With the onset of stagflation – of stagnation despite accelerating inflation

The development of the leading country of modern capitalism, the United States, is paradigmatic

with a population that would have learned, over years of hegemonic re-education, to regard the distributional outcomes of free markets as fair, or at least as without alternative

the end of ‘Pumpkapitalismus’, with a not even roughly predictable loss of savings and income from savings, as well as a rise in unemployment and underemployment, as well as further cuts in public services following a new wave of budgetary consolidation

the outcome depends on the reaction of owners of investment capital: inflation that turns into galloping inflation may trigger fear of asset losses and lead to capital flight

The standard economic theory of politics – which should not be confused with the political theory of the economy in the Marxian tradition

Its favourite narrative is of excessive demands on the ‘common pool’

an old, though perhaps not venerable, concept

That the intensification of the fiscal crisis after 2008 is attributable to the financial crisis rather than a surfeit of democracy is borne out by quantitative studies that have found a positive correlation between the size of a country’s financial sector and the scale of new debt taken on in the wake of the crisis

The losers from the neoliberal turn cannot see what they might get from a change of government; the TINA (‘There is no alternative’) politics of ‘globalization’ has long arrived at the bottom of society where voting no longer makes a difference in the eyes of those who would have most to gain from political change