The Widening Gyre: When the Centre Cannot Hold, the Left Must be Bold

Paul Klee, *Arrogance*, 1939. The tightrope walker tries, in vain, to maintain balance.

By Rob A.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned.

—William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming

In three articles¹ published in English in Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal, Alvaro García Linera explores capitalism’s cycles of accumulation and domination, the crisis of legitimacy in existing political formations, and the opportunities presented by “liminal” time. Although he speaks largely from the Latin American context—particularly Bolivia—his analysis has broad implications for understanding the “disappearing centre” across the globe. In many parts of the imperial core, including Australia, neoliberal and traditional liberal-capitalist centrism is rapidly losing credibility. Linera’s writings provide a critical backdrop for examining how this erosion of credibility occurs, why it is likely to accelerate, and what strategies an anti-imperialist left can adopt to build a tangible revolutionary alternative to capitalist collapse.

Crisis and Liminality

For 35 years, from 1980 to 2005, the moral and labour order of much of the world was governed by a set of basic principles. These principles encouraged an imagined and inevitable destiny for the course of societies… The first early signs of the decay of this global order emerged from the peripheries of the capitalist world at the start of the 21st century… We are witnessing the slow and melancholic disintegration of the old free market order and the nascent rise of various alternative models, none of which has secured a definitive foothold yet. This scenario gives rise to a chaotic world, characterised by fleeting trajectories, still unable to discern a new order that, if established, could endure for another 40 to 50 years.²

We are in a period of transition or liminality, one where neither the progressive nor conservative wings of the capitalist ruling class have yet been capable of consolidating long-term hegemony. Linera credits this volatility to the structural limits of contemporary capitalism, the exhaustion of neoliberal governance models, and the intensifying social conflicts that break centrist illusions of stability and the longevity of the neoliberal consensus.

Cycles of economic accumulation and domination, in Linera’s terms, signify qualitative differences in these modes: the liberal cycle from 1870 until the outbreak of the First World War in the 20th century, followed by the “State Capitalism” cycle starting in the mid-1930s, and the neoliberal cycle beginning in the 1980s and declining through the GFC and subsequent crashes. In response to these cycles, there emerge recurrent surges in both popular progressive and conservative projects, each unable to sustain long-term dominance. In this sense, capitalism’s structural tendency toward crisis creates the conditions for a “liminal time,” in which the failure of one paradigm (e.g., neoliberal growth) makes way for transient political realignments in the vacuum of hegemony. These economic upheavals weaken entrenched ideological formations (and by extension the political centre), as promised benefits like stable employment and robust social programs dissipate, leading to disillusion with establishment parties.

Linera contends that recent history in Latin America reveals a series of these wave-like progressions: left-populist or socialist-leaning governments win power on a surge of popular support (often from unions, Indigenous movements, the urban poor), but then face intense pushback from capital, the media, and conservative coalitions. Meanwhile, right-wing or neoliberal governments capitalize on discontent, gain office, and implement repressive or shock-therapy policies, only to be met by renewed mass resistance. The result is a seesaw dynamic: neither side is able to gain a robust foothold.

This cyclical phenomenon has broader resonance in the imperial core. In places like Australia, the centrist alliances anchoring politics such as the Labor Party and the Liberal-National coalition struggle to maintain credibility in the face of the contradictions of neoliberal decline: wage stagnation, escalating ecological disasters, and deepening economic crisis. Electoral volatility, declining faith in liberal-democratic institutions, and rising populist movements on the right further erode the political center. This is visible in the flight of voters to independent candidates and parties, to ideological outliers that would have been marginal at the turn of the millennium. The Libertarian party’s success in securing victories in local elections, and the rapid growth of anti-lockdown and anti-vax adjacent politics in the Dandenongs and Northern Rivers, attest to the increasing attrition of once relatively stable Labor or Liberal votes to more baroque political “alternatives.”

The fragmentation of the political centre is often read as a sign of deepening polarisation between left and right, but as one of our comrades recently remarked, “it is far more accurate to say we live in a more fractured and alienated society, where the traditions of solidarity have broken down.” Not only the traditions of solidarity, but the very experience of “a world with a sense of direction”, what Linera refers to as the predictive horizon. This horizon shapes people’s daily lives—their strategies, their tolerances, and their hopes. Failures and disruptions can be shouldered under a kind of teleology, where a promised future of abundance justifies an austere present. In the absence of this predictive horizon, we experience a sort of frozen present—lost futures abound in media and art, and a pervasive sense of melancholy and defeat becomes ingrained in the social consciousness of most people.

The future now appears inscrutable, leaving personal life experiences disjointed, like folds lacking any cohesion. With the future extinguished and the present unhinged, the very trajectory of social life seems to have been derailed.³

With the neoliberal horizon faded and passed, and the horizon offered by Trump, Milei and others clearly a mirage, there remains the communist horizon—“a dimension of experience that we can never lose, even if, lost in a fog or focused on our feet, we fail to see it.”⁴ In order to reach it, the left must not respond to this liminal time with moderation, but commit instead to a bold and clear politics of revolutionary transition.

