Austerity treats citizens’ consumption as the cause of inflation to justify repressing demand

Evidence

As always, the blame for monetary imbalance is placed on the improper behavior of the people, who supposedly consume too much. Thus, the key to curbing inflation and restoring the value of the Sri Lankan rupee is to suppress internal demand, thereby limiting imports and improving the balance of payments. In simple terms, it is necessary to repress the purchasing power of the majority of citizens. The stability of the internal and external currency is then achieved at the expense of the population, who literally starves. In this way our economic system tends to devour those who are the very source of value on which the system feeds, acting, in the adverb of Nancy Fraser, “cannibalistically.” — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 349

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces Nancy Fraser’s ‘cannibalistic’ characterization of capitalism as a vivid frame for the system devouring its own value source.
• SEED: Potential article angle: the rhetorical trick of blaming inflation on consumers’ ‘excess’ consumption to justify demand-repression — a pattern traceable across Sri Lanka, Argentina, and Italy.
• XREF: connects to: The ECB justified austerity through rational-expectations Ricardian consumer theory — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 174; Monetary austerity deliberately aimed to rein in workers’ purchasing power — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 757; Monetary inflation was cast as merely a symptom of governmental and worker misbehavior — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order: How Economists…, 783 (+8 more)