“Neoliberal austerity is bad. Pre-fascist authoritarianism is worse”
An interview with Efsyn.gr about Clear Bright Future
I spoke to Tasos Tsakiroglou of the Greek newspaper Efsyn.gr about the Greek edition of Clear Bright Future. The original article is published here. Below is an English translation…
TT: Although the collapse of the ideologies of neoliberalism is daily and blatant, the doctrine “There Is No Alternative” continues to fuel mass fatalism. How do you explain this contradiction that some have called “Gramsci’s paradox”?
PM: Unfortunately, as Labour activists found out in December, mass fatalism is the basic ideology of neoliberalism. Even though Fukuyama has repudiated the end of history theory, millions of people still, implicitly, believe it.
What happened to the ideology of neoliberalism is that it became — as William Davies writes — “literally unjustified”. What the elite did after the 2008 crisis, and what they are doing now, has no theoretical justification in their world view. The state is supposed to be small and inactive — yet through borrowing and quantitative easing and bailouts it is all that is keeping the market sector alive.
If you take Gramsci’s famous quote in context, it was written in 1930 — after the Wall Street Crash but before the rise of state directed…
