This draconian slashing of public services – in Quebec and worldwide – has a clear political purpose. In fact, austerity is one of the many tools of class warfare, waged by the economic elite on the rest of the population. In order to effectively fight back against austerity, we must examine its ideological justification and dispel some of the myths that are used to legitimize both austerity and the fundamentally flawed ‘solutions’ to austerity that are enacted within the capitalist system.

The neoliberal logic of austerity goes as follows. As debt becomes ‘unsustainable,’ public economic expenditures are cut back, and wages and benefits are decreased. Corporate and financial taxes (which are currently at a historic low) can then be reduced, allowing private companies free reign to ‘stimulate economic growth.’ Governments are further pressured to privatize public services, roll back labour and environmental protection laws, and sell public land at absurdly cheap prices for resource extraction, as all this is deemed necessary for private companies to remain competitive and profitable.

We should ask who benefits from increased profits when wages are cut down, and when public services designed to, at the very least, limit an increasing level of inequality, are damaged irrevocably. It certainly is not the university student, who sees their tuition increase while their part-time job salary decreases, nor is it the new immigrant, nor the single mother, nor anybody else who fundamentally depends on public services to mitigate situations of precarity.

If we want to defeat austerity for good, we must attack its root cause: capitalism.

Those who do benefit are the owners of the profiting companies, the economic and political elites, well-secured with six-, seven-, and eight-figure salaries. Decreased labour costs and corporate taxes can lead to a sudden surge in profits, as well as highly misleading statistical indicators like a growing GDP or decreasing unemployment. They are misleading because the profits are never redistributed in any way, and remain squarely in the pockets of the bourgeoisie, and because the majority of new jobs are actually part-time, non-unionized, and provide a salary well under a living wage.

Since the 2008 economic crisis, inequalities have drastically risen, especially in countries where neoliberal ideology is well-ingrained, and where austerity policies have been in place for several years now. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) itself has stated that the policies it has implemented since the crisis were misguided and ineffective, highly reminiscent of the infamous Structural Adjustment Programs of the 1980s and 1990s – loans to countries in crisis in exchange for trade liberalization and decreased government intervention. Yet, this has not precluded the IMF from continuing to push similar policies now, irrational as this ideological thinking may be. Indeed, austerity is more than policies: it is an ideology that is entrenched in all spheres of society, from university campuses to government offices.

We must also remember that austerity is not new. The policies that accompany it have been influential for many decades, returning in times of crisis and fading into the background in times of relative stability. For example, in the U.S. recession of 1973-75, the bourgeoisie was fearful of inflation and demanded lower wages and lower government spending. The result, according to Canadian academic James Rinehart, was mass unemployment and the collapse of inflation-adjusted wages by 1985. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Each time austerity is temporarily pushed back – by more ‘progressive’ capitalist policies, by mass resistance, or by a combination of both – it resurges more powerful than ever.

Bearded ghostly Marx would not be surprised. Indeed, he explained the reason for, and the potential outcome of, austerity politics more than a century ago. Marx argued that capitalist economic theories miss a fundamental point: the cause for economic crises and the systemic imperative for capitalists to push for ever more profits are fundamentally intertwined. As the rate of gains in productivity decreases, Marx argued, the general rate of profit also decreases, as capitalists are able to extract less profits from the workers’ labour. In turn, through crises and economic slowdown, capitalism restructures itself to restore profitability, but at the cost of a drop in investment and an increase in unemployment.

The historical recurrence of austerity shows that Marx’s analysis was essentially correct. This is why challenging austerity by pushing for a fairer taxation system, higher corporate taxes, and public sector investment policies is only a temporary fix, a band-aid on a severed artery. If we want to defeat austerity for good, we must attack its root cause: capitalism. The only way to ensure that austerity won’t come back is to bury the system that makes it possible in the shameful depths of history.

