Austerity’s core purpose is to deepen workers’ dependence on wage labor

Evidence

Austerity achieves a crucial goal: it increases workers’ dependence on the market. As the state dismantles health care, education, social housing, transportation, and public services, we must worry about having money in our pockets to meet our basic needs. If we want to secure a good education for our children, adequate medical treatment, a roof to live under, and the right to transportation, we are increasingly tied to the need to have sufficient money, which most of us can obtain in only one way: by selling our capacity to work in exchange for a wage. If we barely have the energy to make it to the end of the month, how can we find the strength to participate in any collective initiative toward alternative economic structures or even just protect our rights? — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 145

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Central banks trigger recessions to enforce workers’ acceptance of wage labor. — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 39; Monetary austerity deliberately aimed to rein in workers’ purchasing power — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 757; Austerity enforces the wage-labor relation that capitalism requires for growth — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 29 (+18 more)

Broader Connections

• Monetary austerity deliberately aimed to rein in workers’ purchasing power #corroborates (0.95) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 757
• Austerity enforces the wage-labor relation that capitalism requires for growth #corroborates (0.93) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 29
• Austerity regimes aim to break organized labor #corroborates (0.85) — Gary Mongiovi, Austerity Is an Antidemocratic Strategy…, 83
• Austerity policies function to silence working class economic demands #corroborates (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 774
• Defunding public services structurally forces wage-dependence and demobilizes workers #expands (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 145
• Austerity is state intervention that transfers resources from workers to capital #corroborates (0.82) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 195
• Austerity is a counteroffensive that shifts resources from workers to investors. #corroborates (0.82) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1467
• Austerity structurally dismantled the workers’ movement and its economic alternatives #expands (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 654
• Austerity masquerades as apolitical science while bending workers to capital’s will #corroborates (0.80)
• Monetary austerity deliberately induced recession to discipline workers. #corroborates (0.78) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 154
• Monetary austerity deliberately manufactures unemployment to compress wages. #corroborates (0.78) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 284
• Austerity reduces taxes on capital while raising taxes on labor income #expands (0.72) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 146
• Austerity was capitalism’s manufactured response to worker challenges #expands (0.72) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 585