The BVPS concludes the post series of the international symposium Capitalismo e Autoritarismo: o que fazer?, which brought together Brazilian and international scholars from three major fields of the social sciences – social theory, the sociology of labor, and Brazilian social and political thought – invited to answer four questions concerning the intricate relationships between authoritarianism and capitalism in the contemporary world. The responses were published in installments over the following Wednesdays. Check out all the symposium’s publications by clicking here.
Today’s contributors are:
Lilia Moritz Schwarcz is a senior professor in the Department of Social Anthropology at USP, a Global Scholar, and a visiting professor at Princeton since 2009. A member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, she is the author, among other works, of Brasil: uma biografia (2015), Lima Barreto: triste visionário (2017), and Imagens da branquitude: a presença da ausência (2024).
Sérgio Costa is a full professor of Sociology at the Freie Universität Berlin and director of Mecila (Maria Sybilla Merian Centre Conviviality-Inequality in Latin America). Among his most recent books are Desiguais e Divididos (2025), Um Porto no Capitalismo Global (2020), and Entre el Atlántico y el Pacífico Negro (2019).
Kathya Araújo is a sociologist and psychologist, and a researcher in the Social Sciences specializing in power asymmetries and social bonds. She serves as professor and researcher at the Institute for Advanced Studies (IDEA) at the University of Santiago, Chile. She is the author, among other books, of Habitar lo social (2009), El miedo a los subordinados, and, more recently, El circuito del desapego (2025).
The BVPS invited 25 authors affiliated with institutions from different parts of the world to reflect on a question of undeniable relevance to the current moment. We extend our deepest gratitude to all those who generously contributed to this initiative, coordinated by Fabrício Maciel (UFF) and Maurício Hoelz (UFRRJ and editor responsible for the BVPS blog), with editorial advisory support from Miguel Cunha (PPGCS/UFRRJ and BVPS).
See below!
Capitalism and Authoritarianism: What Is to Be Done?
1. What is your diagnosis of the relationship between capitalism and authoritarianism today?
Lilia Schwarcz: Historically, capitalism has coexisted with both democratic and authoritarian regimes, which is why there is no easy answer to this question.
Not by coincidence, for decades the prevailing interpretation was that economic growth, urbanization, education, and the expansion of the middle classes would create favorable conditions for political participation.
But this line of analysis was ultimately qualified by a series of historical examples – with several cases showing how capitalism can coexist comfortably with, and even emerge strengthened from, authoritarian regimes.
It is also worth recalling the more recent debate around the democratic erosion we have been witnessing. Researchers have analyzed how, once elected, various leaders have begun to weaken democratic institutions such as the free press, the independent judiciary, the autonomous legislature, and oversight bodies – even without formally abolishing elections.
Another important line of research associates the growth of authoritarian movements precisely with the tensions that globalized capitalism has been producing. In this sense, deregulated markets can generate social insecurity and authoritarian political reactions.
This second hypothesis would help explain the growth of far-right nationalisms and of populisms. The argument is not that inequality automatically produces authoritarianism, but that rising economic insecurity, the perceived loss of status, the weakening of unions and collective organizations, and the concentration of income can create fertile ground for discourses that promise order and invest in the narrative of security. It may also lead to the rise of charismatic leaders with no commitment to democracy but attached to liberal capitalist logic.
Finally, I would like to recall the even more recent phenomenon of digital capitalism and the concentration of power involving the big technology platforms. Digital technologies are expanding the capacity for both state and private surveillance, a phenomenon particularly visible in contemporary authoritarian experiences.
Sérgio Costa: The challenge of understanding the relationship between capitalism and authoritarianism in the contemporary moment necessarily entails an effort to avoid deterministic answers, whether subjectivist or economistic. This implies recognizing that the link between capitalism and authoritarianism is contingent, which is obviously not the same as saying that this link is fortuitous or random. There are concrete processes that explain this link. These same processes, however, could lead to other outcomes.
