Defunding public services structurally forces wage-dependence and demobilizes workers

Evidence

These austerity maneuvers are not merely technical decisions; they are profoundly political choices. 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

• DEEPTHINKING: The mechanism linking austerity to market dependence — and the self-defeating exhaustion (no energy left for collective action) that closes the loop. Dense and paradigmatic.
• XREF: Core of the ‘invisible order’ theme in the reader’s purpose statement: capitalism requires the wage relation to appear as natural necessity. — connects to: The American absence of shame at paid work perpetuates economic injustice — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 217; Corporate benefit dependency converts workers into watchdogs of profitability — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 260; Austerity’s core purpose is to deepen workers’ dependence on wage labor — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 145 (+12 more)