Austere reason, and the eschatology of neoliberalism’s End Times

On conversation with Mark Blyth’s Austerity, the commentary explores the distinctive dynamics of austerity politics in the United States. The object of a tacit bipartisan consensus, ‘austerity’ has not been named in the same way as Europe, although its material effects (mostly devolved to the state and local levels) have nevertheless been far-reaching. More generically, austerity can be seen as a particular moment in the historical advance of neoliberalization: it perpetuates the leeching of the social state and redoubles the attack on labor unions, systemic goals for the neoliberal project, but it does so in the context of historically and geographically specific conjunctures. The politics of this process may be brutal, but they are still open.