Capitalism of the Living Dead.

 

Austerity: The Demolition of the Welfare State and the Rise of the Zombie Economy

Kerry-Anne Mendoza

(New Internationalist, 2016)

 

There are some books that are considered to.be important enough to reside in the intellectual canon of their time. From the outside this looks as sedate and any such institution. Inside though it is as rowdy as a saloon in a Wild West boom town as the scholars residing within squabble over who should be allowed in, and who should be thrown out.

 

There is a smaller as quieter anexe off to the side, this is where the books that are genuinely necessary live. The entrance is as narrow as the one that keeps the rich out of paradise.

 

First published in 2015 and then revised to include extra material by Dinyar Godrej and David Ransom Kerry-Anne Mendoza's first book would slip through as If it has been greased.

 

Beginning with the Bretton Woods agreement signed at the end of the Second World War to the  austerity policies foisted on countries by the EU and the IMF following the 2008 crash Mendoza shows how capitalism has sold we the people a pup. This has been intertwined with a plot to systematically dismantle worker’s rights and those that underpin the democratic system itself to create a corporate state. This is to the benefit of the 1% and hugely to the detriment of everyone else.

 

These are challenging ideas and ones much of the media and the commenting classes would like to dismiss as just another rant emerging from the ragged tent of the Occupy movement. This is true in the sense that Mendoza was one of its leading lights before going on to set up alternative media outlet The Canary.

 

The text itself though is diametrically opposed to the sort of spiel earnest types deliver to small audiences in rooms above pubs. It is a forensic half-dozen of the myths propping up an economic and political system that recent events have shown to be dangerously flawed.

 

There are some grumpy academics who will say that few of the ideas she expounds are original. Fair cop, so far as it goes, which isn't all that far. What Mendoza does brilliantly is lay them out in clear, jargon free, language for the audience who need to.be exposed to them most; we the voting public.

 

This matters even more since the advent of the pandemic led to governments around the world throwing the fiscal rule book out of the window. An optimist might see in this the possibility of a new age of egalitarianism and social democracy.

 

Unfortunately, this is no time for optimists, there is a better than average possibility that the death by a thousand cuts Mendoza describes being inflicted on our economy and political culture will be accelerated. An unprecedented crisis may yet prove to be an excellent opportunity for the wealthy few to balance the books.

 

Capitalism and cynicism have always walked in lockstep. Read this book to be informed about what has gone before and forwarded about what may be to come. Read it to as a call to arms for the 99% to get angry, take to the streets and turn things around.