I suppose what’s interesting now is the time scale involved. We’re several years into the crash, but at the same time the entire perceptional shift in our ordinary economic expectations has been very rapid – we’ve gone from exburence to lethargy/despondence fairly rapidly. How many people really expect the future to be better than the past in material terms any time soon, if ever again?
The economic slide started in 2007, crashed in 2008 and the Austerity dogma had already been articulated and implemented by 2009 in many economies. To be sure, we were served up various Kabuki/morality plays to ensure a so-called compliance with the Austerity story in various countries, but the swiftness and completeness of the necessity of Austerity by so many varied governments seems quite odd. But then, again, for certain sections of the economy, austerity had been nipping at their heals for near on 30 years. Would the middle-stat “lifestyle” have thrived without the massive amount of personal debt incurred? Was Austerity always gooing to be the end result of the Reagan-Thatcher revolution?
As we head into 2013, the FT call to stay the asuterity course combined the various “expert” and govt forecasts that Austerity may last until 2018 and possibly beyond is a fairly straightforward message that Austerity for certain sections of soceity is their new way of life – forever. We’ll get a few dead cat’s bounces as capital looks to mop up any remaining labour efficiencies in the West through wage competition and the use of debt to create bonded rentier conditions on a ever greater proportions of the society.
However, I’d suggest, again, that socialists must be able to address the new situation where the economy is in permanent decline rather than rely on previous economic analysis where growth was a given.