Against Austerity: How we Can Fix the Crisis they Made

by Richard Seymour

Five years into capitalism's deepest crisis, which has led to cuts and economic pain across the world, Against Austerity addresses a puzzling aspect of the current why are the rich still getting away with it? Why is protest so ephemeral? Why does the left appear to be marginal to political life?

In an analysis which challenges our understanding of capitalism, class and ideology, Richard Seymour shows how ‘austerity’ is just one part of a wider elite plan to radically re-engineer society and everyday life in the interests of profit, consumerism and speculative finance.

But Against Austerity is not a gospel of despair. Seymour argues that once we turn to face the headwinds of this new reality, dispensing with reassuring dogmas, we can forge new collective resistance and alternatives to the current system. Following Brecht, Against Austerity argues that the good old things are over, it's time to confront the bad new ones.

Genres: Economics, Politics

208 pages, Paperback

First published February 20, 2014

About the author

Northern Irish Marxist writer and broadcaster, activist and owner of the blog Lenin's Tomb.

Seymour is a former member of the Socialist Workers Party.

He is currently working on a PhD. in sociology.

Reviews

[Jonas Marvin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This makes a good, eclectic and well-resourced argument about the nature of austerity, the role it plays in the current crisis, the transformations taking place within the system at the moment, and three crucial factors, underpinning and playing a part of this process: ideology, state and class. The stuff on ideology was great, especially both the role social democracy has played, but also the relation ideology has to lived experience. The stuff on the state was good, and enjoyed the discussion on the authoritarian nature of the neo-liberal state and police tactics. Need to engage with Poulantzas, as I'm not sure what I think on those questions as of yet. A lot of the economics stuff went over my head, but was a lot more grounded when looking at the neo-liberal re-organisation that took place in NY and the re-composition of the class. Enjoyed the conclusion and the question of rebuilding our movement and our class (and the emphasis on social movement/community unionism). All round, very good

A needed contribution to the movement.

[Nathan Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

A misleadingly basic title for a concise book anything but -- draws heavily from Mirowski and Poulantas (well-contextualized here) and adequately runs through other serious treatments of neoliberalism in a way relatively approachable -- Seymour is characteristically sharp as all get-out, and this reads like him landing a right hook for a left against the ropes.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good, solid book, excessively easy to read, but sadly, from the perspective of 2021, horribly dated. In fact it's curious looking back at this book, a sort of snapshot of the left one year pre-Corbyn, to sort of see where left thinking was at. There's many positives and alot of negatives.

Good:
Seymour has some sharp, excellently clear discussions on class and state class formation.
It's written in a down to earth, clear, and accessible way. Sadly for someone like me it was immensley boring due to how much stuff I already, but the book would make an excellent buy for a socialist-curious folk, or a relapsed liberal willing to tip their toes in the waters of the radical left, as a sort of explainer thing.

Bad:

Seymour has always had his biases. Mostly bad ones, in my opinion. He cites only about four people throughout, the main two being Poulantzas and Stuart Hall, clearly showing his bias towards strands of continental-philosophy inspired post-war Marxism. While patently having its strengths, there was appalling weakness to such approaches. The abject fetish Hall and many post-Althusserians had on an obsessive fixation on culture, and becoming increasingly preoccupied with narratives that more-or-less presented working class people as dupes, and of hegemony overall being a project of convincing people 'to go against their own interests', was intellectually disastrous (refreshingly, it is not one that Seymour takes here, insisting on the material reality of ideology, and also, most pleasingly too see, not demising the innately coercive and violent nature of power structures). As outlined by Vivek Chibber here, ideology, and indeed hegemony, needs a massive rethinking on the left, away from the post-war Marxist school and back to more of what Gramsci actually wrote. Gramsci, , gave a two point definition of hegemony, where he said it was was "the apparatus of state violence which "legally" enforces discipline on those groups who do not consent, either actively or passively" and the other was "The spontaneous consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group; this consent is "historically" caused by the prestige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world of production". Notice here there isn't a single mention of culture or media. It's "in the world of production", and specifically related to this, is the point if consent has genuinely be achieved by sections, or indeed a majority of the working class, it is only because there is a demonstrable material benefit, however uneven it may be, to them. Seymour gets this right, and it is good to see him take the materialist look on this issue. However the absence of Perry Anderson's masterful work on, The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci, firmly rooting him back into his position as a Leninist thinker firmly fixated on questions of revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, and by far and large the definitive debunking of much post-war Marxist muddles around him, is poor. On class too, the absence of Erik Olin Wright, by far the definitive thinker of classes of his generation from a Marxist perspective, is too odd. As for Hall, his presence is not greatly welcomed, and as much as his earlier writings on Thatcher are acutely sharp (while still wrong, focusing far too much on her supposed ideological support and not her class one) went off the rails with his nauseous proto-New Labour sympathies, and was brilliantly slaughtered for it by his college at the Birmingham school of cultural studies, Ambalavaner Sivanandan. See also this good talk by Chris Maisano: https://youtu.be/vBTRI1QDpaY

