Austerity Wars: The Crisis of Financialization and the Struggle for Democracy

Abstract

Austerity politics constitute by no means an innovation. The neo-classical codes from which they draw inspiration have regulated the institutional architecture of the European Union for decades, creating an ideal framework for the rise of financial capitalism. Although often presented as a depoliticized set of ‘technical’ norms, they have contributed decisively to shaping the process of continental integration and redefining class relations across regions. In short, austerity has provided the normative scaffolding for the European division of labor under finance capital. However, financialization has recently entered a prolonged crisis, with no avenues for growth looming in the horizon. In the current context, the deepening of austerity politics can only translate into an undisguised process of dispossession (similar to structural adjustment programs implemented in the Global South) and a challenge to the social contract that sustained the political and economic regime of the EU in previous decades. This is nowhere clearer than in the peripheral countries of Southern Europe, where millions of people have risen up over recent years to push history in a different direction.In this chapter, I turn to Spain in order to cast light on the class relations behind austerity politics and the broad democratic movement striving to transform them—from that extraordinary outburst called the 15-M Movement to the birth of the political party Podemos.