Richard Saull, Capital, Race and Space, Volume 1: The Far-Right from Bonapartism to Fascism (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2023)

Fascist studies are presently dominated by a largely non-ideological paradigm, albeit one deriving from liberal institutions and figures.Outside this prevailing "new consensus" model, the relentlessly durable theoretical corpus of Marxism has developed its own interpretations of fascism, harking back to a century-old intellectual tradition.From Gramsci to Benjamin, from Lukcs to Bloch, from Trotsky to Thalheimer, from Adorno and Horkheimer to Poulantzas, from Laclau to Habermas, a panoply of authoritative leftist thinkers has left an undeniable mark on the understanding of fascism in the 20 th century, holding an increasingly relevant influence throughout the 21 st .As historical materialism undergoes continuous adaptation, authors such as Richard Saull, intent on developing an "international historical sociology of the far-right social and political movements" (as stated in his institutional presentation at Queen Mary's University of London School of Politics and International Relations) employ leftist cannons, often in heterodox fashion.In the massive two-volume Capital, Race and Space, Saull takes on a synoptic retrospective of the far-right, in a chronological span ranging from mid-19 th century revolutionary convulsions to contemporaneity.With international dynamics superposed upon local narratives, the approach illustrates the author's conviction that "the international constitutes the ideology and politics of the far-right in both the material and imaginary sense" (p.xi).An inherent conditionality is attributed to all far-right permutations, from the inter-war era fascism as an integral product of "mass politics, capitalist imperialism, racism and the legacies of total war," to the proximate "neoliberal far-right," purportedly emerging out of the dysfunctional mechanics of "transnational capitalism, transnational political and legal governance, and a populist political mood connected to 'anti-politics'" (p.xii).Before an ample historiographical excursus, a vantage point of "recurring crises" registers the structural contradictions of liberal capitalist modernity.Several distinctions are operated within the far-right spectrum, but the overall perspective remains excessively holistic.Hence, the definition of the far-right as a "distinct ideological representation and articulation of politics and form of political agency connected to specific social layers and spaces" (p.5), confined by political and social context.There is an obvious degree of hermeticism contained in this perspective, as well as a misguided analytical focus, which pushes the ideological dimension to the margins.Furthermore, structural social interpretations often perpetuate classist tropes, such as the far-right designating the "petty bourgeoisie" as one of its main constituents, anti-Semitism incentivising the lower capitalist hierarchy towards far-right adhesion, organised labour presumably less "vulnerable to far-right appeals" (p.9) and so on.Such contentious lines of argument have been systematically dismantled in fascist studies over the past few decades.