Worth, 2013 - Resistance in the Age of Austerity: Nationalism, the Failure of the Left and the Return of God
This chapter assesses how austerity represents the
continuation of neoliberalism after the financial crisis. It describes the
post-crisis system as a new form of neoliberalism, however it still features
similar logics as before.
The chapter starts by looking back to the immediate period
following the crisis, where it appeared as though neoliberalism may come to an
end, as demonstrated through Gordon Brown’s 2008 G8 summit speech which called
for a ‘new Bretton Woods’. However, Worth goes on to explain
how this transformed into ‘private Keynesianism,’ as argued by Crouch. Where
neoliberalism was never able to re-create the classical liberal form of laissez
faire economics, it was instead putting forward a new strand which utilised
interventions such as bailouts as a way to maintain growth. Whilst the crisis
did revive both Keynes’s and Marx’s critique of capitalism, these oppositions
never materialised into a coherent alternative, and this is used by neoliberals
in order to dismiss leftist arguments.
Austerity acts as a way of redirecting the blame for the
crisis to reckless fiscal spending, suddenly viewing crisis not as a failure of
capitalism, but alternatively as a ‘regrettable yet ultimately cyclical
processes’ of it. Whilst this is in fact agreeing with aspects of Marx,
neoliberalism endorsed this idea in order to call for the requirement of
effective preventative management as a part of its new strand.
The idea that austerity is a ‘necessity’ became widespread,
promoting the logic that states and citizens accept responsibility for
‘reckless public spending’. Whilst this completely diverts the blame away from
the financial institutions, surveys in Britain showed that many people agreed
that the previous government spending was to blame. On the other hand, this was
more heavily contested in Eurozone countries. However, in Italy, the idea of
the necessity of austerity was embedded through the message that if the country
fails to meet the required measures, there will be serious repercussions across
the Eurozone as a whole.
Worth explored the idea that perhaps the reason we can’t
move fully away from austerity is down to the fact that politicians and
practitioners can’t look beyond the market-centric perception. Most still view
the free-market and the private sector as ‘vital cogs in economic and human
development’, therefore the public sector is the one sacrificed at the expense
of maintaining the private sector. The rhetoric around austerity such as the
‘credit crunch’ and ‘balancing the books’ helps to maintain the logic of
private competition.
The latter sections of the chapter compare the far right and
the centre-leftist take on austerity. Worth uses the Tea Party in the USA to
demonstrate how, like UKIP, such individuals imbedded reactionary populism
within a neoliberal discourse, believing that the free market has in fact been
threatened by a lack of cuts and by bailouts. Such movements have allowed
market fundamentalism to truly flourish, even after the financial crash. On the
other hand, the ‘left’ had tried to gear austerity towards the target of
growth, e.g. Hollande and the Robin Hood tax. Worth suggests that austerity is
unpopular because it focuses on cuts and not on stimulating growth.
Whilst I think that Worth effectively explains how austerity
has been used in order to maintain a neoliberal system, I don’t think the
chapter goes far enough in analysing a broad range of resistances to austerity
measures.
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