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The Rise of Authoritarian Neoliberalism

Ian Bruff Published online: 28 Oct 2013.

To cite this article: Ian Bruff (2014) The Rise of Authoritarian Neoliberalism, Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society, 26:1, 113-129, DOI: 10.1080/08935696.2013.843250 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2013.843250

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Rethinking Marxism, 2014 Vol. 26, No. 1, 113129, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08935696.2013.843250

The Rise of Authoritarian Neoliberalism

Ian Bruff
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This article returns to Marxist commentaries during a previous period characterized by profound contradictions and conflictespecially the writings of Nicos Poulantzas and Stuart Hall on authoritarian statism/populism from the late 1970s to the 1980s in order to make sense of the present era. The article argues that we are witnessing the rise of authoritarian neoliberalism, which is rooted in the reconfiguring of the state into a less democratic entity through constitutional and legal changes that seek to insulate it from social and political conflict. The apparent strengthening of the state simultaneously entails its growing fragility, for it is becoming an increasingly direct target of a range of popular struggles, demands, and discontent by way of the pressures emanating from this strengthening. A primary reference point for the article is a notable casualty of the post-2007 crisis, European social democracy, but the implications for radical politics more broadly are also considered. Key Words: Authoritarian Neoliberalism, Nicos Poulantzas, Stuart Hall, Social Democracy, Statism

It may be ruled out that immediate economic crises of themselves produce fundamental historical events; they can simply create a terrain more favourable to the dissemination of certain modes of thought, and certain ways of posing and resolving questions involving the entire subsequent development of national life. The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks One of the most notable aspects of the post-2007 era has been the inability of European social democratic political parties to take advantage of the ongoing crisis,
This article was completed in late 2012. Therefore, it has not been possible to make anything more than a very brief reference to the upsurge of resistance since then in countries such as Turkey and Brazil. Nevertheless, the manner in which these protests emerged as a direct confrontation with the states policies and its perceived authoritarianism and the way in which the protests were portrayed and responded to by the state, confirm the general argument outlined below. This was particularly the case in Turkey, where the Gezi Park and related protests were portrayed as an extremist challenge to democracy which necessitated a violent, coercive reaction. 2013 Association for Economic and Social Analysis

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which would on the surface appear tailor-made for a critical view of free-market capitalism to gain support. Examples include the decline of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), which recorded its worst ever post-1945 electoral result in the 2009 national election; the loss of support for the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP) in the 2010 national election, the party falling to its lowest level of support since 1920, which kept it out of office and confirmed its nonhegemonic status; and the major defeat of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) in the 2011 national election. Perhaps unsurprisingly given developments in these countries and elsewhere, Magnus Ryner (2010, 554) concludes, Accompanying the loss of neoliberalisms hegemonic aura is the absence of [European] social democracy as an effective political agent. Moreover, the growing reality of renewed global recession and the continued escalation of the Eurozone crisis are unlikely to reverse this trend. This echoes other more global commentaries on the potentially negative ramifications for progressive politics produced by the current period of permanent austerity, with a living dead neoliberalismintellectually discredited yet apparently immovable due to the absence of feasible alternativespossibly emerging as a stronger and more implacable force than before 2007 (see Peck 2010b, Crouch 2011, Hay 2011). However, as argued by Martijn Konings (2010; see also Panitch and Konings 2009), there is an enduring tendency in the literature to view neoliberalism as fundamentally about the free market: the disembedding of the market from state and other forms of institutional regulation in the name of the mythical invisible hand (see also Cahill 2007). As such, many of the (excellent) contributions highlighting the crucial role played by nonmarket institutions in establishing and maintaining neoliberalismboth before (see Harvey 2005; Saad-Filho and Johnston 2004) and during the crisiscontinue to pay lip service to neoliberalisms rhetorical and ideological valorization of the free market. Instead, we ought to acknowledge that the ideas that started to circulate from the late 1930s onward in the Mont Pelerin Society1 and elsewhere were both framed by the distinctively post-laissez-faire question of appropriate forms and fields of state intervention in the socioeconomic sphere and also from the beginning preoccupied with the necessary evils of governmental rule (Peck 2008, 7). That is, formally nonmarket areas of social life took on a particularly important role in neoliberal ideology, which in turn meant that neoliberal reform did not necessarily have to take place against nonmarket institutional forms but could instead seek to mobilize them for novel social purposes. Therefore, processes of neoliberalization frequently entail the mobilization of institutional power in a variety of ways, in parallel to more obvious and rhetorically compatible reforms such as privatization.
1. The Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) was established in 1947 with the stated aim of facilitating the exchange of ideas and opinions regarding the defense of liberalism in the face of what was viewed as the mortal threat posed to Western civilization by the Soviet Union and communism more generally and the growing role of social democracy, organized labor, welfare programs, etc., in capitalist political economies. However, as has been pointed out by a number of studies (most prominently, Mirowski and Plehwe [2009] and Peck [2010a]), the MPS was from the beginning less interested in giving free rein to markets than in engineering and managing the markets that it wished to see.