The Problem of Moderation in Liminal Times

In “In Turbulent Times, Moderation Means Defeat for the Left,” Linera issues a direct challenge to reformist tendencies on the left. When the social and economic crises of capitalism sharpen, he argues, the public becomes increasingly impatient with half-measures. Moderation—attempting to appease “centrist” or “middle ground” voters—often disheartens the left’s base and cedes ideological initiative to the right. For Linera, bold, radical action that truly addresses material hardships is the only way for the left to remain relevant:

…when there are problems, the solution to the distress of the poor lies in the wallets of the rich. There needs to be leaders who dare to do this with audacity and strength. Are there progressive solutions to inflation and informal employment? Of course there is. We just need to seek them out, to invent them. What we cannot say is that there is no alternative. In times like these, it should be banned to say that.⁵

This insight is especially pertinent in contexts like Australia, where the standard policy range is narrow—center-right to moderate social-democratic—and public trust in politicians is waning. Despite a popular mandate to govern on a nominally left policy platform, the Labor party have bluntly refused to table materially significant solutions to crises affecting the working class, such as rapidly declining affordability of housing, steep increases in the prices of non-discretionary goods and services, and the hollowing out of the public healthcare system. This will come as no surprise to materialists who understand the subordination of the Labor party to the interests of private capital. But to workers without this consciousness, the party’s betrayal has not gone unnoticed. The question on many people’s lips is, “why should we vote for a “left” party that has presided over a brutal decline in living standards?”

Furthermore, the uncritical support of militarism and imperialist aggression in the form of AUKUS, the war in Ukraine, and Labor’s anaemic stance on Gaza have alienated soft leftists, progressives, and diaspora communities, all of whom are now looking for alternative political representation. Vijay Prashad refers to the current crop of “left” parties in the imperial core as the “extreme center.” If supposedly left parties materially fund and support genocide, prison labour, violent imperialist extraction, and anti-democratic forms of hybrid warfare, then what possible reason do progressives or leftists have to support them? And if the basic economic policies of both the conservative and liberal parties orbit around the neoliberal consensus, and function in much the same way vis a vis unions, marginalised peoples, and social struggles, why choose either? There is a direct relationship between the increasing visibility of these contradictions and the rapid decline of the credibility of the establishment parties.

The collapse of legitimacy opens up the possibility for radicalisation, but not only in the direction of a class conscious left movement. Equally possible are rapid turns to the right, as we have seen with the anarchist and anti-authoritarian tendencies that have joined forces with the anti-lockdown movement, which have been drawn deep into the undercurrent of neo-fascist ideation that characterises these spaces. Caught in a liminal moment, a left that offers only incremental fixes for systematic crises will in practice remain indistinguishable from mainstream parties. The broad masses will swing toward right-wing populists, as has already been evident, or otherwise lapse into apathy. What is urgently needed in these unfolding conditions is not moderation, but political clarity, and the confidence to act boldly in the direction of revolutionary transition.

Liminal Time as Crisis and Opportunity

Although Linera frames liminal periods as deeply unstable, he also notes their potential for transformative change. In the midst of crises, once-unquestioned dogmas lose their hold. Spaces open for new political imaginaries—whether they be reactionary or emancipatory. A core driver of the declining legitimacy of the political centre is the conspicuous absence of a coherent and inspiring political project, of a predictive horizon appropriate to the crises of our time. Workers are repeatedly asked to accept austerity without end, to avoid fracturing “social cohesion” through political activity, and to conjure belief in promises of improved living standards that have failed to materialise for more than a generation. They are asked to do so without any guarantee in the capability or even the intent of the major parties to resolve the crises. The patience and trust of working class people the world over is wearing thin.

For many young workers, this is their only experience of political culture. Their experience of “the left” orbits around the centrist-liberal or social democratic formations in their nation, who at best tend to proffer insipid appeals to representative identity politics and empty gestures at climate mitigation. That this is done while those same parties defend and entrench regimes of oppression and funnel taxpayer dollars to fossil fuel extraction is not lost on anyone, young or old. So, when an ostensibly anti-establishment politics like that of Trump or Musk emerges with what seems on the surface like a political alternative, one that energetically denounces out of touch elites and promises radical shifts to the economic and political fabric, it is little wonder that an immiserated public, starved of political ambition from the decaying centre, prick up their ears.

People do not take to the streets and vote for the left in order to tinker around the edges of neoliberalism; they mobilise and radically shift their previous political allegiances because they are fed up with neoliberalism, because they want to get rid of neoliberalism as it has only succeeded in enriching a few families and companies.⁶

In this milieu, Linera’s emphasis on short-lived victories and defeats underscores a crucial point: to break out of the cyclical back-and-forth, the left must organize in forms that can withstand inevitable conservative backlash. We must articulate a thoroughly revolutionary political project that can speak to the masses, provide genuine material solutions to the problems facing everyday people, and demonstrate how, despite appearances, the far-right of a special type⁷ is incapable of and uninterested in developing these solutions—that their aim is to loot and run.

