea of a humane future. The material conditions for a better life already exist; the challenge lies in creating the conditions that will liberate them from the curse of private property. This requires envisioning an ecologically sustainable, emancipated and egalitarian society. This could persuade the working class to engage in organised collective action.

The dialectical unity of these two perspectives enables the socialist movement to develop a concrete vision for social transformation. Otherwise, there is a risk of becoming trapped in endless reforms or of adopting a dogmatic revolutionary stance that has lost its ability to function as a political lever.

The question of strategy has once again gained renewed importance in today's situation. I believe this question fundamentally concerns organisation. My answer is that building a movement with both critical and utopian dimensions, extending into the spheres of production and social reproduction, requires communal forms of self-governance, where the working class and oppressed groups become subjects of their own emancipation.

In this sense, I believe it is worthwhile to reopen the discussion on the commune-form today. I intend to approach this discussion from three different angles. The first is the ethical dimension. Ethically speaking, the commune opposes a collectivist and solidarity-based subjectivity to the individualistic and aggressive subjectivity imposed by neoliberal capitalism and emboldened throughout the process of fascistisation. It adopts the view that an individual's well-being is intrinsically related to that of others.

As an organisational structure, the commune must be organised in a way that establishes new relations in both production and social reproduction. Workplace occupations, cooperatives, neighbourhood solidarity networks, ecological struggle communes and organisations for gender equality are potential nuclei of these communes. These communes create associations based on solidarity, common ownership and direct democracy, operating outside the logic of the capitalist market and the state. They constitute the potential power of the socialist movement.

As a movement, communes must be formed by linking these organisations to create dual centres of power. Ultimately, the communes pursue the goal of socialising the means of production, democratic planning and the radical transformation of property relations by organising a bottom-up counter-power as an alternative to capital and its state. They establish their own specific coordination and representation organs. As a concrete movement capable of overcoming capitalist catastrophe, they build the socialist movement itself.

References

• Dardot, P. & Laval, C. (2012). The New Way of the World: On Neoliberal Society, trans. Işık Ergüden. Istanbul: Istanbul Bilgi University. 
• Hardt, M. & Negri, A. (2012). Declaration, trans. Abdullah Yılmaz. Istanbul: Ayrıntı.
• Koselleck, R. & Richter, M. (2006). “Crisis,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 67(2), 357–400. 
• Lazzarato, M. (2014). The Making of the Indebted Man, trans. Murat Erşen. Istanbul: Açılım. 
• Lorey, I. (2006). “Governmentality and Self-Precarization: On the Normalization of Cultural Producers.” 
• Marx, K. (1993). Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, trans. Martin Nicolaus. London: Penguin. 
• Robinson, W. I. (2025). “The Global Fascist Project: Crisis, Control, and the Struggle from Below.”