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In consequence, institutions that are viewed (by way of their genesis in previous eras) as a form of social protection against the often-wrenching nature of socioeconomic restructuring could well be the means by which such change establishes itself. This includes the growing use of collective bargaining negotiations to explicitly discipline labor rather than treating unions as equal partners; increased welfare retrenchment and the broader shift from welfare to workfare; plus the decline of catchall political parties and the rise of authoritarian forms of government (often in tandem with a resurgent Far Right; see Bruff [2010] on catchall parties in Germany). The implications for many strands of progressive and more radical politics are considerable, for they have often focused on collective interests as mobilized through trade unions, welfare programs, labor parties, and ultimately the state. As such, the possibilities for a renewed politics of the Left are currently hamstrung by the assumptions underpinning these traditional worldviews (see also Lyon-Callo 2008). In order to make sense of the present period of crisis, I return to discussions on Thatcherism from the late 1970s through the 1980s. This decade witnessed a range of writings that explicitly viewed the British state and other institutions as complicit in, rather than victims of, free-market Thatcherism. It was a time of profound crisis for the Left in the UK and elsewhere; however, as with the current conjuncture, the Left seemed unable to take advantage despite a deep recession, an anemic recovery, mass unemployment, widening socioeconomic inequalities, and general societal discontent. The most relevant commentaries from that time for this present article are Stuart Halls (1979, 1985) writings on authoritarian populism and Nicos Poulantzass (1978, 1979) discussions of authoritarian statismPoulantzas being a key inspiration for Halls take on Thatcherism and also a formative influence on one of Halls main protagonists, Bob Jessop (Jessop et al. 1988; see also Coates 1984; Gamble 1988). Both Hall and Poulantzas show in a range of ways that one should not view authoritarianism as merely the exercise of brute coercive force (for instance, policing of demonstrations, racist political rhetoric, etc.). Authoritarianism can also be observed in the reconfiguring of state and institutional power in an attempt to insulate certain policies and institutional practices from social and political dissent. These insights are crucial for the argument to follow because a key consequence of the growing neoliberal content of nonmarket institutions is the shrinking capacity of such social forms to absorb and ameliorate the pressures emanating from socioeconomic restructuring. The loss or weakening of forums where social compromises can be established, maintained, and strengthened has generatedespecially in our current time of crisisthe conditions for the emergence of more coercive neoliberalization processes. Put more simply, in the absence of a hegemonic aura, neoliberal practices are less able to garner the consent or even the reluctant acquiescence necessary for more normal modes of governance. Of particular importance for this article is the increasing frequency with which constitutional and legal changes, in the name of economic necessity, are seeking to reshape the purpose of the state and associated institutions. This attempted reconfiguring of state and institutional power is threefold: (1) the more immediate appeal to material circumstances as a reason for the state being unable, despite the best will in the world, to reverse processes such as greater socioeconomic inequality and dislocation; (2) the deeper and longer-term recalibration of the kinds of activity that are

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feasible and appropriate for nonmarket institutions to engage in, diminishing expectations in the process; and (3) the reconceptualization of the state as increasingly nondemocratic through its subordination to constitutional and legal rules that are deemed necessary for prosperity to be achieved. In sum, we are witnessing the rise of authoritarian neoliberalism. Authoritarian neoliberalism does not represent a wholesale break from pre-2007 neoliberal practices, yet it is qualitatively distinct due to the way in which neoliberalisms authoritarian tendenciessuch as the increasingly punitive nature of penal and criminal policy (LeBaron 2008; Wacquant 2009)have come to the fore through the shift toward constitutional and legal mechanisms and the move away from seeking consent for hegemonic projects (i.e., away from neoliberalism as socially desirable as well as economically efficient). Of course, coercion and consent should not be viewed in dichotomous terms, and nor should consent be equated with enthusiastic support. Nevertheless, under authoritarian neoliberalism dominant social groups are less interested in neutralizing resistance and dissent via concessions and forms of compromise that maintain their hegemony, favoring instead the explicit exclusion and marginalization of subordinate social groups through the constitutionally and legally engineered self-disempowerment of nominally democratic institutions, governments, and parliaments. Unlike Stephen Gills (2008) ostensibly similar account of disciplinary neoliberalism, which instrumentalizes the law as the tool of the powerful (especially transnational capital), I argue that any attempted reshaping of the legal framework is a multilinear, uneven, and contradictory process, even if underlying trends and patterns can be observed. The contradictions across different dominant groups (for example, between transnational and more local capitals), as well as the conflicts between dominant and subordinate social groups, continue to go to the heart of the state (see Ebenau 2010; Hartmann 2011). For instance, the post-2007 period of global crisis has intensified the crisis of legitimation already confronting various capitalist states, yet the authoritarian neoliberal response could further heighten this crisis by way of the states reconfiguration into a less open and democratic entity. This does not automatically open the door for an emancipatory politics to emerge again, the 1970s and 1980s are instructive in this respectand there are multiple examples of how the radical Right (the Tea party in the United States, growing xenophobia in Europe) has proved successful in narrating the crisis. Nevertheless, the Occupy, Indignados, and related movements have been a welcome corrective to the pessimism that the above observations encourage, not least because these movements have exposed the authoritarian neoliberal state to protest and struggleand thereby to continued delegitimationfrom a perspective that continues to affirm the values embodied in notions of solidarity, equality, and cooperation. This is crucial, because the focus on the increasingly coercive imbrication of nonmarket with market forms of class power is not merely a frontal critique of such power but is also an attempt to mobilize support for an alternative understanding of how people can govern themselves. Therefore, the potential for neoliberal institutions to be mobilized for novel social purposes could work both for and against neoliberal ideology, with the outcomes of social and political conflict shaping their present and future practices. As such, although it is primarily concerned with European social