Summarizing multiple and complex developments in a very rudimentary way, it seems to me that the end of actually existing socialism and the advance of capitalist globalization produced a context of an explosion of individual expectations of social ascent, especially in the global South, at the same time as growing competitiveness among the different national economies reduced the room for maneuver of welfare states, mainly in the global North. In parallel, in both the global South and the global North, an unprecedented concentration of income and wealth can be observed.
The result of these movements is that, in the first decades of the present century, we have arrived at a situation, in the global South, of declining poverty (very pronounced in Asia, less pronounced in Africa, and heterogeneous in Latin America) but with limited possibilities of social mobility for the so-called emerging sectors, and enormous difficulty for the established middle classes in maintaining their relative levels of income and wealth. In the global North, jobs, mainly in the more consolidated industrial sectors such as the production of durable goods, are disappearing in the face of competition, chiefly from Chinese industry.
Alongside such economic transformations, the expansion of minority rights and the reduction, even if very limited, of asymmetries of gender, race, and ethnicity, in both the global North and the global South, destabilize established hierarchies, generating frustrations and anxieties for those who were losing power and influence.
In very rough terms, this is the, so to speak, objective configuration upon which authoritarian discourses that promise to restore the nationalist, sexist, and racist order win over and frame the subjectivity of those who felt and feel disoriented and helpless in a context in which old certainties and new hopes melt into air.
Kathya Araujo: Authoritarianism is a word that refers to a set of phenomena. On the one hand, it denotes a type of political regime. On the other, a specific mode of exercising the powers with which someone has been invested in order to wield authority, for example, a schoolteacher or a father, a woman president or a doctor. Third, authoritarianism is a specific modality in which relations among individuals, and between individuals and institutions, are organized within a society. Answering this question requires beginning by drawing that distinction.
As far as specific political regimes are concerned, as history has shown, authoritarianism is not necessarily tied to capitalism. We have had authoritarian regimes well beyond capitalism’s sphere of influence. Capitalism, for its part, has operated under different kinds of political regimes. Capitalism is more amoeba than bull, both for its infinite capacity to change shape and for its professional phagocytosis. It is able to slip into any crevice to ensure its survival, and authoritarian or democratic regimes (and their principles) will always be potential instruments to that end. Nevertheless, the now-classic work of Guillermo O’Donnell, drawing on the case of South America, has suggested the intimate link between capitalism and authoritarianism as a regime. What O’Donnell showed in his classic book The Bureaucratic-Authoritarian State is that the emergence of authoritarian regimes in the second half of the twentieth century in South America was bound up with a crisis in the dominant classes’ capacity for political and social control. A crisis connected to the growing questioning, by broad sectors of the population, of the traditional forms of authority tied to the prevailing modes of distributing social power and to the economic and social architecture that came with them. Authoritarianism goes hand in hand with a narrative of restoring order that presents itself as a technical restoration rather than a political decision. As this work teaches, the narrative of restoring order by way of authoritarianism, today as then (though by very different routes), is a way of resolving the crisis of domination that is, at the same time, a means of protecting the capitalist model.
But there is the other dimension of authoritarianism, the social one. It is to this dimension that my field of research comes closest, concerned as it is with structural transformations and their impacts on individuals and the social bond. From this perspective, the research shows how capitalism, in its neoliberal modality, takes part through non-obvious channels in shaping the fate of authority in present-day societies. In societies deeply influenced by neoliberal principles, individuals face a growing need to counteract the high levels of complexity of the world, together with very high levels of existential insecurity and social positional instability. One of the manifestations of this need is the search for guarantees that can be observed in a dependence on the perceived superiority (in skill, vision, or strength) of certain actors. This is sharpened insofar as we find today the paradoxical coexistence of a generalized questioning of hierarchies and authority (for example, that of science, or that of teachers) alongside a willingness to consider that only positions of authority that wield their power forcefully, with a heavy hand, are capable of being effective. In this way, experiences under neoliberal capitalism find one of their channels of expression in a strengthening of support for authoritarianism: they foster a receptive sensibility toward political authority figures who emphasize their strength, power, and capacity for domination, and who are able to convince others of their effectiveness in guaranteeing protection against perceived threats, which are amplified by the underlying existential uncertainty. Capitalism gives authoritarianism a foothold as a political modality insofar as it weakens the moral and socio-cultural underpinnings of democracy.