Seymour is weak when it comes to the state. Or rather, Poulantzas is. Poulantzas was correct on 90% of what he wrote about the state. Viewing it as a site of social struggle, in which many different competing aspects of capitalist class society tassel amongst themselves for dominance, organising in power blocs and acutely influencing the makeup of the respective state institutions, is spot on, and even has some remarkably similar empirical support in the form of Thomas Ferguson's work on the "Investor Theory of Politics". However, Seymour writes that the state is a fiction, that is doesn't exist per say. While not denying that, obviously, it exists in the form of the police officer, the border patrol guard or the welfare officer, he maintains that it is merely and always a constellation of the governing class forces at such a time, and has no prior essence regardless. This is wrong, to me. The state, after all, did exist before capitalism (although they were very close), starting to become centralised and organised in the early modern period during the late 16th century, while capitalism only started coming about by the 17th. Capitalism on its own, as Seymour and Poulantaz correctly note, cannot run a whole state. That would be absurd, they are too divided amongst themselves and too obsessed with quarterly profits to bother with the kind of long term strategy a state requires. But the point is capitalism had to have the prior constructs of a state to use in the first place to acquire its dominance. It did not create it by any means. It had grinded its way into existence through mutual processes of the advancement of military technologies, the increasingly inadequate measures of taxation needed to fight and support wars that feudalism offered (see Richard II's late days and the system of "bastard feudalism" during the Tudor reign), and a compromise amongst sections of the monarchical class with the new merchant to offset the powers of the lords and the barons. Poulantzas' theory of the state, from from explaining it, actually explains the acute absence of the state. Where is it, after all? Seymour will in one sentence talk about it being a fiction, then talk about "it" doing something. What is this it? If the state is merely a amalgam of class interests, then it cannot have an "it" that it operates as. The state in the eyes of Poulantzas seems to be little more than a vague mist, a sort of non-corporeal thing that floats around depending on what is influencing it. Or like some vast circus tent with huge elephants roaming about inside. But it begs the question of what is the circus tent, who made it, who keeps it held upright, and who lets the elephants in and out in the first place? All these need answering, and an account of the state which still reduces it to class forces (albeit fractured ones) isn't much more explanatorily valuable than the tired old Leninist instrumentalist approach. The civil service, the vast apparatuses of the military and the secret services, the organising state bodies that allow the executive to reign, all must have their own, separate analysis. Seymour doesn't do that, because neither did Poulantzas, and to me it does not make sense to talk about class compositions having favour inside the state at any given time without a specific notion that they would have to be impacting upon something. If they are forming the very thing they are also impacting, that seems riotously contractionary to me. Plus, Seymour's insistence on the state not primarily being a a tool of repression, or operating solely for some form of constraint, seems somewhat overstated. While grant that it is not just that, the state's defining feature, the thing that gives it sovereignty of everything (including capitalism) is its monopoly on the use of legitimate violence. That aspect is missing from Seymour's account, and as much as a view of the state which drags it away from it just being a mere tool by the bourgeoise at all points is to be welcomed (indeed, it renders most leftist attempts to impact it at all, by this viewpoint, pointless), equally, by robbing the state of its traditional "state like" qualities outside its means of organising capitalism, he also robs the left of the countervailing tendencies, the ability to precisely take over the state, use it for our own benefit and use said levers of legitimate force and violence for our own means (eg, requisitioning, nationalisation, seizing assets, banning speculation, regulation and controlling transnational transactions, not to mention, repressing the bourgeoise in case of an attempted '79 style Chilean coup) seems odd and self-defeating. It is especially stupid for Poulantzas to be so insistent on this point, and his absurd attempt to wash away the categories of state and society as somehow indistinguishable of one another when one considers his intellectual mentor Gramsci. Indeed, the harsh militaristic language of Gramsci (filled with terms like "war of position" and "war of manoeuvre") betray just how much of a Leninist Gramsci was, committed throughout life until his death to the violent overthrow of the bourgeois state and capitalism, a far flung image compared to the idea of him being some genteel believer in gradual reform, a proto runner to forms of Eurocommunism and later Third Way centrism (as the little priests of the Italian communist party in the 80s and 90s tried to paint him as, in an attempt to justify their dreadful dropping of socialist policies and their disastrous coalition in government under the guise of it achieving some vague "hegemony "as if hegemony, for Gramsci, meant a mere acceptance of the most stupid and vulgar tendencies of your country's national culture, with a feeble attempt of bolting on some leftist-ish things onto it being the only attempt at intellectually justifying it, as opposed to hegemony being something formed within the working classes precisely to smash said culture, or to at least change it permanently.