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democracy, this article is also relevant to struggles, crises, and conflicts beyond Europe. The below discussion is structured into three parts. Initially I focus on the contributions made by Hall and Poulantzas on authoritarian populism/statism, and in the process I outline the above argument in greater detail. Next, I turn to contemporary examples of authoritarian neoliberalism and the attempts to moralize the crisis as a case of when good capitalism goes bad and to reconfigure state power in highly specific ways, principally via the constitutionalization of austerity. Last, I consider the implications of my argument for social democracy and, relatedly, for a more radical politics that is both antistatist yet also emancipatory in outlook.

Back to the Future

Stuart Hall, along with Martin Jacques and others, is responsible for coining the term Thatcherism (before the 1979 election victory for the conservatives). Perhaps less well known is that, in his famous The Great Moving Right Show article for Marxism Today, Hall (1979, 158) rooted the rise of Thatcherism in the contradictions and crises besetting British social democracy in the 1970s. The recession catalyzed by the 1973 rise in oil prices exacerbated already-existing problems of capital accumulation within Britain, forcing the 19749 Labour administration into permanent crisis management. Although based on social contracting and corporatist consultation (and therefore labourist), this development served to disorganize and fragment the British working class. A key example from this period is the increasingly coercive imposition of incomes policies that sought to co-opt trade unions into accepting longterm cuts in real incomes, the result being a consistent scaling back of expectations about what could be achieved under even a progressive government. The contradictions inherent to a governing social democratic partywherein its status as the political representative of the labor movement clashes with its need to bargain with capital in the name of the national interest of growth and prosperitybecame especially acute during this period (156). Unsurprisingly, disillusionment with this set of arrangements grew. In consequence, windows of opportunity for a radical Right narrative of the crisis began to emerge. Dating from the 19704 Heath government onwards, the tendency was to pitch the people against unions, the nation against class, and so forth in order to mobilize the aforementioned discontent behind a call for the rejection of such modes of governing (often associated with social democracy in the UK; although, in continental Europe, Christian democratic parties also engaged in corporatist consultation with unions). Perhaps unsurprisingly, sustained rhetorical attacks on the welfare dependency culture and the overloaded statecombined with appeals for greater self-reliance and family valuesresonated with parts of the population that would otherwise lose out under a Thatcherite government. This building of a populist, moral common sense made it possible for Thatcher to appear to be with the people and against the state and its intrusions/failings, despite the fact that moves against welfare and organized labor would inevitably lead to the

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reorganization of class power along considerably more unequal lines, with only a minority of the people benefiting (168). This narrative was not antistatist in a general sense, for the accompanying rhetoric again, appealing to resonant and traditional notions such as duty and responsibility for ones actionssought to mobilize support for moral values and thus for the states strong role in upholding them (1920). This was particularly apparent with regard to law and order, where the theme more policing, tougher sentencing, better family discipline, the rising crime rate as an index of social disintegration (19) sought to weld people to a need for authority in order to protect civilized norms of behavior that were at risk from an explosion of lawlessness. Hence the phrase authoritarian populism: a shift from above toward authoritarianism, pioneered by, harnessed to, and to some extent legitimated by a populist groundswell [from] below [This] often took the shape of a sequence of moral panics These served to win for the authoritarian closure the gloss of populist consent (Hall 1985, 116).2 Thus, the radical Rights selfrepresentation as antistatist did not, as with neoliberal ideology more generally, tell the full story. Indeed, authoritarian populism is a deliberately paradoxical concept, seeking to capture the profound contradictions at the heart of Thatcherism. Hall argued that he was building and also improving on Poulantzass discussions of authoritarian statism (see Poulantzas 1978, 20347). For Hall, Poulantzas was too quick to seize on contemporary developments and to assume that they were intrinsically state-led, top-down, and coherent. This also led Poulantzas to neglect the social struggles and the shifts in the balance of forces that were playing out in wider society (Hall 1985, 1168). But is this fair? Certainly, if one concedes that Poulantzass (1978, 239) claim that all contemporary power is functional to authoritarian statism is representative of State, Power, Socialism, then this would be the case. However, in a well-known critique of Hall, Bob Jessop and others (1985) contend that Poulantzass discussions of authoritarian statism are more open-ended and nuanced than Hall admitted. Therefore, it is appropriate to return to Poulantzas as well as Hall. In particular, it is constructive to connect the relatively polemical chapters on authoritarian statism in State, Power, Socialism with earlier sections on the institutional materiality of the state (see especially Poulantzas 1978, 49160). Here we find a constant seesaw between determinism and contingency as Poulantzas struggles to account for contemporary developments in capitalist societies. This gives his discussions a richly suggestive hue. For instance, Poulantzas argues that the state is a crucial site for the exercise of power in capitalist societies, making it a key point of reference for any social group struggling for ascendancy (148). However, the state is not somehow separate from the society it is part of, possessing its own power independent of social struggles. For this reason, although popular struggles stretch well beyond the state, they also traverse the State from top to bottom these very struggles always have long-range effects within the State (141; original emphasis).
2. Moral panics in the British context tended to relate to threats from within that were often discussed in hysterical terms by the mass media and particular social groups. In the 1970s a central theme was the rise of mugging, supposedly rooted in the emergence of an amoral black underclass (see also Hall et al. 1978).

