Austerity Is a Deeply Antidemocratic Project

This article first appeared in the print issue of the German-language Jacobin.

Austerity is omnipresent. Increases in interest rates, fresh privatizations, ever more flexible labor contracts, cuts to health care and public education, reduced capital gains taxes, and raised taxes on consumption. Every economic reform is presented to us as a necessity: we must tighten our belts, lest our state go bankrupt. We need to be realistic and make difficult choices, as the economic situation requires. A vision of economics understood as a pure, objective, logical science entrances us. There is no alternative, and no option but to rely on the experts.

But what do these experts mean when they use this seemingly ubiquitous term? Most will describe it as economic policies that involve cutting public spending and raising taxes. Herein lies the first trap: economists use the lens of the aggregate, the whole. These experts talk about the US, French, or Brazilian economies as cohesive national entities. On closer inspection, however, these are gross abstractions that hide the deep class divides within and between national economies.

If we look at aggregate state spending in the country we live and work in, the United States, we don’t see any trace of austerity. In fact, the state is spending heavily — especially to secure shareholder profit, with public handouts to private entities in the military-industrial complex and other sectors. Under Joe Biden, the United States took on debt to incentivize asset managers to invest in the green transition, boost the American financial sector, and send at least $12.5 billion in military aid to Israel in less than ten months. Added to further “aid” sent in August, this…