Archive of Buying Time

The titles below trace this history and provide the backdrop for understanding class struggle today in the context of the collapse of neoliberalism: 

The recent election signaled a decisive shift in Italian politics, marking the collapse of the parties that have ruled Italy for the past 25 years. In this interview, conducted by Lewis Bassett, David Broder surveys the state of Italian politics in the four weeks since the election, and asks where next for Italian politics.

Capital could not just abolish the gains of the postwar period. It was necessary to preserve social peace. The "trick" in the 1970s consisted of using inflation to defuse the emerging conflict between labour and capital over redistribution. The money machine was used to compensate for the loss of income which resulted from the reduction in capital’s contribution to the welfare state… Evidently, that could not last. So from the late 1970s inflation was replaced with public debt, and states borrowed (rather than tax) in order to be able to keep up the level of services. Then, in the 1990s, when states began to worry about the growing weight of debt servicing as part of their budgets, and reduced their spending (and thus social services) we took recourse to private debt. In other words, we made it easier than ever for households to take on debt so that they could preserve their purchasing power, which was being cut back by these budget consolidation measures. And that led us to the 2008 catastrophe.