Centrism as an Ideology
It seems to me there are two aspects of ‘centrism’ (and it is an -ism) are worth distinguishing: the contemporary expression of historical centrism, and the structuring logic of centrism. The former emerges after the fall of the Berlin Wall and, in the UK, especially after the rise of Blair and the (neo)liberal consensus. It’s premised on social and economic liberalism, and a strong technocratic, managerial streak: fundamental political questions have been solved, and the polity simply needs to be run by the right experts now. Efficiency becomes the ideal value. That all takes a hit after 9/11 and the rise of worries over fundamentalism — conceptualised by centrism as something which is unreasonable and foreign to the polity. Paradigmatically, fundamentalism is a residue of the past after the end of history. But contemporary centrism definitively collapses with the 2008 crisis and the regime of accumulation that had kept in check various social conflicts. The past 10 years have only seen the tensions rising as capitalist accumulation continues to stagnate, and the centrist position has never grappled with this stalled materialist base.
On the other hand, the structural logic of centrism is the posited inexistence of any fundamental social antagonism. Society is deemed to be fundamentally harmonious — capable of ‘rational’ debate, with everyone potentially being friends (see the manufactured uproar over Laura Pidcock saying she wouldn’t be BFFs with Tory MPs), and coming to consensual agreement. This doesn’t preclude differences of opinion between parties, but they revolve around minor issues instead of differing images of what society should be. From this POV, populism has to be seen as irrational. Populism takes as its fundamental basis the fact that society is riven by an irreconcilable antagonism (see Laclau and Mouffe). While populism presents itself as a solution to this antagonism, centrism simply denies the antagonism exists in the first place. So it’s not a surprise that centrists can’t understand populism, since it’s by definition excluded from their worldview.
But this structuring logic of centrism also shows why it’s an ideological position: it has to assert the inexistence of fundamental antagonism as its foundational gesture. This means that centrism is not a neutral balance between the left and the right — it’s a rejection of the very premises that make the left and right meaningful terms. (Relatedly, this is why I don’t think Corbyn’s Labour can ever be ‘centrist’ — though it can, and has, taken the centre ground of British politics.) Centrism’s entreaty to people today is that it is a non-ideological balance between extremes, but this misrecognises the constitutive logic in play — it would be more accurate to say that it tries to solve social antagonism by managerial fiat, rather than reasoned debate.
