Anti-austerity between militant materialism and real democracy: exploring pragmatic prefigurativism

ABSTRACT

The anti-austerity movement that emerged in the wake of the 2008 global economic crisis and 2010 Eurozone crisis, and which forms part of the ‘age of austerity’ that came after those crises, was underpinned by a set of ideas and practices that we refer to here as ‘pragmatic prefigurativism’. Whilst the anti-austerity movements typically rejected formal ideologies such as Marxism and anarchism, nevertheless pragmatic prefigurativism can be understood as a ‘left convergence’ of sorts. The paper explores the features of this pragmatic prefigurativism, comparing the anti-austerity movements in the UK and Spain. In particular, we note the role of unresponsive institutions of democracy in prompting the move towards pragmatic prefigurativism, the adoption of techniques of direct democracy and direct action as the means through which to express a voice and to refuse austerity, and the pragmatic nature of the subsequent (re)turn to political institutions when this became a possibility.

KEYWORDS:

• Austerity
• anti-austerity
• prefigurative politics
• UK
• Spain

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The Lindsey Oil Refinery dispute took place in the UK during 2009, immediately after the onset of the global economic crisis. Whilst not always considered an anti-austerity episode – on the grounds of its infamous ‘British Jobs for British Workers’ slogan; nevertheless, the dispute did represent a (contradictory) attempt to challenge efforts to lower workers’ wages in the wake of the 2008 crisis, and for that reason we consider it here (on the different strands of the dispute, see also Ince, Featherstone, Cumbers, MacKinnon, and Strauss (2015).

2 The Panrico workers’ strike began in 2013 and turned out to be the longest lasting strike in Spain since the restoration of democracy in 1978.

3 The website of the IWGB can be found here: iwgb.org.uk.

4 The website of the UVW can be found here: www.uvwunion.org.uk.

5 The website of the IWW can be found here: iww.org.uk.

6 Movistar sometimes goes by its former name, Telefónica.

7 The Vestas factory occupation took place in 2009 in opposition to the decision to close a wind turbine factory based in the Isle of Wight, in the UK.

8 Iai@flautas was a movement of older activists who sought in part to use their identity as older people to challenge the Spanish government's austerity agenda.

Additional information

Funding

This work benefited from funding awarded by the University of Birmingham School of Government and Society Research Fund and the project AJOVE12 funded by the Catalan government on ‘Social Inequality and Political Participation during the crisis’.

Notes on contributors

Olatz Ribera-Almandoz

Olatz Ribera-Almandoz is a Researcher at the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB). She is also a member of the Johns Hopkins University – Universitat Pompeu Fabra Public Policy Center. Her research focuses on the interactions between social movements and public institutions in the context of multilevel states, with a special focus on the (new) demands of social justice, welfare and housing. She recently completed a PhD in Political and Social Sciences at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona), and has been a visiting scholar at The University of Manchester.

Nikolai Huke

Nikolai Huke is a Research Assistant and Lecturer in Political Science at Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen. He is the author of two recent books on social movements in Spain during the Eurozone crisis: Krisenproteste in Spanien (2016) and ‘Sie repräsentieren uns nicht’. Soziale Bewegungen und Krisen der Demokratie in Spanien (2017). His research interests include European integration, democratic theory, Critical International Political Economy, vulnerability and resistance, everyday agency, transformations of welfare states, industrial relations and migration policy.

Mònica Clua-Losada

Mònica Clua-Losada is Associate Professor in Global Political Economy at the Department of Political Science at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. She is also an executive board member of the Johns Hopkins University – Universitat Pompeu Fabra Public Policy Center in Barcelona. Her research focuses on the contestation, subversion and resistance by labour and other social movements of capitalist relations of domination. She has written and researched on the effects of the current financial crisis on the Spanish state, the British labour movement and social movements in Spain. Her work has been published in different languages and outlets.

David J. Bailey

David J. Bailey is a Senior Lecturer in Politics in the Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham. He is the author of The political economy of European social democracy: A critical realist approach (Routledge) and co-editor of European social democracy during the global economic crisis: Renovation or resignation? (Manchester University Press). He recently co-edited a special issue of Globalizations, on alternatives to capitalism in the present.