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This means that the state is emphatically not a predetermined entity whose function is to act in a monolithic manner in the name of capital. Rather, its evolution is strongly connected to the manner in which class conflicts manifest themselves over time. As such, the state embodies and crystallizesin the form of policies, institutional arrangements, and apparatusesthe general domination of those who own the means of production over those who do not, and hence it should always be viewed as a capitalist state. However, sometimes sweeping concessions to subordinate classes and social groups (for example, welfare programs), in return for their cooption into a system of production of relations that continues to leave them disempowered, are also present within the states makeup. For this reason, one cannot predict with precision the specific content of the compromises embodied in state policies, institutional arrangements, and related apparatuses, and these will play out in different ways across space (comparing different countries/regions at both similar and distinctive levels of development) and time (the same countries/ regions over the years). Nevertheless, Poulantzas argues that the periodization of the development of capitalism into distinct phases of history is possible, meaning that certain forms of capitalist state are likely (but not guaranteed) to predominate within such periods. This is not a smooth process, as authoritarian statism is a political response to capitalist crisis, which includes the crises of capitalist states themselves as they struggle to manage the fallout from their own development (Poulantzas 1978, 2036). An example of an authoritarian statist response to crisis is the tendency to disproportionately favor certain fractions of capital over othersin the present day, for instance, global finance over national manufacturing. In addition, the state increasingly expands its penetration into areas of social life such as urban planning, socioeconomic regeneration of deprived areas or regions, and public health services and programs, as it seeks to stabilize the contradictions and dislocations emanating from socioeconomic restructuring without granting material concessions to subordinate social groups (2104). Perhaps most potently for social democrats and conventional progressive politics, Poulantzas argues that authoritarian statism is also the reality which emerges from the ruins of the Welfare State myth (213). One can look to the explosion of punitive workfarism since the 1980s as an example of this, and Poulantzas was already arguing, thirty-five years ago, that social democratic parties were hollowing out and becoming increasingly ill suited for the task of representing labor within the state. Thus, the choice presented to voters at elections is a facade: instead of alternatives to the current government being proposed, we find alternations of the current government as the choice on offer (23140). This was a key aspect of Third Way social democracy, which came to the forefront from the mid1990s onward and sought to marginalize more progressive worldviews in the name of economic necessity. On the surface, and as alluded to earlier, this can be read as a pessimistic and totalizing account. However, for Poulantzas the rise of authoritarian statism was not predetermined, eternal, or universal. More specifically, the states materiality, as the crystallization of various compromises between different social groups, inevitably renders as a multilinear, uneven, and contradictory process any attempted reshaping of the states social purpose. This multifaceted, inbuilt opacity and resistance to

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change forces ascendant social groups to confront a multiplicity of institutional and policy legacies laid down over time, as the result of earlier struggles (Poulantzas 1978, 130). Therefore, if we place Poulantzass discussions of authoritarian statism within the wider context of State, Power, Socialism, then we can appreciate that the policy of the State is thus established [and will continue to be established] through a real process of intra-state contradictions (134). Furthermore, these contradictions are sharpened in times of capitalist crisis, and the authoritarian statist response is partially responsible for new forms of popular struggle characterized by an antistatism that resists both the greater investment of state power into everyday life and the states increasingly coercive nature (246). Crucially for the books final chapter (concerning the road to democratic socialism), these struggles, to the degree they are successful in precipitating more general crises of legitimation, could open the door to radical and democratic forms of antistatism that simultaneously lie at a distance from the state and have the potential to transform it (25165). This connects strongly with Halls interventions concerning Thatcherism, which were predicated on the question of how a particular (and highly partial) form of antistatism was able to mobilize and transform British society and the British state. However, Halls more concrete analysis enables us to acknowledge, perhaps more than Poulantzas allows, the potential for popular struggles rooted in antistatism to transform the state in precisely the authoritarian directions that Poulantzas discussed. Conversely, Poulantzas (1978, 246) shows us more clearly than Hall that an increasingly authoritarian state is simultaneously strengthened and weakened by this shift toward coercion as new forms of popular struggle set up major dislocatory effects within the State itself. Therefore, the insights of both theorists are particularly beneficial when analyzing the contemporary period, for together they show in a range of ways why and how one should view authoritarianism as a complex, multifaceted, and contradictory phenomenon. Hall and Poulantzas sought to understand their own period in order to identify possible strategic opportunities for the Left; their study of the world could not be separated from the task of how to change it. The question, therefore, is whetherin a renewed time of capitalist crisisthe rise of authoritarian neoliberalism does in fact create conditions in which progressive and radical politics can begin to reverse the tide of the last three decades. For this we need to consider examples of authoritarian neoliberal practicesparticularly, the coupling of moralizing rhetoric about capitalism with an increasingly constitutional and legal basis for creating a more moral capitalism.

