Austerity as Public Mood

Social Anxieties and Social Struggles

Kirsten Forkert

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield International
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781783481958
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Scienze della comunicazione

Austerity as Public Mood explores how politicians and the media mobilise nostalgic and socially conservative ideas of work and community in order to justify cuts to public services and create divisions between the deserving and undeserving. It examines the powerful appeal of these concepts as part of a wider public mood marked by guilt, nostalgia and resentment – particularly around the inequalities produced by global capitalism and changes to the nature of work. In doing so, the book engages with urgent questions about the contemporary political climate. Focusing on the UK, it challenges accounts of neoliberalism which frame it as primarily an individualising force and localist definitions of community as mitigating its damaging effects. Finally, it explores how resistance to austerity can challenge these tendencies by offering a politics of solidarity and hope, and a forum for experimentation with alternative forms of collectivity.

Chapter 1

Austerity and the Appeal of the Past

According to economist Mark Blyth, austerity has become ‘standard policy for states in trouble within liberal democracies’ (Blyth 2013b, 43), including the United Kingdom.¹ As discussed in my introduction, there have been attempts in the United Kingdom at resistance, but these have not been large enough to change policy or shift public opinion in a significant way. Instead, attitudes towards welfare have hardened, at a time when many people are struggling financially. This was evidenced through the results of the 2015 British Social Attitudes Survey, which has found a long-term trend of declining public support for welfare benefits for the poor – 61% in 1989 and 27% in 2009, remaining low at 30% in 2015 (British Social Attitude Survey 2015).² Support for state benefits for unemployed people and single parents was also much lower than for pensioners and disabled people (2015, 1), although, based on reporting by the Crown Prosecution Service, disability hate crime prosecutions increased by 213% (E-Inclusion Europe 2015).

In this chapter, I will examine the prevalence of such attitudes, at a time when jobs are increasingly insecure and precarious. The starting point for this chapter comes out of observing the limitations of the numerous ‘mythbuster’ pamphlets I handed to passers-by as an activist, and which had been produced by False Economy, the Public and Commercial Services Union, the New Economics Foundation³ and other organisations. The arguments within these pamphlets were based on statistical evidence of the damage caused to the economy and society by austerity, or emphasised the much greater damage to the public purse caused by tax avoidance than benefit fraud (such as illustrated by the poster in figure 1.1). In doing so, they attempted to shift attention away from the sacrifices that working- and middle-class people might believe they should be making, and towards the costs to public finances of large corporations and the wealthy.

Figure 1.1. Poster protesting Starbucks avoiding tax, London, 2012. Source: the author.

The hope was that giving people the facts would empower them to question dominant media myths and challenge austerity. Anecdotally, when I have distributed these pamphlets as an activist or referred to their figures, I have been met with scepticism. No matter how convincing their arguments or how robust the evidence might be, the message of these pamphlets somehow seems implausible.

Why might this be the case? Is it because these perspectives are not widely circulated enough within the media to give them mainstream credibility, or is it that when they are, attempts are made to discredit them? There may be some truth to this speculation, as demonstrated by the angry reactions to Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s book on inequality, The Spirit Level (see Booth 2010 and Clark 2010 for a summary and the authors’ response). Or is it because pro-austerity arguments resonate more with people than anti-austerity arguments? Is this because claims that there simply is no more money left, that the financial crisis is due to profligate government spending or that the welfare state is a luxury that we can no longer afford somehow convince people despite evidence to the contrary? This chapter approaches this question from a perspective that might seem counter-intuitive at first: it is about trying to understand the appeal of pro-austerity arguments from their moral and emotional perspective. It is also about how pro-austerity arguments draw on a deep current of nostalgia for previous historical moments such as the Second World War, the post-war period or, in some cases, the Victorian era. These periods are frequently combined into what Owen Hatherley terms ‘historical syncretism’ (2016, 5), noting that these narratives ‘do not have to be historically accurate to be emotionally effective’ (2016, 9). It is necessary to grapple with the intuitive moral and emotional appeal of pro-austerity perspectives – to understand how they form a public mood – if we are to understand our current predicament.

