ABSTRACT
In the twenty-first century, anti-austerity protests seek to constitute practical negations of capitalist legitimacy. Given this aspiration, five key issues are initially delineated as at stake in the anti-austerity protests: (a) the imposition of capitalist legitimacy; (b) the construction of individual and collective autonomy; (c) the struggle for human sovereignty; (d) the implementation of neoliberal programmes of austerity; and (e) the welfarist logic underlying the post-war promise of prosperity. This analysis of these considerations is followed by reflections on the reality of austerity and those sociological dimensions that contain significant antitheses: (a) the regulative power of the state; (b) the legitimizing function of neoliberal ideology; (c) the ineluctable presence of societal fragility; (d) the contradictory nature of creative destruction; (e) the pervasive presence of commodification processes; (f) the interpenetration of purposive and substantive forms of rationality; (g) the hegemonic influence of neoliberalism; and (h) the adaptive potential of the ‘new spirit of capitalism.’ It is argued that these antitheses make the anti-austerity protests’ enacting of anti-capitalist practices and modes of organizing, like those of radical democratization and decommodified exchange, particularly significant. Despite being conditioned by capitalism’s crisis, anti-austerity protests intimate at the institution of an alternative, emancipatory political imaginary.