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Practices of Authoritarian Neoliberalism: When Good Capitalism Goes Bad

The post-2007 shift to more authoritarian forms of neoliberalism was not an inevitable development, whereby the state acted as a functional derivative of what capitalism required of it; the shift was rather the result of sustained political activism that built upon precrisis trends. Understanding this is essential, for otherwise, owing to the massive bailouts of banks and other financial institutions, one will mistakenly

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view the crisis as somehow inaugurating the return of the state. But nonmarket social forms never stood above the financial world that they regulated; rather, they were embroiled in its contradictions [Furthermore] the massive interventions in the course of the current crisis are merely the culmination of the long series of interventions that marked the neoliberal era (Panitch and Konings 2009, 73). In addition, neoliberalisms genesis during a period bearing witness to the growing role of social democracy, organized labor, welfare programs, and so on, in capitalist political economies, means that neoliberalisms critique has never been restricted to the economy. In fact, from the beginning its critique has covered all areas of social life. In consequence, the virtually innumerable aspects of social life that could, in an ideal world, be reformed in the name of the market make it relatively simple for neoliberalism to be rhetorically deployed against all manner of intellectual, political, and social enemies. As Jamie Peck (2010a, 78) notes, Even after decades of neoliberal reconstruction, it is remarkable how many present-day policy failures are still being tagged to intransigent unions, to invasive regulation, to inept bureaucrats, and to scaremongering advocacy groups. This, of course, is despite the fact that many of the appropriate reforms demanded by neoliberals have been implemented across the world over the past four decades. Indeed, the critique of existing capitalist societies retains a perpetually dissatisfied tone owing to the fact that the neoliberal utopia has not been realized, at least in the pure sense embodied in neoliberalisms rhetorical valorization of the market. Hence, by the end of 2008, once the immediate threat of global collapse had been averted, the narration of the crisis as a case of when good capitalism goes bad did not take long to emerge. As outlined by Bruno Amable (2011, 12), this narratives solution entails not the fundamental reform or the overturning of capitalism but the demand for increased ethical responsibility by individuals. There has not been a rollback but rather an intensification of neoliberalism. Crucial here has been the relocation of responsibility for the crisis from financial institutions to individuals, who ran up large credit card and mortgage debts, and to states, whose inability to regulate appropriately resulted in the immoralization of finance and, consequently, their own budget deficits. Both the population at large and the state were declared guilty of permitting the massive excesses in the finance sector, meaning that they should justifiably bear the burden of making bad capitalism good (again). This has inevitably taken different forms in different countries, but the selfflagellating thrust has not altered. In the UK, an oft-repeated narrative states that the governments budget deficit is equivalent to the countrys credit card debt, meaning that both individual citizens and their political representatives must acquire a far greater sense of self-reliance and ethical responsibility in order to prevent more binges in the future. As Nayana King de Souza (2011, 202) argues, this narrative has entailed the simultaneous construction of two discourses: the delicate markets, which need financial support as a result of being extensively damaged by the actions of individuals and states, and the formidable markets, which are the guardians of the global economy and whose judgments on credibility and creditworthiness are nonnegotiable. This, she elaborates, is emphatically not extended to nonmarket areas of the political economy because one would be forced to acknowledge that the same spending choice could be made with respect to delicate public services such

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as welfare programs. Instead, such programs are deemed to embody the same morally questionable values that the state allowed to develop in the finance sector, and this poison needs removing from the social body. From this starting point, a whole host of highly regressive changes and developments have been pursued and enforced: sustained falls in real income; attacks on public sector pensions, unions, and workers; drastic cuts in welfare spending; and the accelerated dismantling of the nonmarket core of public services, all as part of the overall necessary act of cleansing. Connecting Hall and Poulantzas bears fruit here, for these moralizing narratives have been accompanied by the drive to subordinate the state to constitutional and legal rules that are deemed necessary for prosperity to be achieved. For example, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) was created in 2010 in order to provide independent and authoritative analysis of the UKs public finances. It is one of a growing number of official independent fiscal watchdogs around the world (emphasis added). The OBRs website declares that it has four main roles: producing forecasts for the economy and public finances; judging the governments rate of progress toward its fiscal targets (namely, a balanced budget); assessing the longterm sustainability of public finances; and scrutinizing the costings attached by the government to various tax and expenditure measures.3 Yet this neutral language masks the highly ideological assumption that even current fiscal policy, perhaps the harshest in British history, is not restrictive enough for long-term sustainability to be secured (see Office for Budget Responsibility 2011, 314). What constitutes fiscal sustainability is never clarified beyond the aforementioned general references to a balanced budget, for to do so would force the OBR to acknowledge that this can be achieved at a wide range of spending and taxation levels. Thus, OBR pronouncements are intended to provide the objective and nonpolitical (i.e., nondemocratic) basis for an ongoing recalibration of the kinds of activity that are feasible and appropriate for nonmarket institutions to engage in. For Hugo Radice (2011, 134), this and other developments are not only aimed at deepening the neoliberal restructuring of institutions, but also at banishing the very idea that societal goals can be advanced through the collective state provision of public goods. Moreover, they resonate with debates on budget deficits and national debt that have taken place in the United States over the last few years, and especially the Pyrrhic victory won by the Obama administration in the 2011 dispute over the debt ceiling. Here, the radical Right outmaneuvered its opponents to the extent that, although the Budget Control Act did not authorize cuts as deep as those demanded by the Republicans (not least the Tea Party caucus), the trigger mechanism inserted into the act normalizes the degradation of public provision as a legally neutral policy goal. In consequence, smaller issues such as the timing of deep spending reductions and the possible prolongation of the Bush-era tax cuts for the super rich have become the focus of political debate, leaving the bigger picture largely unaltered and depoliticized (as can be witnessed in the last few years regarding discussions of the so-called fiscal cliff).
3. What We Do, Office for Budget Responsibility, accessed 29 November 2011, http:// budgetresponsibility.independent.gov.uk/about-the-obr/what-we-do/.