I will begin by exploring austerity’s intuitive appeal (e.g., through metaphors of the economy as household). I will then examine the conditions of growing precarisation, which make it difficult to imagine a future as one is forced to live constantly in the present (Graefer 2017). Faced with this insecurity and limited resources to imagine or enact change, it becomes easy to see the past as possessing a certainty and authenticity lacking in the present. I will discuss the nostalgic decline narratives that have marked the austerity context, which claim that as a country we have lost our moral and cultural bearings and that austerity provides an opportunity to restore them. Key to these narratives are the metaphors of work and community, which both look to the past to find these lost bearings, but also, more disturbingly and simultaneously, position sections of society as outsiders who are undeserving of access to the welfare state.

WHY AUSTERITY ISN’T JUST ABOUT ECONOMICS

Austerity’s appeal is based at least in part on the common-sense idea of not living beyond our means as individuals and the assumption that an identical logic also applies to macroeconomics. As the economist Mark Blyth argues, ‘Ideologically, it is the intuitive appeal of the idea of austerity – of not spending more than you have – that really casts its spell’ (2013, 43). The appeal of the metaphor of the economy as household, of staying within your means, is only partly about economics; it is in fact primarily a moral argument. In situations where macroeconomics is perceived as difficult to grasp, the metaphor of economy as household provides a reassuring simplicity and ordinariness. According to this logic, the economy is not about complex financial operations; it is about personal budgeting. This resonates with everyday experience, as many people can remember having to forgo small luxuries in order to save money. A working-class or middle-class subject is broadly assumed in such a metaphor, although living within one’s means can mean something very different depending on one’s income. The economy-as-household as metaphor is so powerful because it assumes that public debt is no different from owing money to a friend or relative. In Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011b), David Graeber recounts the experience of trying to explain why structural adjustment programmes for developing nations would do more harm than good, and was met with the response by an NGO representative that ‘surely one has to pay one’s debts’ (2011b, 4). As Graeber argues:

The reason [the debt myth] is so powerful is that it’s not actually an economic statement: it’s a moral statement. After all, isn’t paying one’s debts what morality is supposed to be all about? Giving people what is due them. Accepting one’s responsibilities. Fulfilling one’s obligations to others, just as one would expect them to fulfil their obligations to you. What could be a more obvious example of shirking one’s responsibilities than reneging on a promise, or refusing to pay a debt? It was that very apparent self-evidence, I realised, that could make the statement so insidious. This was the kind of line that could make terrible things appear utterly bland and unremarkable. (ibid.)

Such metaphors not only render the complex easily comprehensible but also evoke the certainties of an older social order, exemplified by former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s statement that ‘any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country’ (BBC 2013). If public finances can be simplified to a question of everyday morality, then the division between those who are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ becomes deceptively simple as well – as it becomes about who follows the rules or pays one’s debts and who does not.

As Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou observe, ‘there is nothing merely economic about economics’ (2013, 39). Arguments in support of austerity are not only technical questions about public finances or the economy; they also draw on deep-seated feelings, social mores, old habits, unquestioned prejudices and long-held cultural memories. Politicians and commentators treat the financial crisis as an opportunity to entrench neoliberal policies and practices, never letting a serious crisis go to waste (Klein 2008; Mirowski 2013); such feelings and habits serve as important tools for them. However, the economy as household and other familiar metaphors could also be the instinctive common-sense ideas that we reach for when it is difficult to imagine other explanations or possibilities. These then begin to be taken for granted as truths within the context of what Michel De Certeau terms ‘the recited society’ which is ‘defined by stories (recits), the fables constituted by our advertising and informational media, by citations of stories and by the interminable recitation of stories’ (2011, 186). Such metaphors and narratives take on the weight of truths because we have heard them so many times, and because they fit in with other pre-existing narratives.

