Austerity masquerades as apolitical science while bending workers to capital’s will

Evidence

Konings (2015, 254) puts it thus: “a faith that does not idly hope for magic but assumes personal responsibility for ensuring the transformation of fictions into facts. Such austerity itself takes the form of speculation: it involves a willingness to gear the creation of new symbolic forms to the validation of past promises.” — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 400 (#expands, via linked claim)

A major aim of all austerity regimes is to break the back of organized labor, to neuter it and render it incapable of protecting workers. — Gary Mongiovi, Austerity Is an Antidemocratic Strategy…, 83 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A tiny economy’s crisis was weaponized as a metaphor for austerity — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 202; Central banks trigger recessions to enforce workers’ acceptance of wage labor. — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 39; Austerity’s core purpose is to deepen workers’ dependence on wage labor — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 145 (+24 more)

Related

• Austerity regimes aim to break organized labor (similarity 0.91)
• Austerity structurally dismantled the workers’ movement and its economic alternatives (similarity 0.89)
• Austerity’s core purpose is to deepen workers’ dependence on wage labor (similarity 0.88)
• Economics legitimizes austerity claims by pretending to value-free objectivity. (similarity 0.88)
• Austerity is state intervention that transfers resources from workers to capital (similarity 0.86)
• Austere economies structurally disempower those who would protest austerity (similarity 0.86)
• Austerity is a counteroffensive that shifts resources from workers to investors. (similarity 0.86)
• Austerity operates as capitalism’s counteroffensive against democratically empowered labor. (similarity 0.85)
• Austerity policies function to silence working class economic demands (similarity 0.85)
• Austerity framed economic crisis as caused by governments and workers, not capital (similarity 0.84)
• Austerity presented as neutral science actually disciplines workers for owners’ benefit. (similarity 0.84)
• Unemployment functioned as a deliberate political weapon to weaken labor (similarity 0.84)
• Austerity was capitalism’s manufactured response to worker challenges (similarity 0.84)
• Austerity-driven unemployment stripped organized labor of its political power in Britain. (similarity 0.84)
• International economists forged austerity as a deliberate antiworker project (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Austerity operates as speculation that converts fiction into fact #expands (0.85) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 400
• Austerity regimes aim to break organized labor #corroborates (0.85) — Gary Mongiovi, Austerity Is an Antidemocratic Strategy…, 83
• Monetary austerity deliberately induced recession to discipline workers. #corroborates (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 154
• Austerity is economically irrational yet politically rational for preserving capitalism #corroborates (0.80)
• Monetary austerity deliberately manufactures unemployment to compress wages. #corroborates (0.80) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 284
• Austerity persists as an ideology that resists empirical refutation #complicates (0.75) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 613