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While not of the same order in continental European societies, where attachment to the provision of public goods by nonmarket institutions is stronger, the scale of the attempted shift in Europe is no less significant. Since the 1980s there has been a slowburning crisis of the programs, policies, and practices associated with social Europefor instance, the growing inequality of power between employers and unions in both the workplace and in national policy-making negotiations and the gradual shift toward workfare and away from entitlement to welfare. But the last several years have deepened and accelerated this trend. Especially in 20089, German elites were highly vocal about the moral hazard implications of the global crisis, arguing that the solution to the explosion of toxic loans and bad debts was not to print more money. Hence (social democratic) finance minister Peer Steinbrcks strong critique, in December 2008, of the crass Keynesianism allegedly pursued by the British government in its initial response to the crisis. Shortly afterward, both houses of the German Parliament passed a debt brake constitutional amendment that mandates a balanced budget from 2016 onward, thus inserting a constant downward pressure on public provision in the years and decades to come (only the Left party did not support the motion). This radical step attracted the support of the Social Democratic party and the Green party, both nominally progressive, demonstrating on one hand the deep rooting of the collective social memory in the hyperinflation of the early 1920s (see Bruff 2012). On the other hand (and invoking Hall), the amendment predicated this authoritarian shift upon a specific political narrative that moralized the holding of debt, enabling the amendment to connect to popular anxieties and concerns about the implications of the crisis. This provided the platform for the moralizing of Eurozone countries experiencing sovereign debt crises from 2010 onwards: Germany had taken the constitutional action necessary for the state to circumscribe itself in the name of good capitalism, so why could others not do the same? This was vividly illustrated by the manner in which countries such as Greece and Spain have been repeatedly castigated by media commentators and the Troikathe European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)for their partaking in a something for nothing culture that encouraged unsustainable excess leading up to 2007. As a result, measures possessing quasi-constitutional status have constituted a growing part of the conditions attached to the bailouts in Greece (witness, for example, the evolving terms attached to the money offered) and of related measures aimed at preventing the need for bailouts in countries such as Spain and Italy.4 In other words, such impositions are not just reactive, occurring after a bailout has been requested, but are also increasingly preemptive, locking in neoliberal governance mechanisms in the name of necessity, whatever the actual state of play.
4. This has encompassed a wide range of imposed restructurings, including massive fiscal retrenchment, privatizations on the cheap, and substantial public sector redundancies. In addition, wide swathes of social and welfare policies have been affected, with traditional rights under labor laws and healthcare programs falling under attack. Moreover, in Spain especially, widespread evictions have been used as a means of enforcing compliance with the Troikas impositions.