2. How do you think your field of knowledge could interact with other fields in the construction of this diagnosis?
Lilia Schwarcz: I start from a methodology of ethnohistory that helps us think about the past in terms of change, but also of reiterations and continuities over time. A perspective that, without being deterministic, insists that “our present is full of past” and that, understood in these terms, Brazilians have always been authoritarian.
I also believe that, in times of Culture War – waged quite successfully by the populist far right – history has taken on a central role in preventing narratives of sugarcoated pasts, marked by nostalgic and regressive discourses of an authoritarian bent.
These disputes have revolved around values, identities, customs, religion, gender, historical memory, race, education, and national symbols. They do not necessarily constitute a problem in themselves, since democracies thrive on conflict and dissent. The danger arises when these disagreements cease to be seen as legitimate and come to be treated as moral battles.
Democracy depends on the existence of legitimate adversaries. Authoritarianism, on the other hand, begins to gain ground when the “other” ceases to be someone with whom one disagrees and becomes the enemy whose political existence must be eliminated.
In these circumstances, public debate turns into a logic of symbolic elimination. And it is in this scenario that the promise to restore a supposedly lost historical order can open space for authoritarian projects that present themselves as simple solutions to complex problems and use resentment as a form of social engagement.
It is precisely at this point that I think my field can collaborate with others: by illuminating the symbolic efficacy of political power, how it makes use of rituals, narratives about the past, paintings, and monuments for its own exaltation and for the construction of collective imaginaries.
For this reason, many cultural historians observe that attacks on education and the arts tend to function as early indicators of processes of democratic deterioration. And, in this sense, artistic and visual production plays a very relevant role in denaturalizing inequality and exposing unitary forms of discourse and history.
Sérgio Costa: I would like to emphasize that sociology, as a science specialized in researching the connections between structure and action, that is, between material processes and subjective constructions, is in a privileged position to understand the nexus between capitalism and authoritarianism. This dual and simultaneous attention to structures and to the signification of social processes allows sociology, at least potentially, to avoid the false dispute, so prevalent in research on the rise of the far right, over the primacy of either the economy or of culture and ideology in support for the radical left. Obviously, political choices cannot be reduced to any one of these spheres; social action is a consequence of the interpretation of structures, as we have known at least since Max Weber.
Understanding the connection between capitalism and authoritarianism implies, first, cooperation among the various fields of sociology that until now have engaged in little dialogue. I am referring to the need for collaboration between the sociology of social inequalities and political sociology – which are the fields in which I move with greatest familiarity – and the sociology of emotions, the sociology of religions, the sociology of culture, and the sociology of the digital world, to mention only some of the most obvious fields involved in this dialogue.
Moreover, cooperation with other disciplines is equally essential. To understand, for example, the traps of financial and platform capitalism, dialogue with political economy is fundamental. In turn, to understand the role of digital communication in fueling adherence to authoritarianism, it is not enough to study the content that is disseminated. It is important to study, at least minimally, the material infrastructure and the algorithmic logic, for which collaboration with the information sciences is fundamental. Equally relevant is understanding the limitations of the political system, and of politics in general, in responding to and processing anxieties and expectations in a world of few certainties. For this, dialogue with political science, especially its more critical, less positivist currents, is indispensable. Finally, but no less important, are anthropology, to help us understand how political repertoires are negotiated and modified in everyday life, as well as social psychology and psychoanalysis, indispensable for uncovering the individual and collective impulses mobilized by authoritarianism.