Alternatives to austerity within the capitalist framework inevitably tend to have a productivist mindset, which means that they emphasize growth, even though, devastatingly, continued growth requires unsustainable use of resources. Social and economic justice cannot come about through means that also exacerbate climate change and environmental destruction, which already disproportionately impact people in the disadvantaged communities through droughts, increased levels of migration, higher levels of violence over the control of resources, and increased food prices. According to Oxfam, 20 per cent of the world population will be at risk of hunger by 2050 due to expected drops in global food production. By allowing continued oil extraction from Alberta tar sands, Canada causes damage to its own environment, such as by contaminating groundwater reserves. Even more importantly, Canada is also complicit in environmental destruction worldwide, with many of its mining corporations ruthlessly extracting resources across the world, particularly in Latin America.

Thankfully, such temporary reformist solutions are not the only choices at our disposal. As university students, we have much more power than we think. Economic disruptions, departmental strikes, occupations of public and private spaces – all of these can have a real impact. As students in Quebec, we can organize along with the labour movement through a combative student federation like the Association pour une solidarité syndicale étudiante (ASSÉ). By emulating organizations such as these, we can build autonomous and direct democratic local structures that control both economic production and public decisions. This can lead to a fundamental reorganization of society, based partly in international solidarity, in a way that spells the end of economic exploitation, ecological destruction, and nationalistic thinking.

Anti-austerity is thus necessarily anti-capitalist if it is to amount to anything in the long run. It must radically disengage from mainstream politics, building alternative and direct democratic structures to prefigure the future. We must also remember that if our movements gain enough momentum to actually impact and alter electoral and parliamentary politics, then they also have enough momentum to radically change society outside of mainstream politics. So let’s help build that momentum. A good place to start is with the events scheduled throughout this week, which aim to demonstrate the real power we have as students and provide us with concrete examples of radical struggle.

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The is plenty of examples of the NDP’s shift to the right. One worrying sign was the party’s decision to abandon any and all reference to socialism in its constitution. In doing so, it surrendered a powerful symbol of opposition to capitalism – an economic structure that has as its sole guideline for success the rapid accumulation of profit, which sees natural resources and human life as disposable for the sake of larger bank accounts and has brought us time and time again to the brink of ecological and human catastrophe.

The NDP has also abandoned its hardline anti-austerity position, leaving us to wonder whether this will pave the road for future dismantling of public services. The NDP promises a “balanced budget” in its first year in office; in so doing, it condones the discourse of austerity, and shows that it would have no issue enacting policies that worsen the suffering of the most disadvantaged people in our society, as they disproportionately affect women and marginalized groups. Tom Mulcair himself, the leader of the NDP, has been quoted as praising the “winds of liberty” of former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s brutally neoliberal Conservative government.

Those with economic power wield enormous influence on electoral politics, and so the consequences of not falling in line would be disastrous.

Importantly, the provincial NDP in Alberta sees no problem in the extraction of tar sands and the construction of pipelines that accompanies it, and thus has no problem denying the most basic rights of Indigenous people in Northern Alberta, allowing the continuation of extreme environmental degradation, the pollution of water sources, and ultimately the undermining of Indigenous autonomy. The NDP’s increasingly staunch support for the State of Israel’s violent policies toward Palestinians is also problematic. One NDP candidate from Nova Scotia holding a critical stance toward Israel, Morgan Wheeldon, has already been forced to resign during this campaign, showing that there is no space in the NDP for critical analysis of Canada’s complicity in Israeli settler colonialism. Is a party overall so willing to shift around its policies and concede to capitalist pressure at all qualified to help bring about a better, more equal, democratic, and flourishing Canada? I say no.

Worst of all, no progressive party is immune to such a disintegration of its ideals. Capitalists, as a class, own all the means of production and all the mainstream media, and have instrumental control of the state through lobbying. They also have access to class weapons such as the capacity to relocate entire industries at the cost of thousands of jobs, as well as the simple yet disastrous tool of capital flight, whereby capitalists move valuable assets and capital to another country because of political events. It is then not surprising that progressive parties are so eager to negotiate: those with economic power wield enormous influence on electoral politics, and so the consequences of not falling in line would be disastrous for them.