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Examples of the increasingly widespread constitutionalization of austerity include Spains enactment of a constitutional amendment in August 2011, with little debate, that strongly limited the scope of budget deficits, even though its public debt was low by European standards and thus could withstand a prolonged period of deficit spending to prop up its economy. Italy did likewise in 2012, and in the same year Austriaostensibly in little trouble but following suit regardlessmodified its federal budget law to the same effect. These amendments were passed in the name of restoring and ensuring credibility with the formidable financial markets, which in turn would enable the delicate domestic markets to be supported more effectively. However, as Becker and Jger (2012, 17983) point out, the real shift has come with initiatives such as the Fiscal Compact and the Euro Plus Pact. These are aimed at the wider European political economy and embody a much more automatic way of imposing sanctions on states that do not comply with the [highly restrictive] fiscal benchmarks. Moreover, the ECBs gradual move toward an unlimited capacity for purchasing the sovereign debt of national governments whose bond yields are deemed to be too highculminating in September 2012 with the Outright Monetary Transactions initiativeis predicated on the creation of a permanent, continent-wide conditionality regime aimed at all governments. Fundamentally, the thrust is toward the strengthened surveillance of member states (to the extent that the Troika is now monitoring the progress made by numerous Eurozone countries in implementing the necessary reforms), the establishment of legally binding national fiscal frameworks linked directly to a renewed Eurozone-wide stability and growth pact, and an increased commonality across national tax basesall with little recourse to democratic and popular oversight in the countries concerned. The most striking example to date was European leaders speedy rejection, due to the fear that democracy would produce the wrong result, of Greek Prime Minister George Papandreous suggestion, in late 2011, that Greece hold a national referendum on the second and most punitive bailout. This forced Papandreous resignation and, moreover, attempted to silence political dissent via the formation of a national unity government committed to implementing austerity measures. Given the way in which the surveillance mechanisms have developedvia notions of mutual learning and adherence to best practice benchmarksit is unlikely to be the last time such a nakedly antidemocratic outcome is enforced.5 Such illustrations of authoritarian neoliberalismwhereby the moralizing of the global crisis is connected to increasingly coercive legal, institutional, and policy processesdo paint a pessimistic picture. However, in keeping with Poulantzass (see 1978, 2417) observations on authoritarian statism, I view authoritarian neoliberalism as a response both to a wider crisis of capitalism and more specific legitimation crises of capitalist states. Therefore, authoritarian neoliberalism simultaneously strengthens and weakens the state as the latter reconfigures into a less open and democratic polity. Examples of weakening include the considerably more visible and significant
5. This also indicates the qualitatively different nature of these mechanisms from those embodied in traditional structural adjustment programs. Contemporary European surveillance is now preemptively self-imposed in the name of a universal goal, as opposed to being reactively imposed on specific countries somewhere else in the world.

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crises of legitimation across a number of countries since 2007, but it should not be forgotten that before 2007 one could already observe declining voter turnout and party membership, increasing electoral volatility, and growing mistrust of the political elite. This means that a states own crisis intensifies at the same time as its strategies of displacement (for example, the aforementioned constitutional and quasi-constitutional changes) seek to stabilize the contradictions and dislocations emanating from socioeconomic restructuring without granting material concessions to subordinate social groups. As a result, the attempted authoritarian fix is potentially more of a sticking plaster than anything more epochal. The question, then, is whether the contradictions inherent to authoritarian neoliberalismespecially with regard to the strengthening/weakening of the statehave created conditions in which progressive and radical politics can begin to reverse the tide of the last three decades.

Implications of the Authoritarian Fix for Progressive/Radical Politics

When considering the interwar period, Antonio Gramsci sought to capture the dilemma facing the socialist movements of his time: namely, that even a deep capitalist crisis has ambiguous implications.6 This is the crux of the problem for progressive and radical politics today as well, for the inability of European social democratic political parties (and the Left more generally) to take advantage of the post-2007 crisis has been one of the most notable aspects of this period. Returning to Ryner (2010, 555), we find that modern European social democracy is so deeply imbricated with the system that is in crisis that it is in no position to offer an alternative. In my opinion, it is possible for a more genuinely social democratic politics to reemerge, but only if there is a serious examination of the traditional focus on collective interests as mobilized through trade unions, welfare programs, labor parties, and ultimately the state. It is precisely this traditional worldview that, according to Hall (1979, 157), is cruelly exposed in times of capitalist crisis, because of especially the states role in diminishing societal expectations of socioeconomic progress in the national interest. Therefore, supporters of progressive politics ought to consider more expansively the production and reproduction of inequalities of power in capitalist societies. This in turn should entail a more skeptical attitude toward the state and a more positive view of nontraditional politics (see Odekon 2006). One example in Germany is the Left party (Die Linke, formed in the last decade), which has clearly broken with the New Center (Neue Mitte) politics of the SPD while maintaining organic links to the trade unions and social movements that helped bring it into being (see also the rise of Syriza in Greece). Die Linkes emergence shifted German political discourse to the left in the mid-to-late 2000s, which in turn has increased the likelihood that a broader coalition of social constituencies will oppose the rise of
6. See this articles epigraph and Gramsci (1971, 184, 276).