The conclusion too, is weak, but is an interesting snapshot of what Seymour and much of the left thought was even possible pre-Corbyn. There is not a single mention of actually taking the state over. At all. He merely talks about pushing cleavages into it, operating in spaces of it, building up resistances inside it (and again, there is this bizarre tendency to deny the state as an object in itself while presuming it has such an objective quality at every turn). Pre-Corbyn, I guess that's all he could have thought we'd get. Post-Corbyn, it also seems a bit illusionary, but infinitely less so than it did before hand. And this is simply because Seymour barely mentions the word "party" in his analysis of what to do. He does not fall into the trap of demanding yet another fucking new left party to challenge the Labour Party (after about, I think, what, 4 different ones now?). He merely calls for some vague, nebulous coalition of the new social movements, a renewed trade unionism. That's it. The party, as Lenin brilliantly knew, is the central unifying tool, it acts as a way of crystallising and concentrating the energies of the social movements and periods of labour agitation in order to give it some institutional form in power, and also to ensure its demands can continue on for a long time when they inevitably fizzle away (for a great account of why this is needed, see David Broader's sharp criticisms of Operaismo and Tony Negri in Italy, and his inability to understand this). The idea of taking over the labour party is absolutely not even on his agenda, even though by this point there was some slow moving winds in that direction, as seen by Ed Miliband's election in the first place (Alex Nunn's The Candidate is excellent in this regard). This is an odd weakness from an otherwise pretty solid Leninist, and leaves it all rather vague.

His account of the need for a form of identity politics as a buttress to this new unionism he imagines is pathetic. Firstly, because there is no such thing as an identity for working class people, and the things he imagines are rooted in cultural identity (he mentions struggles over housing as one of belonging and community) and nearly always negative identities, ones rooted against something (no one seriously values being a fucking renter, which is what 99% of housing struggles are). They want to be something else entirely, not fetishes their current identity. Borrowing from Judith Butler, he says the left needs a "unity of difference" rooted in an intersectional approach. This means nothing. It is as valid a phrase as a "fog of bricks" or a "mist of concrete". How one can generate any unity based on the implicit notion of bounded, essentialised difference (which is what all identity politics is), is beyond me. Intersectionality is also a worthless concept, for all it does it identify nebulously defined groups (who are already essentialised, ignoring how hopelessly fragmented "black" "woman" or "gay" already are), then presuming they bolt onto to class through some abstractly defined "mutual oppression". But this merely tells us what is, not how it cannot be, nor in fact why it is. "Oppression" is not analysis, it is mere description. Many people can be oppressed by many things, from stubbed toes to bad stomachs to hair loss, universality alone does not equate to identifiable political agents. And to presume the categories of the latter (eg race, sex, gender) neatly 'intersect' with class, is to completely misunderstand totally all four of them. The first three tend to be defined by struggles over recognition/discrimination, the latter almost totally on exploitation. For the problem with identity politics is that it identifies things that are inherently worthless, things that in themselves are wholly negative social constructions upheld by a mixture of dogma and stupidity, and from said identification try and will up a shared essence amongst the whole group, one with recognisable 'interests'. This, as Cedric Johnson points out, "falsely equates racial identity with political constituency". Nor does a fixation on disparities on one thing or another really teach us anything. After all, a solution to black people being killed disproportionately by cops is to just shoot more white people. Patently, that's not a solution, but it shows that as soon as one is done identifying how this or that group is badly affected, you have to get on and talk about universal solutions, lest waltz into said trap. Intersectionality theory presumes that class acts as a form of cultural identity, and that cultural identity acts as a materially grounded social relationship like class, which manages to simultaneously whitewash the former and essentialise the latter. For the point is that racism creates race, but classism does not create class. Black people struggle to liberate themselves from the burdens put upon them precisely because of the designation of "black" created. They want to stop being "black people" and start being humans, considering ascriptive differences are rooted in absolutely nothing scientifically or biologically valid. The proletariat, as Moishe Postone correctly noted, don't just want to stop being exploited workers, they want to stop being workers all together, for by definition, class being a social relationship, it is implicitly dependent on the existence of a capitalist class to derive its own essence, which is, by definition, inherently exploitative. The real struggle, Postone argued, was not between capital and labour per say, but really between capitalism and a different mode of production entirely. Class consciousness is when one stops saying "I am working class" and starts asking "Why am I working class?", whereas "race consciousness" can only elevate a toxic ascriptive difference, transforming it through racecraft from a social construction into something "real" (and ironically treat it in the same way racists too). For class is already intersectional, and the real differences between people rooted in identity can only be understood by being mediated through a class perspective, not race and class but race-in-class. Class is the glass prism from which the multiplicity of identities can be seen spiralling out from, needing the light beam of Marxist analysis to see how they operate. Basically, I'm saying you need a class approach before all else, as class "reductionist" this may be.

