Simon Pearson

The End of the Long 20th Century

April 3, 2025

The long 20th century has ended, not with a transition to something new, but with the collapse of what once was, neoliberalism has failed, but nothing has yet replaced it, and in the absence of a left alternative, the far right alone moves to seize the ruins.

I. Introduction The dominant class assured itself that history had ended. It was wrong.

The Cold War’s conclusion was meant to herald the final triumph of neoliberal capitalism, with the American-led order appearing unassailable. The long 20th century, stretching from the industrial transformations of the late 19th century through the convulsions of war and revolution, seemed to have settled into technocratic permanence. All that remained was the steady administration of capital, the expansion of markets, and the inevitable march toward liberal democracy.

That illusion has shattered.

The early 21st century has not simply seen the breakdown of the economic and political certainties of the last century, it has revealed them as ideological fabrications. The 2008 crash exposed capitalism as neither self-correcting nor efficient but a system sustained by state intervention on behalf of capital. The pandemic confirmed that modern states, for all their bureaucratic prowess, were incapable of protecting their citizens. War returned to Europe, American democracy faltered, and the far right, long assumed consigned to history, has returned as a dominant force. Even China, once seen as the engine of global growth, now confronts deep structural crisis.

These events, taken alone, signal crisis. Taken together, they mark the end of an era. The long 20th century is over. Its institutions persist, but belief in them has collapsed. The question now is not whether the world of the last century can be restored. It cannot. The question is what will replace it.

II. 2000 and the American Illusion

If American democracy ever existed in the way its defenders imagined, it did not survive the 21st century. The rupture came not in 2016 or 2024, but in 2000, when the Supreme Court, in a transparently partisan decision, handed the presidency to George W. Bush. The legal coup in Bush v. Gore established a precedent: when power was seized through institutional means, it would not be meaningfully contested.

The election hinged on a few hundred disputed ballots in Florida, where Bush’s brother was governor. The chaos of hanging chads and misaligned machines only underscored the point: American electoral procedures were arbitrary, and outcomes could be determined by fiat. The Court, recognising the fragility of its ruling, explicitly stated that its decision should not set precedent. But precedent it became.

The belief that democracy could function through institutional inertia persisted, but each test revealed its emptiness. The 2016 election, shaped by FBI interventions and elite machinations, reinforced the lesson. The January 6 coup attempt in 2020, initially dismissed as a fringe rebellion, emboldened the movement that returned in 2024. American democracy, where it still exists, functions as spectacle. Power is contested elsewhere.

III. 9/11 and the Permanent State of Exception

A year later, the towers fell. The American dominant class seized the opportunity. The USA PATRIOT Act redefined the balance between state and public, ushering in an era of surveillance and repression. The ‘War on Terror’ was not just a military campaign but a restructuring of state power. Guantánamo, drones, and extrajudicial killings became normalised. At home, the security state was entrenched, with few dissenters.

The Iraq War in 2003 followed this logic. Ostensibly about weapons or democracy, it was a demonstration: international law was irrelevant, institutions malleable, and power its own justification. Yet instead of cementing American hegemony, the war accelerated its decline. The occupation produced not order but insurgency. The legitimacy of American power crumbled.

Now, the logic of the War on Terror has returned home. Trump’s administration repurposes its machinery for domestic use. Migrants are held in facilities that echo past horrors. The theatre of legality has vanished; power asserts itself openly.

American influence persists, but its unchallenged supremacy has ended. The War on Terror revealed the limits of empire. The rise of China, the reassertion of Russian military force, and the defiance of the Global South all signal the same fact: the 21st century is no longer America’s by default.

IV. 2008 and the End of Economic Legitimacy

The 2008 crash should have buried neoliberalism. Instead, it revealed its essence: a system reliant on state power not to regulate capital but to rescue it.