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authoritarian neoliberalism in Germany than would have been the case had Die Linke not found a measure of success (Solty 2008; Bruff 2010). Nevertheless, the contradictions inherent to social democracy that were identified by Hall will not disappear, even if there is space for a genuinely social democratic politics to narrate the crisis in a progressive fashion. Indeed, one can observe this in Germany, where Die Linke has been criticized for its participation in state governing coalitions in eastern Germany that have been significantly more centrist than its rhetoric has implied. Consequently, the need to unsettle conventional opinion on the possibilities for progressive change via traditional nonmarket institutions inevitably highlights the case for a more radical, transformative politics. This is particularly pertinent in the current period, with the state evolving into a stronger and more authoritarian but also a more fragile and delegitimated entity. Indeed, the decline of mass political parties, combined with the imbrication of all main parties with a system in crisis, potentially makes the state an increasingly direct target of a range of popular struggles, demands, and discontent (Poulantzas 1978, 2417). The problem for the Left is that, as many have pointed out, radical politics is currently being practiced most successfully by radical Right movements and parties, if one considers the rise of xenophobia and racism in Europe (such as the emergence of the Golden Dawn party in Greece), the establishment of the Tea Party in the United States, or indeed the more general antiparty dominance of charismatic figureheads in various countries, such as Vladimir Putin in Russia. Moreover, some of these radical movements are not averse to alliances with mainstream authoritarian neoliberal politics. This is perhaps most notable in the Netherlands, a country often viewed as socially and culturally progressive, yet since 2002 it has seen two neoliberal governing coalitions involving the Far Right.7 Therefore, the authoritarian fix, like capitalist crises more generally, has ambiguous implications for progressive and radical Left politics, especially when both are in danger of being outflanked by the radical Right. In consequence, the rise of the Occupy, Indignados, and related movements is welcome, for they have offered an emancipatory challenge to the dominant narratives of the crisis. In an increasingly direct manner, they have exposed the authoritarian neoliberal state to protest and struggle, and consequently to its continued delegitimation. This was illustrated vividly in the November 2011 clearing of Zuccotti Park in New York, which displayed visibly (despite attempts to herd journalists into one section of the park) both the coercive capacities of state power and the denialin the name of democracyof the constitutional right to expressive protest. Furthermore, Zuccotti Park is not an isolated event, with justifications of
7. The September 2012 election in the Netherlands is an interesting example of the intensified contradictions facing capitalist states in Europe. On the surface, it is a victory for more moderate politics, with the far Right Party for Freedom (PVV) and the leftist Socialist party (SP) faring considerably less well than expected. However, this was only achieved because the two centrist partiesthe neoliberal Peoples Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) and the social democratic Labor party (PvdA)increased their support by stealing policies and rhetoric from the PVV and SP, respectively. Especially with the formation of a VVD-PvdA coalition in November 2012, the stage was set for a further round of diminished expectations and, consequently, increasingly favorable conditions for the resurgence of both the PVV and the SP in the future.

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police violence and the mobilization of juridical power against such movements having become a routine part of events across the globe. Notorious cases include the pepper-spraying incident on the Davis campus of the University of California, but one can also think of repeated instances of coercion in Spain and other southern European countries in the Eurozone, and more recently in Turkey and Brazil. Although these examples make emancipatory change appear even further out of reach because they alert us more expansively to how inequalities of power are produced and reproduced in capitalist societies, they also enable us to consider more fully how other worlds are possible through this enhanced awareness. More to the point, this greater understanding helps bring to the forefront an emancipatory antistatism that is both at a distance from the state and potentially transformative of it through new forms of democratic struggle. This is crucial because focusing on the increasingly coercive imbrication of nonmarket with market forms of class power not only produces a frontal critique of such power but also attempts to mobilize support for an alternative understanding of how people can govern themselves. Such mobilization is fraught with dangers to the extent that it increases the potential for disagreement between different streams of radical thought on how to achieve a new society. For instance, age-old debates on whether or not critiques of the state distract us from the root driver of capitalist crises and conflicts (i.e., historically specific production relations) have resurfaced. Moreover, a range of views have been expressed within the newer movements, and in commentaries on them, concerning the desirability of (1) horizontal resistance, to overcome the potential for both co-option and marginalization through the avoidance of traditional notions of politics and collectivism; (2) a renewed Left critique of the state rooted in organized revolutionary mobilization that confronts vertical state power and the latent (often real) violence that such power represents; or (3) a radical reformism that remains within the system but reappropriates the language of freedom, rights, democracy, and justice from neoliberal and/or conventional framings (see, for example, Dhaliwal 2012; Roesch 2012; Foran 2012). Interesting in these debates has been the general (and often implicit) consensus that traditional Left worldviews of all kinds are in dire need of (minimally) updating thoroughly and (more broadly) rethinking fundamentally. Of course, as in the past there is no easy recipe for a solution not even as a model theoretically guaranteed in some holy text or other (Poulantzas 1978, 265), but it remains the case that unless people identify with and become the subjects of a new conception of society, it cannot materialise (Hall 1988, 282). Otherwise, we will remain trapped within the moralizing, and highly inegalitarian, good capitalism goes bad strictures that have dominated the post-2007 period and that have also served as the foundation for the rise of authoritarian neoliberalism.

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Acknowledgments
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 2010 workshop of the International Political Economy Group, a working group of the British International Studies Association, University of Salford, UK, and at the

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2011 Historical Materialism conference, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, UK. This article is part of a wider project on social Europe and neoliberalism, and Id like to thank the following (alphabetically) for their comments, advice, and discussion: David Bailey, Andreas Bieler, Peter Bratsis, Mnica Clua-Losada, Matthias Ebenau, Alexander Gallas, Emmanuel Pierre-Guittet, Jeffrey Harrod, Eva Hartmann, Laura Horn, Peter Ives, Bob Jessop, John Kannankulam, Nicholas Kiersey, Nayana King de Souza, Martijn Konings, Nagore Calvo Mendizabal, Phoebe Moore, Adam Morton, Reecia Orzeck, Adrienne Roberts, Ed Rooksby, Magnus Ryner, Maja Saveska, Stuart Shields, Nicola Smith, Susanne Soederberg, Daniela Tepe, Angela Wigger, and Stefanie Whl.

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