Kathya Araujo: Reflection on structural transformations, social processes, and their impacts on social bonds and individuals is an indispensable contribution to thinking about political phenomena. As I have tried to show throughout my work, the political key is today far less powerful for explaining social life than it was fifty or sixty years ago. The efforts of the sphere of institutional politics to give shape to social discourses, orientations, or narratives now compete with the weight of people’s ordinary experiences. It is from these latter that they draw their knowledge of the social and build their positions on what is admissible and what is inadmissible; on what is required and what is not; on what is right and what is wrong; on what is worth protecting; and, of course, their fears. That is why society today does not let itself be explained by those political keys, just as it is not with those keys that we can explain the relations people establish with politics. Politics may intervene to make use of what emerges from these ordinary experiences, but it cannot replace it with its own productions.
On the contrary, the forms taken by the social bond and by individuals are a principal key to understanding the political bond today. It is indispensable to understand the mechanisms and social processes by which authoritarianism becomes admissible and desirable in our societies, and the ways in which people’s experiences in neoliberal capitalist societies drive this phenomenon.
3. In your opinion, what possibilities for effective action could be guided by this discussion, with a view to confronting the negative social effects produced by the deepening of authoritarianism today?
Lilia Schwarcz: Authoritarianism advances not only through the force of the State, but also through the slow erosion of social bonds, public trust, and institutions.
For this reason, strengthening political institutions, civic culture, social movements, and mechanisms of redistribution remains a kind of primer for determining whether capitalist societies remain democratic or move toward forms of authoritarianism.
In this way, in my opinion, actions in favor of democracy should not be directed exclusively at strengthening institutions. They must also include the cultural and educational spheres. It is worth investing in the public sphere, because democracy depends on building spaces in which people can debate, disagree, and construct minimal consensuses.
Hence the importance of strengthening public education in general and universities in particular; preserving the autonomy of the press; protecting cultural institutions; and encouraging plural forms of public debate.
It is not, therefore, a matter of eliminating conflicts, but of preventing them, in the democratic process, from turning into permanent wars or from turning adversaries into bitter enemies.
Second, in my view, it is necessary to concentrate action on the inequality that exists in our country – and that expresses itself in social, racial, and gender terms. In a nation like ours, marked by its colonial past, slavery, and large-scale monoculture landholding, strengthening democracy also means severely combating inequality, in order to better qualify our democracy.
Third, I understand that in times of Culture War, defending historical memory is also a democratic measure. Societies that lose the memory of their authoritarian experiences become more vulnerable to repeating them. For this reason, archives, museums, monuments, artistic production, and the teaching of history are not peripheral elements of democracy. I would say they are part of a symbolic and regulatory infrastructure.
Fourth, I would also stress how necessary it is to urgently regulate the power of digital platforms and the concentration in a few private companies. This will require demanding greater algorithmic transparency, data protection, platform accountability, the creation of usage guidelines, and the fight against coordinated disinformation campaigns.
Finally, without wishing to be utopian, I believe it will be necessary to recover the idea of the common good. The advance of authoritarianism is associated with the weakening of the very idea of collectivity and solidarity. For, as the literature explains, democracy requires more than elections; it requires practices of solidarity and belonging, and projects for learning equality.
Thus, combating authoritarianism is not merely about defeating authoritarian leaders. Authoritarian regimes thrive when people become isolated, demobilized, and incapable of acting collectively.
Sérgio Costa: My diagnosis, or if you prefer, my wager, is that the far right’s success in mobilizing the frustrated anxieties and expectations that emerge at this specific moment of capitalist globalization is contingent, that is, it does not constitute an imperative, a historical necessity. It follows that other repertoires of signification, democratic and solidary ones, can be (and indeed recurrently are) equally successful in the task of articulating and responding to these same anxieties and expectations. For emancipatory and progressive politics, this implies a dual and simultaneous task: to transform the structural conditions that generate frustrated anxieties and expectations, and to construct repertoires of signification for present-day discontents grounded in solidarity and democracy.