We can see this dynamic consistently throughout history and in recent years. For example, in Greece – a country that is suffering a humanitarian crisis and a drop in the quality of life akin to the effects of a war on its soil, caused by the austerity policies imposed by the European capitalists and technocrats – a progressive (and maybe even radical) party arose, known as Syriza. Its members came from the countless pockets of grassroots resistance in Greek society, and they were determined to end austerity once they gained control of the state. A series of bitter and intense negotiations began with the European Union, which continued throughout the summer, culminating in a referendum on what national economic policies should be pursued. The result of this referendum was an astounding expression of support for a break from austerity politics, and possibly a departure from the fundamentally anti-democratic European Economic and Monetary Union. And yet the party surrendered, abandoned its progressive policies, and let austerity through the gates. It is now facing party implosion, and is fishing for support in the older centre-left and centre-right political spaces.

European labour parties are another example of this phenomenon of rightward drift. They all began quite like the NDP, as a group of socialists and social democrats hoping to achieve a break from capitalism through elections and the use of state power. Until 1995, the UK Labour Party even had a clause in its constitution listing “the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange” as a goal. Without exception, these parties became supporters of neo-liberalism. Nowadays, they sometimes even play on racial lines and anti-immigration stances, as in Sweden or France, to help maintain a fragile status quo. Their surrender has left the field wide open for right-wing, anti-immigration, and xenophobic parties to turn the European continent into a fortress.

As for the NDP, it is not even waiting to be in power to capitulate – it is doing so now, in the hope of broadening its voter support, by appearing reasonable and legitimate to the economic elite of the country.

As for the NDP, it is not even waiting to be in power to capitulate – it is doing so now, in the hope of broadening its voter support, by appearing reasonable and legitimate to the economic elite of the country. What can we do, then, if we believe in the potential to organize ourselves to bring about a more equal, non-oppressive society? If our collective understanding of politics is carefully limited to participating in electoral campaigns, voting, and then ceasing all political participation, it all seems quite bleak indeed. With such an understanding of politics, one can only reach the conclusion that we are doomed to choose between Capitalist A and Socially Minded Capitalist B, and that there are no solutions to entrenched exploitation and environmental destruction.

And yet, there is hope. Change, progress, and human emancipation can be spearheaded into existence. Working and disenfranchised people have claimed major victories throughout history, but let me be clear: it was never due to a vote. Their successes were the fruit of occupations, mass protests, demanding immediate concessions from those in power, lest everything be blown up, to be reconstructed again by the people – in other words, direct action with the aim of scaring the shit out of the bourgeoisie. Women didn’t win their right to vote through the conscientious voting of others, they did so by carrying out militant actions throughout the first part of the 20th century. Black people didn’t end the Jim Crow laws enforcing racial segregation by voting, but by rioting, by organizing, and by prefiguring a better society. Low-income workers didn’t gain minimum wage laws and state protection by voting, but by occupying their workplaces, striking en masse.

The solution is simple and yet so complicated. It lies in direct action, in direct-democratically managed spaces, in international solidarity. It lies in breaking away from the state and from capitalism, and taking care of ourselves and each other instead. It lies in refusing to let representative politics co-opt our movements. There are people waging this kind of struggle in Canada: Indigenous peoples and environmental activists blocking the construction of pipelines; student unions here in Quebec organizing themselves on a radical and democratic basis; community members holding neighbourhood assemblies and support groups; unionized workers getting ready for a fall strike.

I am not telling you not to vote – do vote if you wish to, pressure the NDP and other parties, and resist their inevitable rightward shift. Engage in reformist struggles – which, after all, can coexist and interplay with revolutionary organizing in a mutually beneficial relationship. But as you cast your ballot, remember that there is much more to do, and that if you aim for real change, it must be forcefully taken and not politely requested.

Gregoire Beaune is a U3 Philosophy and Political Science student. To contact him, email gregoire.beaune@mail.mcgill.ca.

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