Twin Peaks People are Party People

Centrism cannot maintain the illusions it once did: the structural contradictions of capitalism have become painfully visible. When the centre recedes, new avenues of opportunity open. Revolutionary theorists from Lenin to Gramsci note that conjunctural crises can accelerate change if the left is organised, politically astute, and willing to develop solutions that resonate with mass discontent. In Australia, the collapse of trust in the Liberal-National coalition, combined with disillusionment in Labor’s mild reformism, is precisely such a conjuncture. Whether it leads to a progressive reorientation or a reactionary wave depends on how effectively the left can organise and build mass popular support, on what formations and vehicles it adopts, and with what strategies it proceeds.

While Latin America’s history of populist, socialist, and nationalist experiments differs from Australia’s, Linera’s perspective on the necessity of strong social bases, ideological clarity, and continuous mobilisation is broadly applicable. The Pink Tide governments initially saw success by combining progressive economic measures, assertive anti-imperialist rhetoric, and grassroots activism that embodied the demands of large sections of the disaffected population. Their partial defeats were brought about by imperialist sabotage, a failure to transform the economy, and an inability to maintain the mobilisation of their base—factors which allowed right-wing forces to regroup. Australia’s left must heed these lessons and forge alliances among the working-class, Indigenous communities, environmental activists, and migrants, fostering ongoing engagement rather than episodic mobilisations.

It is not enough to simply articulate a communist horizon—the vehicle of revolutionary transition must also be built. Existing leftist formations in Australia have struggled to produce a dynamic, responsive, and robust party capable of mobilising the masses in this direction. Liberals and progressives are increasingly disillusioned with the major parties and the traditional organs of movement activity, with NGOs and the unions as they now stand. Returning to Lenin’s question, the “what is to be done?” of our time and place seems to point strongly in this direction. Liminal time and the interregnum between cycles of accumulation and domination present a situation where the contradictions of capitalism are at their sharpest, particularly in the numbing milieus of the imperial core. It is in just such a moment that a coherent Marxist-Leninist force, with a clear anti-imperialist orientation, can bring together the disparate threads of proletarian radicalisation into an engine of social change.

Whatever Ploughs Our Dreams is Ours to Give

For the left, a bold vision of the necessity of the socialist project, and a party formation with the capacity to move towards it, offer a pathway out of the morass. Building strong mass organisations, confronting global capital, and advancing a coherent socialist vision are all essential steps, as are direct engagement with and material support for workers from diverse backgrounds and communities. At the granular level, struggling together builds solidarity; if leftists are willing to roll up our sleeves and show up in the lives of everyday people, we may gain their trust and subsequently, their ear. When they ask what we make of the unfolding situation, they’re all the more likely to listen and to join us in our efforts if we have shown concretely that we share their interests and are willing to work alongside them to improve our shared conditions. While the road ahead is replete with challenges, the liminal time between cycles and the dissolution of centrist illusions opens the way for a left unafraid of itself to articulate the possible in the present.

We began with a poem by William Butler Yeats, an Irish nationalist from a privileged merchant background. Troubled by the prospect of popular rule, Yeats denounced democracy as little more than a breeding ground for disorder and mediocrity, believing that the “mob” threatened true governance. His disdain for the masses eventually led him to express support for fascism, reflecting a broader distrust of people’s capacity to govern themselves. The Second Coming expresses an all-too familiar bourgeois paranoia at the collapse of the ruling political order and the emergence of a people’s democracy. Yet, contrary to Yeats’ fear, a collapsing centre is not solely a crisis, but also an opportunity to reshape political consciousness and build a better world. Whether the Australian left seizes this liminal juncture depends on its willingness to address head-on the structural realities of capitalism and imperialism. If it does so, the disappearing centre could become the catalyst for a renewed, far-reaching socialist project—one that not only survives cyclical waves but transforms them into a sustained, emancipatory advance.

We need not share Yeats’ concern that “mere anarchy” will be loosed upon the world. Rather, let us turn to one of our own dear poets and political activists, Muriel Rukeyser. Rukeyser did not balk at social change—she invented new forms of documentary poetry, and breathed vivid life into the dreams of a socialist future that animate us and bring us into active political struggle. That animating spirit, that spectre that once haunted Europe now roams the air over our griefs, our wars, and this goodness among us. Our task is to bring it to flower upon the people-flowering earth.

Whatever roams the air is traveling

Over these griefs, these wars and this good.

Whatever cries and changes, lives and reaches

Across the threshold of sense; I know the piercing name;

Among my silence, in cold, the birth-cry came.

Salt of these tears whitens my eyelashes.

Whatever plows the body turns to food:

Before my face, flowers, color which is form.

Cries plow the sea and air and turn to birth

Upon the people-sown, people-flowering earth.

A year turns in its crisis. In its sleep.

Whatever plows our dreams is ours to keep.

Whatever plows our dreams is ours to give:

The threshold rises and changes.

I give, I perceive;

Here are the gifts of day risen at last;

Blood of desire, the rising of belief

Beyond our fury and our silences.

—Muriel Rukeyser, Phaneron

Notes

Author

Bren