Austerity Apparatus

by J. Moufawad-Paul

"By 2009, every anti-worker ideologue and their devotees had a popularized concept under which to mobilize their arguments about how and why workers should absorb the excesses of those capitalists who wanted to maintain their wealthy lifestyles: austerity. In this sense, the austerity apparatus is simply that which functions to police the everyday operations of crisis capitalism. In another sense this apparatus is the mobilization of operations that are a normative part of capitalism even without a crisis But this is simply due to the fact that economic crises are also part of capitalism's day-to-day functioning: capitalism is crisis, implicitly or explicitly."
An excavation of the ideology of austerity and its relationship to the mechanisms of capitalism, Austerity Apparatus is a philosophical excursion through a variety of concepts surrounding capitalist crisis and class struggle. Written as a series of interconnected meditations on the problematic of austerity, Austerity Apparatus is a creative intervention rather than a polemic or rigorous analysis; it is designed to force reflection on the ways in which contemporary capitalism conditions its subjects to accept its limits.


In examining the problematic of austerity, Moufawad-Paul also discusses the relationship between neoliberalism and fascism and the ways in which the latter is immanent to capitalism. This aspect of Austerity Apparatus should be of particular interest to readers exploring the meaning of the contemporary re-emergence of fascist politics.

Genres: Politics, Philosophy, Nonfiction

176 pages, Paperback

Published May 15, 2017

Reviews

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

An extended essay more than anything else, this book explains the concept of the 'austerity apparatus' - apparatus in the Althusserian sense, an ideological 'cunning machine developed by crisis capitalism to channel dissent into the protection of capital itself'. Moufawad-Paul makes the correct point that this apparatus is novel without being new - 'austerity' was the norm in the 19th century and for much of the world in the 20th, but it has been recomposed to take on a new life in the era of the reproletarianisation of those relatively-privileged in the historic mid-20th century compromise between capital and labour. This 'newness' serves as one of the austerity apparatus' key components - a way of disciplining the subject which austerity creates. We are positioned by austerity between two 'states' - the 'state of anxiety' characterising the 'era of austerity' lies between the 'state of social peace' (a return to the historic compromise, the surrender of class struggle) and the 'state of emergency' (exterminism, fascism, the defeat of class struggle). As Moufawad-Paul argues, these positions are not mutually exclusive but bleed into one another: the advocate of social peace quickly becomes an advocate of emergency, the 'social fascist'. One interesting aspect of this, though underdeveloped, is Moufawad-Paul's point that the austerity apparatus acts as a distraction from the enormous threat of ecological devastation. By reducing the possibility to austerity's continuation or cessation, the question of capitalism is avoided and the left is 'domesticated' (incidentally, JMP makes a useful criticism of the way that 'policing' is used by some theorists - but I'd be interested in an exploration of the 'domestic', too!).

Moufawad-Paul is clearly indebted, in this book in particular, to the works of autonomists and communisateurs - particularly Tiqqun, who is quoted frequently and whose sense of breezy urgency Moufawad-Paul tends to mimic. That's one of his good qualities, an openness to the work of the 'ultra-left' which is atypical of most Marxist-Leninists and Maoists. But although JMP makes his criticisms of these movements (especially accelerationism) quite clear, I worry that this style can make it seem like he agrees with them; the alternately gloomy-optimistic stance of Tiqqun etc can seep into his argument, making it seem like the austerity subject is total and unavoidable. But that precisely is not his point. Though acknowledging the chicken-and-egg difficulty of a party which forms a class and a class which forms a party, JMP reiterates his commitment to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (explored in e.g. Continuity and Rupture) and to the party (or 'partisan war machine') as a process, unfolding in tandem with the formation of the proletariat as revolutionary subject through the mass-line. If I would like this to have been developed in greater depth, I can't begrudge JMP for writing like a philosopher and not like a historian; ultimately, this book was intended and should be taken as an intervention - which it would be worth our while to heed, especially in the context of a Corbynism still defined principally in opposition to 'austerity'.

[Dont · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moufawad-Paul's third and most recent book (more of an essay). This time, they try to unpack the left and right positions within the subjectivity of austerity. As usual with Moufawad-Paul, lots of useful formulations to counter commonsense; distinguishing conjunctures that are novel from the notion that they are new. Thereby the analyze austerity and its place within the state apparatus is not to necessarily claim that capital is in a new conjuncture but that the problems of austerity represent a novel response to capitalism's limits. Equally useful are his biting critiques of the commonsense which holds that capital is eternally creative and inventive while organized political instruments that organize the conditions of revolution are somehow out-of-date, antiquated, and throwbacks of history. Such a distinction serves both a left and right austerity commonsense (what I would call, neoliberal fatalism) where the best we can hope for is the "social peace" of liberal democracy. The worse option, alternatively, being "state of emergency" - fascism. The irony, of course, is that nostalgia for Keynesian labor/capital detent is somehow seen as forward-looking but the communist necessity is seen as a relic of a buried historical project. Irony, on second thought, is not the right word.

[Zach · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm 75% certain there's a term for "pulls together a lot of disparate problems and shows how they're all part of one interconnected system" which I'm blanking on at the moment, but that's what Austerity Apparatus does with contemporary political woes. It's immensely readable, thoroughly examining the cycle of economic austerity as an intentional function of capitalism rather than as an error that can be corrected. It definitely helped clarify some of my thoughts on American socioeconomic struggles, and I imagine the book would probably hold a few lightbulb-over-the-head moments even for lefty folks who are already well-versed on the topic.

[Isaiah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good overview of a peculiar development in the Western left. The book is at its strongest when focusing on the captured left, that which cannot look further than opposing the (as the author sees it, artificial) onset of austerity. There is some jumbling of rhetorical opponents, as the book covers the purveyors of the apparatus itself, social democratic trade unionists, fascists and promoters of theories like communization and Empire. This is made somewhat easier to follow by the unusual organization style (following Tiqqun, according to an interview with the author).

[Alfie Hancox · Rating 5 out of 5]

JMP successfully cuts through the vicious circle of economism and identity politics, to paraphrase Ajith. I only would have liked to see his brief and seemingly important point about the reproletarianised middle class being "contained" from the traditional working-class expanded upon.

I eagerly await his upcoming book focused on economism!

[John Davie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Capitalism bad. Austerity and debt also bad, but only a product of capitalism. Fundamental contradiction is still class. Vanguard party is still the solution, aided by reproletarianization in imperial core.