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Eight years after the emergence of a renewed global crisis of capitalism, there is no evidence of a wholehearted return to economic growth. The economic stagnation has been such that the IMF has had to consistently revise downwards its predictions of growth. The policies attributed to a politics of austerity have been presented as virtually the only solution out of this crisis.
Austerity refers to the specific sets of policies designed ostensibly to reduce public debt through a decrease in government expenditure on public services and welfare systems. Austerity programmes have, however, been heavily criticized for facilitating the growth of corporate welfare at the expense of a safety net for the poorest, for bringing about the systematic entrenchment of a market logic into as many areas of public life as possible, and for being precisely the wrong approach to stimulate economic growth. Many leading economists around the globe now believe that austerity is not a programme of recovery while increasing numbers of activists agree with former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis that "austerity is being used as a narrative to conduct class war".