Austerity also goes beyond how we might interpret changes in the economy; it equally reshapes our everyday experiences, our hopes for the future and our perceptions of the past in relation to the present, particularly during a time of declining prospects. It could even be considered a ‘structure of feeling’ (Williams 2011). As I pointed out earlier in relation to Lauren Berlant’s (2011) argument, austerity places limits on our capacities to achieve our aspirations, and, in some cases, makes the contradictions between these aspirations and the reality particularly stark. These contradictions can be exploited within pro-austerity arguments and rhetoric, particularly when ideals of the ‘good life’ or neoliberal self-reliance are not critically examined. Austerity also redefines what we perceive as luxuries to be sacrificed during hard times and what we deem to be necessities. It both draws on and produces a habitus around a diminishing sense of entitlement to public services, and increasingly precarious employment. It is also about redefining who we deem valuable to society as well as those aspects of ourselves we deem to be valuable. Conversely austerity also frames who we see as expendable, as the question of which public services to cut is often by definition about who we see as less important to society. And, most fundamentally, it is about how we perceive our interdependency, our own vulnerability as well as the vulnerability of others.

AUSTERITY, PRECARISATION AND TIME

I will now discuss the interaction between pro-austerity rhetoric and the conditions of job insecurity and financial uncertainty in which such rhetoric is received. Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou characterise these conditions as ‘precarisation’, defined as the exposing of a ‘targeted demographic to unemployment or to radically unpredictable swings between employment and unemployment, producing poverty and insecurity about an economic future, but also interpellating that population as expendable, if not fully abandoned’ (2013, 143). Within the context of austerity, precarisation does not only affect those who are obviously destitute, but is something many people experience to a certain extent. According to the Skills and Employment survey, 52% of UK workers were worried about their jobs in 2012 (Felstead et al. 2015); the Trades Union Congress (TUC)⁴ report that between 2010 and 2012, the number of temporary, casual jobs increased by 89,000, and the number of workers involuntarily on temporary contracts (meaning they would rather be on permanent contracts) had doubled (TUC 2013). The number of people aged 20–34 years living with their parents has increased by 25% since 1996 (Office of National Statistics 2014). This suggests a normalisation of the idea that one’s job, wages or living conditions are never truly secure.

Bridget Anderson argues that those in precarious situations are forced to live in the present rather than being able to plan for the future, arguing that ‘time matters’ – in terms of the length of employment contract, and the irregularity of employment (2007, 5). Drawing on the work of Dimitris Papadopoulos and Vassilis Tsianos, Anderson frames precarity as a form of exploitation that takes place through temporal conditioning (Anderson 2007, 6). She argues that ‘chaotic and unpredictable working times undermine other social identities’ (Anderson 2013, 5–6) such as relationships, family, friendships and democratic participation. For Anderson, precarious work is a key part of the ‘insecurity and uncertainty about tomorrow that testifies the return of mass vulnerability’ (Castel 2005 cited in Anderson 2007, 5). If one is continually living in the present, then imagining any kind of alternative future or the ability to take action is severely limited, with disturbing implications for democracy. Austerity, too, is premised on present sacrifice as a condition for a deferred, more prosperous and stable future.

In The Fragility of Things (2013), William Connolly argues that living under financial uncertainty undermines the time and space to engage critically with larger political issues, including the consequences of austerity. Exhaustion and pre-occupation with day-to-day issues make it difficult to have the time to think and consider alternatives to the status quo. He says:

If you are stuck in circumstances in which it takes Herculean efforts to get through the day – doing low income work, obeying an authoritarian boss, buying clothes for the children, dealing with school issues, paying the rent or mortgage, fixing the car, negotiating with a spouse, paying taxes – it is not easy to pay close attention to larger political issues. Indeed, you may wish that these issues would take care of themselves. (2013, 24)

This means that those who may not necessarily agree with neoliberal ideology ‘may become predisposed to the myth of the rational market in part because the pressures of daily life encourage them to seek comfort in ideological formations that promise automatic rationality’ (2013, 25). This means that people, including those experiencing hardships under neoliberalism, may reject state interventions such as welfare or healthcare provision.