Democratic forces (politicians, parties, governments, intellectuals) have been encountering enormous difficulties in facing this dual task. At the structural level, progressive governments and politicians in the global North have, in recent years, literally gambled away the institutions of the welfare state as if this would guarantee greater competitiveness in the global economy. In the global South, governments bet on income-transfer policies decoupled from employment policies or from an industrial policy capable of advancing the productivity of national industries. The result is the primarization and deindustrialization of national economies, as well as household indebtedness, aggravating anxieties and uncertainties.
At the level of developing repertoires of signification of collective experiences, that is, in the sphere of the struggle for hegemony, progressive forces have also shown little dynamism, resorting, as can be seen in the Brazilian case, to old models of interpretation in order to respond to new aspirations. In Europe, what I have seen is that democratic parties and politicians, even parties with a long social-democratic tradition, when harried by the far right, incorporate into their discourse the repertoires of the right-wing radicals. They denounce the supposed privileges granted to immigrants or the equally supposed excesses of “identity politics.” They agree, so to speak, to play on the adversary’s (discursive) field, aggravating their own existential crisis.
Kathya Araujo: There are many, but for reasons of space I would like to concentrate on one, perhaps the one that most concerns me as a social scientist. Good diagnoses must be produced. This means starting from the fact that not all authoritarian regimes or authoritarian styles of the present are alike; some stand at a considerable distance from others. They are not alike because, to begin with, their meaning varies in each case. But also because they are mounted upon very different histories and economic, social, and political processes. Indeed, they differ greatly from one another because in each case the specific features of capitalism differ; the structure and cohesion of the dominant groups, as well as the degrees of stability or destabilization of these groups; the factors that define the current historical condition of the societies in which they operate; the features of the social bond and of individuals; the recent political history; the set of moral and socio-cultural supports on which political life rests, among others.
Thus, in this context, it is advisable to delimit clearly the phenomenon we face in a cross-cutting way, while bringing out the specificities of national cases. At the same time, it is important to build more complex analytical frameworks that take organically into account the fact that it is impossible to understand political authoritarianism without understanding social authoritarianism.
4. Which authors and/or works in your field of knowledge would be relevant to this debate? Mention three or four.
Lilia Schwarcz: ANDERSON, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983.
ARENDT, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1951.
LEVITSKY, Steven; ZIBLATT, Daniel. How Democracies Die. New York: Crown, 2018.
TROUILLOT, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995.
Sérgio Costa: The Brazilian and international bibliography on the subject is extremely rich, and any selection is necessarily incomplete and arbitrary. I limit myself here to three Brazilian titles:
Limites da democracia [Limits of Democracy] (Companhia das Letras, 2022), by Marcos Nobre, shows incisively how the political system in Brazil proves incapable of processing the discontents echoed in real and virtual streets, thus creating a favorable environment for anti-system authoritarian discourses.
Do transe à vertigem [From Trance to Vertigo] (Ubu, 2022), by Rodrigo Nunes, reconstructs in order to deconstruct the foundations of authoritarian discourse, highlighting how anguish and fears are instrumentalized by regressive grammar.
Amanhã vai ser maior: O que aconteceu com o Brasil e possíveis rotas de fuga para a crise atual [Tomorrow Will Be Bigger: What Happened to Brazil and Possible Escape Routes from the Current Crisis] (Planeta, 2019), by Rosana Pinheiro-Machado, documents the author’s pioneering work in detecting how the crisis of masculinity and, more generally, intersectional conflicts feed authoritarian tendencies.
Kathya Araujo: The Bureaucratic-Authoritarian State by Guillermo O’Donnell: a book we ought to revisit. For all the distance between today and the period the author studies, many of its underlying theses hold up and gain in relevance. Not to take them up as they were, but to think them through in the heat of our own times.
The Invisible Institutions by Pierre Rosanvallon: I find it invaluable in showing how our effort today must be to understand that dimension of the invisible which sustains and moves societies (what the author calls invisible institutions) in order to address the visible.
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff: an indispensable reference for thinking about the new strategies of power and control in their articulation with capitalism.