Banks were bailed out. The working class was left to collapse. Governments rushed to stabilise finance while enforcing austerity on their populations. In the US, millions lost homes. In Britain, the crash justified a decade of Conservative cuts. In Europe, it became a sovereign debt crisis, with Germany imposing economic strangulation on Greece, Spain, and Italy.

Capitalism showed itself to be a structure of permanent crisis management. The market’s self-correcting myth died. The response was not reform but entrenchment. The left, failing to articulate an alternative, clung to the same failed institutions. The right, willing to abandon norms, filled the void.

V. Pandemic and Predation

If 2008 revealed capitalism’s dependency on the state, COVID-19 showed crisis as its mode of operation. A moment demanding collective action instead saw governments prioritise profit over life. Millions died. Public health collapsed. Essential workers were sacrificed while the elite retreated.

Lockdowns were chaotic, PPE shortages routine, and publicly funded vaccines commodified. For the working class, it was disaster. For the rich, it was opportunity. Billionaires amassed greater wealth. Tech monopolies expanded. Asset managers fed on ruined small businesses. It was not failure—it was design.

There was no reckoning, no reform, no reconstruction. The state restored order for capital. The rest were left to bury the dead.

VI. The European Impasse

The EU was meant to be a model of post-national governance. Instead, it has become a technocratic shell. The eurozone crisis revealed its core contradiction: monetary union without fiscal solidarity. The refugee crisis of 2015 exposed the limits of liberal tolerance. Brexit shattered integrationist illusions. War in Ukraine revealed Europe’s dependencies.

Even where the far right has not governed, it has set the agenda. Liberal centrists now mimic their language of nationalism and exclusion. Europe does not lead the future; it manages decline.

VII. The Left’s Absence and the Right’s Advance

The long 20th century ended not with transition but collapse. Neoliberalism endures, not from strength, but from the vacuum left in its wake. The left believed history moved in its favour. It was wrong.

The left’s institutions are dead or dying. Its ideas exhausted. Social democracy clung to legitimacy long after power was lost. Radical movements failed to translate energy into strategy. Organising gave way to online performance. Class became abstraction. The right, unburdened by coherence, moved in.

The far right does not offer justice. It offers vengeance—against migrants, minorities, elites. It does not need to fix capitalism. It redirects rage. Its promise is not utopia but strength. Where the left hesitates, the right acts.

There are countercurrents—labour insurgencies, tenant resistance, Indigenous struggles—but they remain fragmented. The left must not just resist but rebuild. Without organisation, theory, and imagination, it will be swept aside.

VIII. China: Crisis, Not Ascent

China was proof that capitalism could thrive under authoritarian state control. That myth has collapsed. The property sector has imploded. Local governments drown in debt. The demographic crisis deepens. Xi Jinping centralises power and turns to nationalism, but these cannot substitute for a broken model.

Taiwan remains the test. The CCP proclaims reunification inevitable. But Taiwanese youth reject it. The war in Ukraine has forced Beijing to reconsider. The danger is not a rising China, but a China in crisis, compelled to act externally to maintain internal control.

IX. Russia: Rule by Spectacle

Russia’s war in Ukraine was meant to assert strength. Instead, it exposed limits. The conflict became attritional. Sanctions hurt but did not break. Putin’s grip remains firm.

The Wagner rebellion showed cracks; Prigozhin’s death reaffirmed control. Navalny’s murder was not desperation—it was discipline. Dissent ends in the grave. The West’s hope that sanctions or defeats would unseat Putin proved naive.

Russia does not fear instability. It thrives on it. Crisis is not its enemy but its medium. It is not returning to the Western order. It is building something else.

X. Conclusion: Seizing the Future

The long 20th century is over. Its scaffolding—liberal democracy, the market, the promise of progress—has collapsed. The dominant class offers no future, only deferral.

The far right advances, not with blueprints but with the will to act. The left, if it is to matter, must match that will. The fight is not for restoration but rupture. There is no return to the welfare state, no path back to post-war compromise.

History has not ended. But it will not wait. The question is not whether there will be change, but who will shape it.

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