Which gets me briefly onto unions. He is disdainful of the idea of resurrecting any notion of the big union, or a union incorporating vast swathes of one workforce. He maintains we need to focus on potentially specific political issues as a mechanism of unionisation, sporadic and unfocused as they may be. While correctly disdainful of the blather of the "precariat" and the supposed radically changed nature of work, he still maintains it will have to be done differently, more akin to the way social movements operate, more fluid, with more aspects of direct democracy. This leads back onto his earlier point of the need to integrate all the diffuse aspects people in society (migrants, black people, students, women etc.) in a vast smorgasbord of vague radicalness. But this seems weak. While no one presumes, or even particular wants, a return to old school unionism, this seems awfully wishy-washy. Far from aiming to try and get pockets of small private sector workers temporarily unionised on the basis of case to case issues, as much as that would be good, it would seem to be more urgent to simply focus on the areas of labour which are the most powerful and are capable of really hurting profits. Amazon workers are a vital area of struggle in this regard. Logistics workers in the vast commodity chains is another (as Paul Prescod brilliantly explains here). It seems a strategy of fewer but stronger matters here. Also, to his point that we need more direct democracy. Sigh. The last thing the left needs is more participation from stupid people with no strategic insight at all. The reason for the vanguard is precisely to ensure there are some people who know where the ship is going, who can see the horizon more broadly. The Labour party conference in 2019 was an example of such an absence of leadership, motions flying everywhere with no key strategic guidance. Occupy and the Indignados movements are things I'd rather be considered to the dustbin forever, frankly. It seems better leadership is the priority here, not necessarily whether there are more sheep bleating in greater number.

[Ricky Bevins · Rating 4 out of 5]

A much more abstract discussion of austerity than one might expect. I was anticipating a breakdown of austerity policies which demonstrates their utter failure in economic terms.

But this book made it obvious that austerity is never implemented even primarily for economic reasons, and that demonstrating its inability to recover the economy would be missing the point entirely.

Austerity is working exactly how it is intended; it is a tool that consolidates the power of financial capital at the expense of those least able and least responsible to pay for the Crisis. Austerity is a tool of class warfare.

The meat of this book deals with ideology. How Austerity is configured, how it is implemented, how it is sold and digested by the wider public and finally how the 99% can resist and reverse its implementation and effects.

A worthy read and I'd be keen to see an updated version. Published in 2014, I'm curious as to how this analysis holds up post-Brexit, post-Corbyn and post-pandemic.

[Shanice Mcbean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Too tired to write a long/substantial review. For one of them, read here: http://livesrunning.wordpress.com/201...

Briefly: this is a much needed book/kick up the arse.

Particularly useful is the robust analysis of the effects austerity is having on the restructuring of class - ruling and working, how austerity is as much political as economic, our relationship with ideology and the shortcomings and tasks of the Left.

I'd give it 4 rather than 5 stars because after 3 great, chapters of analysis I thought the strategical conclusions were too vague in the final chapter. Perhaps deliberately, Seymour hasn't really offered any specific or detailed suggestions for ways forward. So for example while his discussion of CLASSE in Quebec was welcome and did point to several important lessons to be learned about general strategy, I don't feel any more equipped to understand how those lessons apply to specific entities Left Unity, or PAAA in the British political terrtain. Or how Marxists and organised revolutionaries should specifically approach austerity qua Marxist and revolutionary following his analysis.

I think he should have offered his head to the guillotine, so to speak. I doubt it's the case he hasn't got views on these things. Even if he had been totally wrong its better if we, in discussion, get things totally wrong on the way to getting something right. The final chapter reads a little like a person strolling along, knowing sorta where they have to go but not stopping to decide whether to take a right at the Tesco or carry on straight.

[Philip Mckenzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a short read, but incredibly dense in a good way. The author paints a bleak but important picture on how the policies of austerity have rooted themselves into the philosophy and logistical operation of the state. If economics is a new field you'll find this a perfect way to grasp these policies and most importantly what are some effective tools to counteract this thinking. I would recommend this book to others who are interested in digging deeper into our current economic and social crisis.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very, very good. Read it before it's dated. Readers of Lenin's Tomb will love it. Seymour's sense of humor is actually included, unlike American Insurgents, The Meaning of David Cameron and The Liberal Defence of Murder.

[Jacob Marshall · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read most of this for an essay I wrote about Marxism in contemporary Britain. It was often a bit convoluted but genuinely excellent at crystallising the ideology behind austerity. seymour utilises gramsci in a way i’ve only seen stuart hall do to such success

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Coherent but illustrative of where Poulantzas & Althusser can get you.