Paradoxically, authoritarian capitalism is often sold by the ruling global capitalist class as the epitome of efficient and clean governance. Transnational media, driven by the ideology of profiteering and owned by the transnational capitalists heavily invested in the ongoing expansion of the reach of global capital, hold up authoritarian capital as the mecca of good governance. Transnational organizations such as the various arms of the United Nations (UN, from World Bank to World Health Organization), having been thoroughly co-opted into the infrastructures of global capital over the last three decades, prop up exemplars of authoritarian capital as models for (re)producing the conditions of authoritarian control as essential to improving human health and wellbeing. Transnational think tanks and civil society organizations such as the World Economic Forum (WEF) and platforms such as the St. Gallen Symposium (both anchored in Switzerland, the destination taxpayer haven where the capitalist class stash away their corrupt transactions, see Christensen, 2011) play vital roles in crafting a wide array of "communicative inversions" (Dutta, 2011, 2016) to assert the desirability of authoritarian capital as the necessary technocratic mode of good governance to produce human health and wellbeing.
As I have desribed in my work, "communicative inversions" are the symbolic infrastructures that turn materiality on its head, communicating the very opposite of the actual events through the placing together of symbols, images, languages, and stories (Dutta, 2016). It is vital to critically interrogate these communicative inversions deployed by the state-capital networks in propping up authoritarian capitalism as a technique of rule.
For instance, consider and critically interrogate terms such as "clean" and "corruption free" that are often deployed by the global capitalist class within this context of legitimizing technocratic rule created for enabling greater consolidation of power and capitalist wealth extraction in the hands of the elite (in authoritarian regimes as well as in neoliberal democracies, the revolving door between state and capitalist actors is a powerful exemplar of this consolidation of power in the hands of the elite). Similarly, the global capitalist class projects the story of poverty alleviation as a fundamental communicative inversion that extends the reach of global capital at the margins, expels communities from their livelihoods, and produces hyper-precarities. In the rest of this essay, I will attend to the key arguments offered by the global capitalist infrastructures of authoritarian propaganda.
First, as noted earlier, the rhetoric of authoritarian capitalism thrives on the projection of efficient, clean, and effective governance. Regimes with distorted elections, dictatorships, and with elaborate infrastructures of propaganda are sold in the language of clean and efficient governance, projected as democracies. Consider the hyperjingoistic adulation of authoritarian state management as good governance or "exceptional political leadership" offered by the paid journalist mouthpieces of global capital (one Fareed Zakaria comes to mind, held up by the capitalist infrastructures of the liberal CNN). Consider the cycles of capitalist media stories cultivating Russia-gate while simultaneously actively contributing to the deployment of media narratives to hijack and dismantle democracies in the Global South.
Critical interrogation of terms such as "clean" and "efficient" attend to the fundamental terrains of operationalization. When a transnational capitalist class defines a regime as clean, it is deploying a series of communicative inversions to project an image of cleanliness that serves its interests of capitalist expansion. "Clean" for the capitalist class constitutes a series of communicative claims that maximize capitalist exploitation. For instance, a fundamental communicative inversion is at work in depicting tax havens that are integral to the infrastructures of global capitalist corruption as clean. Attend closely to the financial infrastructures in economies depicted as "clean" that work through multiple layers of communicative inversions to hide the corrupt financial assetts of the ruling elites from the Global South. The infrastructures of corruption in the "Global South" are in essence held up by the infrastructures of corruption in tax havens projected as the exemplars of "clean governance." The authoritarian techniques that are placed together to erase this fundamental corruption of the global capitalist class are communicatively inverted through a media propaganda infrastructure, projected as cleanliness in governmentality.
Second, consider in this backdrop the fundamental "communicative inversion" of promoting democratic change that underlies the propping up of capital-friendly elite authoritarian regimes across the globe while simultaneously subverting democratically elected popular governments, supported by transnational media capital. Historically, whether in Indonesia or Chile, "communicative inversions" performed by the global capitalist media were integral to the establishment of repressive authoritarian regimes that reworked popular democratic socialist spaces in the Global South through the use of violence and murder, turning them into fields of profiteering for the global capitalist class. The global liberal media, fed and held up by their capitalist owners, played vital roles in seeding, circulating, and establishing the infrastructures of communicative inversion. Most recently, these capitalist media infrastructures have been vital to the organized attacks on popular democracies across the Global South, holding up the "communicative inversions" crafted by the capitalist elite class.
Third, authoritarian capitalism is projected as effective governance that catalyzes poverty alleviation through the adoption of extreme neoliberal reforms. "Communicative inversions" here play vital roles in turning materiality on its head. For instance, the everyday challenges to health and wellbeing among the margins are turned into narrative accounts of health and wellbeing. The struggles for survival among the margins are projected as empirical evidence of a good life. To achieve this communicative inversion, elaborate rituals of symbol making draw out images of upward mobility among the margins while working through techniques of authoritarian disciplining to erase the actual evidence borne out through the lived experiences at the margins. Critical to the production of this "communicative inversion" is the violence of communicative erasure. The entire infrastructure of articulation at the margins is wiped out so the state-capitalist elites can insert the hegemonic narrative of poverty alleviation, inverting extreme neoliberal policies as socialist commitments. Lived realities of struggles at the margins are simultaneously erased by a climate of fear held up by techniques of repression. Alternative media accounts of poverty, hunger, homelessness are targeted, labeled as false, and repressed. Academic studies of poverty and inequality are violently attacked, categorically erased from the discursive space. Sites of making claims to truth are so thoroughly colonized by the state-capitalist class that the only discursive registers available to citizens are communicative inversions. The production of "communicative vacuum" therefore is essential to the reproduction of authoritarian control. Amidst this communicative vacuum, empirical evidence pointing to high inequality is inverted with claims to socialism and equality.
In sum, authoritarianism is a necessary tool for the global onsluaght of capital at the frontiers of capitalist expansion. The neoliberal zeitgiest legitimizing the transnational capitalist order has been thoroughly debunked, amidst the financial crises, deep inequalities, and pandemics global communities are struggling against. In the backdrop of this thoroughly debunked ideology of the global free market, the mandarings of the market must turn to their age old strategy for securing the market: violence, disciplining, fear and manipulation. Techniques of authoritarian capitalism are integral to the expansion of the (neo)liberal capitalist order.
COVID-19 makes visible the urgency of fighting against this tide of authoritarian neoliberal excess. The question in front of communities globally is: How do we transform our communities and democracies as spaces for struggle against the hegemonic sites of capitalist expansion?
Christensen, J. (2011). The looting continues: tax havens and corruption. Critical Perspectives on International Business, 7(2), 177.
Dutta, M. J. (2011). Communicating social change. Structure, Culture and Agency. Routledge.
Dutta, M. J. (2016). Neoliberal health organizing: Communication, meaning, and politics. Routledge.