In other words, those most in need of alternatives to the current system do not have the space to meaningfully engage with and develop them. Previous research has drawn attention to the significant role taken by the ‘new middle class’ in new social movements (Crossley 2003; Bagguley 1995; Rootes 1986), highlighting the role of access to higher education, family and other resources which make it possible to be politically active. These dynamics are exacerbated under austerity conditions, as time and resources for people to be able to develop the alternatives to challenge it are taken away. Increasing inequality also limits who can be involved in public debates and campaigns on alternatives. This then potentially plays into Right populist accusations about anti-austerity campaigns being dominated by ‘metropolitan elites’.

AUSTERITY MELANCHOLIA

When one does not have the space or time to resist or consider alternatives because of preoccupations with day-to-day survival and not being able to plan one’s time, then claims to restore an orderly society can have an immediate intuitive and emotional appeal, particularly when this orderly society is based on cultural memories of the past. In ‘How the Conservatives Can Win Again’ (2015), Phil Burton-Cartledge argues that the Conservative Party develops policies which produce insecurity on a material level, but then simultaneously present themselves as the providers of stability:

‘Long-term economic plan’, ‘Northern powerhouse’, ‘securing a better future’, ‘competence vs. chaos’, ‘strong leadership’, it was all flim-flam but they successfully appealed to (atomised) voters’ need to believe something better, something more tangible and stable was just around the corner. Yet as the Tories flattered the aspirations they stuck knitting needles deep into the insecurities. (Burton-Cartledge 2015)

The Conservatives were not only claiming to restore stability in public finances; they also appealed to socially conservative values as providing moral certainty in response to social anxieties caused by material insecurity. Pro-austerity narratives often involve a degree of introspection (directly or indirectly) about how society has lost its way, and promise to restore a lost social order – or, when it is practically impossible to do so, to mourn the loss of social order. Examples of this include the decline narratives about ‘Broken Britain’, used by The Sun newspaper⁵ and the Conservative Party to describe social disintegration, and former Prime Minister David Cameron’s comments about ‘strivers vs. skivers’, in which he pitted those in work against the unemployed, blaming an overly generous welfare system. Such narratives both condemn a society in decline, and draw on the cultural memory of earlier periods in history when similar decline narratives were used (e.g., the 1970s, which will be discussed in the next chapter). Within such narratives, idealised conceptions of the Second World War and the immediate post-war era frequently come to stand in for the thrift, discipline and moral certainty seen as lacking in the present (Bramall 2013; Jensen 2013; Hatherley 2016). If the future appears bleak, ‘primed to resemble an enterprise zone full of call centres on the edge of a business park on the M4’⁶ (Hatherley 2016, 4) and we feel powerless to create something better, then the past can restore a lost moral compass, and offer some lessons about how society should be. However, as it is essentially a backward-looking and rather guilt-ridden view, this sort of austerity-driven introspection can also limit our capacity to imagine the future (as it will never live up to the ideals of the mythical past).

This backward-looking aspect of austerity discourses could be interpreted as a form of melancholia, which Paul Gilroy has examined as a ‘depressed reaction that inhibit[s] any capacity for responsible reconstructive practice’ (2004, 107). Drawing on the work of the German social psychologists Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich on the German public’s melancholic longing for the power of the Nazi regime after the death of Hitler (ibid.), Gilroy argues that the United Kingdom is experiencing a condition of ‘postcolonial melancholia’, which is a form of mourning which is marked by continual anxieties about British culture being in decline and which prevents a critical examination of the legacy of colonialism (2004, 162). There are connections between postcolonial melancholia and austerity’s idealisation of the past, particularly the post-war era. In part this is because of an unwillingness to examine the role of the Empire in post-war prosperity, and particularly the basis of this prosperity in exploitation of other countries. Austerity and postcolonial melancholia also share ‘the need to get back to the place or moment before the country lost its moral a...