Steve Bannon on ‘productive capitalism’: investigating the economic ideology of the American populist right

Abstract:

In this article we explore the economic thinking of the American populist right and the reservoir of ideological tropes that it draws on. We start with Steve Bannon and show how he narrates a binary distinction between a healthy, productive capitalism and a perverted, speculative capitalism. While speculative capitalism is attributed to globalist elites and parasitic minorities in the US, productive capitalism is defined as the home-grown American variety that once benefited workers and entrepreneurs alike. In a comparative ideological analysis, we document that Bannon’s move of ‘othering’ has a long history in writings of the extreme right in the US. In the 1920s and 30s, Henry Ford and Charles Coughlin grounded their antisemitism in a dichotomy of productive and speculative capitalism. Lawrence Dennis developed an Americanized version of fascism using a similar distinction. More recent thinkers of the American Alt-Right revived the critique of capitalism along such lines, as we show with reference to the writings of Samuel Francis. This article contributes to the study of populist ideology by showing how economic theorizing is grafted upon its core distinction of the sane people and corrupt elites.